Does anyone have advice for someone suffering from many of the subjective (there is no reliable objective criteria) symptoms of gender identity disorder?
This is very scary to deal with so I would really appreciate any help.
Maybe think of it as not a disorder, but rather an unusually weak match between your identity and your genitalia (and/or societal gender norms), assuming this is what you feel. Would you still be suffering if there were no behavioral expectations of you? Would you feel normal and happy if a lot of people were like you and you associated with them at will without any stigma attached? Would you still strongly desire sex reassignment?
Many of the trans women and most of the trans men I’ve known are okay with their primary sexual characteristics. Women’s T-shirts reading “I heart my penis” exist for a reason.) My sample is rather biased toward the less-than-binary, but still it goes to show that this isn’t rare.
BDD looks social, not physical, to me but I’m not an expert. (Not that social dysphoria is irrelevant, anyway.)
I’m in a similar boat as yours. What I recommend is:
Don’t panic. Litany of Gendlin; whatever your true gender (defined as the gender you would be happiest living as, to appease the anti-essentialists) turns out to be, it’s already itself and knowing it will make you happier than denying it or making something up for the sense of closure.
It’s okay to be whatever you turn out to be. (Yes, even “someone who guesses wrong and tries to live as the wrong gender for decades”.) I never really had a problem internalizing that but Internet strangers telling you it’s okay seems to help.
Try it on for size! Use text-based support groups, with people sufficiently open-minded that they’ll happily comply if you tell them you’re trying names and pronouns to see how they feel and change those every few weeks.
You’ve probably tried all the things you can do in private with no medical intervention (with clothing and hair and changing your apparent body shape and posture and so on). If it’s feasible for you, maybe try to do them whenever you’re in private for long enough that it becomes routine, and see how it feels when it’s not an extraordinary thrill.
Some subsets of the trans community are binarist essentialist judges of Who Is Truly One Of Us. Avoid those.
Share your anxieties. I don’t know if that’ll help you, I just want to feel less alone.
Genderfluidity is a thing, and some people do have ‘phases’ of feeling like one gender that eventually end. Neither of those things invalidate the individual’s feelings in the moment, or make it less necessary to have a way of handling the current situation so that it doesn’t take over your life.
It may be worth considering what happens in the worst case if you go through with a modification you’re considering, and how you might handle that. Like, to use a personal example, I’m genderfluid between female, third gender, and agender, and I’m considering top surgery; the worst case scenario is that my gender might solidify on ‘female’ in such a way that I find it unpleasant to be flat-chested. I don’t think that’s very likely—as of right now I’m perfectly fine with the idea of being flat-chested even when I’m ‘in female mode’ - but even if it happens I think I can handle it, and it also suggests that I might want to go with a reduction, to the point where I can comfortably wear a binder when I feel particularly inclined and not have ’em be such a big deal the rest of the time (kinda not an option right now) rather than an outright removal.
Share your anxieties. I don’t know if that’ll help you, I just want to feel less alone.
I may feel that the concept of the “other” gender applies more to myself than my own, but I don’t know that my concept of genders is in any way correct in that it matches what other people think, or even matches what I will think in the future.
I have some strong hang-ups regarding sex that I know are deeply influencing me and no way of getting rid of them to see how gender identity feels to me without them. There is no real reason for these hang-ups to exist, I received no unusual conditioning. For all I know they could be a result of GID.
If I expect that further analysis will produce a certain result, should I just update now to that result and act appropriately?
I don’t know what your hang-ups consist of, but wanted to note that asexuality is a thing—I’ve heard a few stories from people who [now] identify as asexual who had thought [previously] that they were broken.
* I have now read downthread and suppose it likely that you have already considered this.
Not necessarily, because training/becoming accustomed to things is an important human trait that decision theorists generally ignore. If you think you’ll feel something at a certain point, trying to force it now might still be the wrong choice. IE, trying something might be the best way to find out how you feel about it, because without trying it you might be stuck wondering or might have other problems.
Because while it exists for both primary and secondary sexually dimorphic characteristics, it is much stronger for the secondary ones.
