...Sorry, @geoff1000: What line? 99% what?
@DarrenWalker Understandable.
Same as it ever was seems just fine as long as you're asleep in it. If you're waking out of it (or never went to sleep), you see how much nastiness goes into holding it all together.
So many transphobes here. How sad.
@Ixyavi
Hello, and welcome to Cuddle Comfort!
@DarrenWalker So the transition isn't because they identify as the other gender ; but because they want to be identified by people they meet, as being that other gender ?
"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck ; it's probably a duck" ; is useful advice for anyone wanting to be identified by others, as a duck. Advertising is most effective if it puts out a consistent message on many channels.
The comedian Gavin Webster started one of his stand-up shows by describing himself as a cross- dresser ; explaining that his typical male attire was actually that of a typical butch lesbian.
@DarrenWalker Let's think of a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is female and 100 is male. Cuddlers who specify only male or only female partners, have drawn a line just above 0 or just below 100, and we are all OK with that.
In a binary world, that line could be 1 or 99 or anywhere in between, and it would effectively filter out the half one does not want. In a non-binary world, setting the line at 1 or 99, would include or exclude everyone in the middle ; so we have to make a conscious choice, an informed decision about what we want.
I'm sure that female cuddlers who specify female only, would be upset to meet someone who said they identified as female but had every outward sign of being male. I say that if someone wants to be identified as their non-birth gender, they should really make an effort to follow that stereotype. Someone who isn't trying to do that, can ignore the stereotypes.
@geoff1000 asks, "So the transition isn't because they identify as the other gender; but because they want to be identified by people they meet, as being that other gender?"
You have a sense of yourself as male, yes? What if everyone you met—everyone in the world—treated you as female because you haven't got breasts? (I realize this is a difficult thing to imagine, but try.) Whatever you do, no matter how stereotypically male, people only ever see you as female. You argue a point and don't back down: people don't call you aggressive, they call you a bitch. You know how much your time and labor are worth, and insist on being paid accordingly: you're not confident, you're a bitch again. You wear stereotypically male clothing, and people assume you're a lesbian.
And so on. Meanwhile, folks with breasts act the same way you do, wear the same clothes you do, do the same things, and are treated as males: aggressive, confident, straight males. If you want to be treated as what you are, you're going to have to look the part: you need breasts. Your gender, a psychological thing, doesn't change when you transition—just your body.
That said, it is entirely possible for your mental map of your body to not match the body you have.
Until we learn to reprogram the cortical homunculus (an interesting thought morally, messing with the brain that way), there's only one way to sort that out.
@geoff1000 also says, "Let's think of a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is female and 100 is male."
Let's not. Making 'female' equal 'zero' is a thing that's been done too often already, and calling 'male' zero isn't any better. Instead, let's think of a spectrum from red to blue, where pure red exists only on one spot on the end, pure blue only on a corresponding spot on the other side, and pure purple only in a single spot in the center.
In a binary world, anyone on the red side of purple is "female" and anyone on the blue side is "male."
In a nonbinary world, only pure reds are "female" and only pure blues are "male," with most people being some shade in between.
However, this applies only to genital type, not body type. So someone to the red side of purple could be entirely female when it comes to privates, but still be nearly six feet tall with broad shoulders, slim hips, solid muscles, and hardly any breasts. Speaking stereotypically:
Body type male "Private" type female
I'm sure that nearly every cuddler who specifies female only would be upset to meet someone who was in fact AFAB, but had every outward sign of being male (with the exception of those private parts which don't come into a cuddle). I say that if someone wants to be sure their buddy isn't unhappily surprised by their body type, they should be straightforward about their body type—no matter which side of the purple dot they happen to have been born on.
The site already allows for filtering on the basis of age, height, body type ; and people like to exchange photos. Why not criticise everyone who has any filters ?
I feel that the criticism of my use of numbers for a scale, was unnecessary.
@geoff1000 asks, "Why not criticise everyone who has any filters?"
...I hope that's not a genuine question. Now, I am criticizing the idea that it's necessary to filter by crotch type on a platonic site—and I'm certainly criticizing the idea that what a person's privates look like determines their body type and/or basic personality.
But it makes perfect sense to want to know how much life experience your prospective buddy has, how tall they are, how curvy, how nice to look at, talk to, etc. I'm not criticizing that at all.
It just happens to be a simple fact that your private parts really only determine how sexual interaction with you works.
Your private bits can provide hints at what your personality and body type might be. But direct information is a lot better than hints, and who needs to know what you've got between your legs if it's not going to make a speck of difference to a nice platonic cuddle? There are other things you need to know, and it makes a good deal more sense to request that information, not information that only hints at what you actually need to know.
I feel that calling half the human population "0" was unnecessary. Intentional or not, I think the implications are unfortunate. Agree to disagree?
...Not that my red-to-blue spectrum description is much better in terms of usefulness, unfortunately for me.
In reality, see, 'male' and 'female' are like two separate colors: a person can have all blue paint and no red paint, (or none of either, or equal amounts of both right up to the top of the metaphorical paint can), but that's rare. It's normal to have both, but more of one than the other.
Or one more visible than the other during a physical exam, at least.
The sex assignment doctors do at birth is based on a single part of the baby's body—the genitals—and focuses on which "color" the kid seems to have most of in that specific area. So when you filter your buddies based on what they were assigned at birth, that's what you're learning: which "color" was predominant in their genital area when they were born.
It doesn't actually tell you anything about their muscles or curves or tendency to take charge or to listen understandingly or anything else that's important in a cuddle. Just that one thing: that's all you can be sure of.
I think it makes more sense to ask directly about the things you actually need to know.
@DarrenWalker I see your profile says "cuddles everybody" so in your analogy you are red-blue colour-blind, and can't understand what all the gender-defining fuss is about. That would be like me being asked in a McDonald's if I wanted my coffee in a blue disposable cup or a red one, or what my purple shade threshold was.
Others might want a specific number of sugars, or amount of milk, or for it to be decaffeinated. I wouldn't criticise them for that ; so nor would I criticise someone who specifically wanted a particular colour of cup, and if that wasn't available, to go without.
On that note, I'm told that Pepsi chose blue for their cans of Cola, because so many imposters used red cans to mislead customers who actually wanted Coke.
I think the way you guys have described it both ways shows how much belief has in understanding. Those of us that grew up believing one way of thinking, maybe not even being exposed at all until adulthood that their may be a spectrum are going to have difficulty bringing into focus one of their core beliefs. Please be tolerant of how deeply core beliefs can make it for people to learn something new.
The only way is through discus and exposure. I just learned what AFAB means today, LGBTQI+, the difference between gender and sex and all that a short time ago. I’ll never be able to truly understand the struggles of people who deal with it, because i don’t. As much as i want to be correct in thinking and action i probably won’t get it right most the time. I’ll just try and be respectful and open.
So be slow to call some behavior transphobic or homophobic because we just don’t know any better.
calling someone a "transphobe" implies they are scared. I don't think anybody is scared of transexuals.
@BashfulLoner
I find a lot of the newer theories unsettled "science". The alphabet letter group wants us to believe the number of trans folks is larger than it is. Perhaps because of the politics mixed in during the last twenty years.
I'm not phobic, I'm actually curious. Every one gets respect and tolerance but the jury is out
@Groucho i don’t personally think science has much to do with it, in my mind it’s about people being themselves, understand it and sharing it. I mean we may agree or not, but it’s not our human condition that’s effected.
People should be who they be, and i may not be smart enough to get who they believe they are.
But because i don’t understand it might make me behave in a way that’s unsavory in certain instances.
@Groucho
What do you mean, why do you believe there is a consorted effort to inflate trans numbers?
@grumpy_cat cat
Politics
@BashfulLoner Exactly.
Oh my, a science denier! I have gotten quite attached to my psych degree. What to do. What to do?
I don’t think science makes a this choice for us, you can use it to make some points. Chemically what doe it tell us? Biology tells one tithing psychology tells us something else. People are making a choice on what they believe because none of them have proven one point.
I don't hear science denial, I hear that for some of the questions involved, science is largely irrelevant. Whether there's 2 albinoes or 1000, some of us would like to know what the world is like for them and communicate and behave in a way that might lessen their being stigmatized.