That is actually not uncommon—I can only offer anecdata here as I’m not aware of any studies on the matter, but have met rather a lot of trans and genderqueer people who find secondary dimorphic characteristics to be much more emotionally-salient to dysphoria than the state of their genitalia. It also not infrequently shifts over time—some people seem to change on that after being hormones for a while, or after getting some major procedures (not necessarily GRS) done. I know a post-op trans woman who still gets very strong dysphoria because the secondary characteristics still feel wrong to her.
Even if these thoughts are “motivated cognition” as far as I can tell there’s not any cure for them. You can view surgery and/or HRT as a palliative answer for not hating your body.
Might not be. In the worst case (as in BDD), body mod doesn’t help. In the best case, you actually have a different problem (gender roles too stifling, some genderqueerness that only requires some accommodation rather than full transition, a different problems with your body or with social roles, a different psychological problem) and solving that helps.
I don’t understand how feeling like you’re in the wrong body manifests as suffering. If I woke up as someone or something other than what I feel like I am, I would react positively or negatively on a case by case basis. Whether my self-image matched my body would not be at all relevant.
If you were transformed into a being with no sexual characteristics at all, say, a magical non-anthropomorphic helium balloon, would you expect your suffering to be abated or partially abated or unchanged?
I don’t understand how feeling like you’re in the wrong body manifests as suffering.
Me either really. It just hurts when I notice it. You may as well ask how feeling a wound on your flesh manifests as suffering.
If you were transformed into a being with no sexual characteristics at all, say, a magical non-anthropomorphic helium balloon, would you expect your suffering to be abated or partially abated or unchanged?
The thought experiment is nonsensical to me. My brain would not be able to consider that my body and if it were modified to be able to do so, the method by which it were modified would entirely determine the effect.
I cannot imagine myself as a helium balloon. I can imagine a helium balloon and attach the label “me” to it, but this does absolutely nothing for me in terms of self-image or emotion.
I cannot imagine myself as a helium balloon. I can imagine a helium balloon and attach the label “me” to it, but this does absolutely nothing for me in terms of self-image or emotion.
Attaching the label “me” to the image I see in the mirror is essentially all I do when thinking of myself as my body. What are you doing apart from that?
I don’t understand how feeling like you’re in the wrong body manifests as suffering.
Me either really. It just hurts when I notice it. You may as well ask how feeling a wound on your flesh manifests as suffering.
I assume you meant the wound thing as an example of irreducibly simple suffering, but actually I’ve spent quite some time investigating things of this kind through meditation, and they do break down further, in ways that make them much easier to deal with. In fact, physical pain is one of the forms of suffering most amenable to this.
What I was trying to get at with the balloon question is are you troubled by your body being gender A, or by it not being gender B? Is it an aversion, or a desire, or a restlessness, or what?
Attaching the label “me” to the image I see in the mirror is essentially all I do when thinking of myself as my body. What are you doing apart from that?
I can’t speak for Liza, but what I mean when I talk about thinking of myself as my body (though I’m more likely to use the language “identifying with my body”) is something like attending to the experiences that come from that body.
The extent to which I do this varies greatly; in particular, in certain forms of meditation I attend to those experiences to the exclusion of almost everything else. That said, if I’ve been doing a lot of that sort of meditation in a short period of time, I find that my default level of identifying with my body changes without reference to how much attention I’m actually paying at that moment. (It’s also true that my default level of attention changes, but that’s a separate issue.)
So “I’m identifying a lot with my body” can either describe a right-this-moment altered state of my attention, or a more broad frequently-over-the-last-few-weeks altered state.
Attaching the label “me” to the image I see in the mirror is essentially all I do when thinking of myself as my body. What are you doing apart from that?
I really don’t know. Perhaps my ability of introspection is inferior to yours.
What I was trying to get at with the balloon question is are you troubled by your body being gender A, or by it not being gender B? Is it an aversion, or a desire, or a restlessness, or what?
All three. It exists at every level of abstraction. If I try to ignore it, the aversions and restlessness do not go away.
Also some of Eliezer’s statements on gender have made me worried.
nor have I seen any male person display a feminine personality with the same sort of depth and internal integrity, nor have I seen any male person convincingly give the appearance of having thought out the nature of feminity to that depth.