Not calling them Trannys is probably a good start, thankfully he was banned.
@Groucho "Oh my, a science denier! I have gotten quite attached to my psych degree. What to do. What to do?"
You have to be your own psychotherapist. Jumping up from the chair to lay on the couch and answer the question, then jumping back again, will at least keep you fit. 😀
I remember watching a drama about a white-only school having a sudden influx of black pupils. There was a lot of aggression and then finally a kind of truce, until they settled down together. Then at the end, a bunch of Chinese pupils arrived.
Maybe our ability to accommodate and integrate those who are different in some ways, makes each new influx easier.
Science deniers are typically males between 12 and 30 years old who think 5 means 8 when sexting.
A young woman complained that she was only bad at parking a car, because her boyfriend said "this" ( indicating a distance with a finger and thumb ), "is 9 inches".
@geoff1000:
That would be like me being asked in a McDonald's if I wanted my coffee in a blue disposable cup or a red one, or what my purple shade threshold was.
Eh... since "colors" in this case are "genital types," that analogy only works if the McDonalds in question is a No Interacting With Colors store. In which case it'd make perfect sense to point out that requesting a certain color of cup (when every cup comes with a plain, glued-on cup holder) isn't reasonable... and nobody would ask that.
@Groucho, @BashfulLoner and @littermate: I'm pretty sure human psychology is produced by human brains. Science hasn't unraveled the mysteries of the mind yet, but that doesn't mean it never will.
At the moment, what we have is evidence that the psychology of a human mind doesn't always match the category of personality we assign to people on the basis of how their private bits looked at birth (or how we made them look). Not even always a "more or less, good enough for comfort and happiness" match. In short, we can be fairly certain that assigning pronouns, gender roles, etc., at birth isn't always a good idea.
Science can tell us the why later.
@DarrenWalker Science has unravelled quite a bit, yet I agree there are miles to go before we're done.
Just as medical science , i.e., medicine , recognizes that nature creates a small percentage of birth defects, autoimmune illnesses and lesser anomalies, so does the science of the mind recognize that Nature is not able to deliver 100% perfection.
I look at the efforts to "fix" things by chemical and surgical means as acknowledgement there is indeed a problem. That doesn't mean bullying or ostracizing are valid responses. It doesn't even mean there should be fixes employed.
If you are in my circle of friends, acquaintances or coworkers, maybe the best course is that I look at this the way they look at my claustrophobia or my cousin's anorexia nervosa.
Frankly, it is so rare for me to cross paths with transgender individuals, I haven't given this much thought. I'm starting to.
That you know of! I found out after knowing someone for years that they were trans.
Not trying to offend or be controversial. Probably representing (though not as well as I'd like) a silent majority.
I apologize if you are offended.
What is perfection anyway, @Groucho? What's disadvantageous in one situation can be absolutely essential in another (and vice versa).
Like you, I see humanity's efforts in the area of medicine as acknowledgement that there's some kind of problem that needs fixing. The goal in all these interventions seems to be health and happiness: to extend life and make it as painless as possible without actually killing the ability to feel pain (and thus avoid harm). So is whatever makes a long, pleasant life possible "perfection"?
If so, tweaking Nature's little flukes so that the people who have them are long-lived and happy is an act of pursuing perfection... and doing that right does require making sure you know what you're doing.
An autoimmune disorder is a thing everyone would want corrected. An extra hand? Maybe, maybe not. Ask first.
Conflating the genitals with the brain, however, is rather a different mistake. How do I put this? The shape of your bits does not determine the kind of person you are.
If someone with a penis is gentle, kind, and compassionate, this is not a birth defect.
When they're called soft, wishy-washy, and pathetic, this isn't a birth defect either.
There are, unmistakably, differences in behavior that result from having different hormonal balances in your body. But those differences aren't tied to genitalia—they're tied to hormones... and they're not responsible for as much as some people would like to think. What's the difference between a wimp and someone who knows there are better ways of getting things done than fighting? Perception.
So if males and females and the intersexed—and men and women and the nonbinary—were allowed to be whatever the natural set up of their brains made them most comfortable with, and not policed into tiny boxes (no matter what they looked like)... maybe then there'd be less gender-confirming surgery.
Maybe.