Does this mean my personality has no depth? I feel very complicated and very confused but I don’t know how to tell if my personality is masculine or feminine.
I want to repair myself in the way that produces as whole and real a person as possible.
I doubt Eliezer has very thought out views on this issue and you shouldn’t take seriously things he says on the topic as condemning of your identity/personality.
As far as advice: From the people in my life who are trans it seems like the best way to feel better and learn is to talk to other people who are going through or have gone through the same thing. You can find forums or chats like #transgoons that are supportive, or look for groups to talk to in your area physically (though obviously this can be intimidating, especially if you’re uncomfortable with being public with who you are/might be).
From my point of view I will say: Don’t feel like any of your potential identities have to conform to very specific ways of being and acting. A lot of people seem to think you need to be a manly man entirely or a girly girl entirely, but that’s constraining the options open to you by A LOT. You can be attracted to men and like wearing skirts without having to give up being aggressive or car repair, and you can cut your hair short and wear oxfords and slacks and a tie without needing to change who you’re attracted to or how you talk. If you don’t already I recommend hanging out with lots of queer people to get a better idea of the kind of options open to you and also to the kind of acceptance that you can get for whatever you want to be.
In principle, personality issues are detachable from gender issues. You can just make a list of masculine personality traits and feminine personality traits, remove the gender labels and scramble them all together, and then try to assess which of those traits you have, and which of those traits you’d like to have. Voila, you now have a personality analysis and a personality ideal and it says nothing about gender.
Could it be that your real issue now is what philosophy of gender to believe? The basic divide is between “essentialism” and “non-essentlalism”. An essentialist says masculinity and femininity are something more than arbitrary groupings of qualities. A non-essentialist says they are fictitious categories, held in place by custom, privilege, etc. Halfway positions are possible. Also one needs to distinguish between descriptive and normative philosophy of gender. Essentialism can be regarded as the ideal and non-essentialism as the reality, or vice versa. (Or analysis and ideal can both be essentialist or both non-essentialist.)
In the thread from three years ago, there is definitely some rather strong gender essentialism present. He considers the categories meaningful, and he says that empirically he hasn’t ever seen them violated in a specific way. (“I have never known a man with a true female side, and I have never known a woman with a true male side, either as authors or in real life.”)
Eliezer undoubtedly interprets all of this in an evolutionary way, and one of the ironies of evolutionary gender essentialism is that the gender categories are considered meaningful but still ultimately contingent—unlike older, more metaphysical essentialisms like yin and yang, in which masculinity and femininity are associated with a polarity of being that extends far beyond the animal kingdom. Evolutionary gender binaries aren’t supposed to result from essences, they are a contingent coupling of physiology and personality brought about by natural selection. So the humans with the wombs could have been the hunters, and the humans with the testes could have been the nurturers, but we got locked into a phenotype and a survival strategy that works the other way around.
What Eliezer’s normative views on gender are, I have no idea. He’s a transhumanist so he probably favors radical self-determination. He might be normatively non-essentialist while still employing essentialist categories. People who really disapprove of essentialism would think it a bad thing to even say “you can choose to be male, female, or any mixture thereof”, because it implies that maleness and femaleness exist.
nor have I seen any male person display a feminine personality with the same sort of depth and internal integrity, nor have I seen any male person convincingly give the appearance of having thought out the nature of feminity to that depth.
Absolutely not! It just means Eliezer is working from a biased sample and therefore his perceptions should not be taken as scientific fact.
I am sorry you’re having such problems, Liza. I kind of relate because I didn’t even believe in gender for a long time. Then I realized that there were a few things about me that I had never accepted and couldn’t seem to change:
I live to make other people happy. This is a very feminine trait—probably related to maternal instincts.
I have never been as aggressive as I want to be. I force myself to be aggressive when life demands it, and I’m very proud of this—but the fact that I have to force myself and that I feel proud of it are signs that I’m not naturally aggressive. Men often have a natural aggression that … actually allows them to have fun while being aggressive. I don’t get that, and I want to, but I don’t.
I hope you have encountered alternative gender labels like “genderqueer”. You do not need to choose between male and female! There are even more options. You can also be N/A, gender apathetic, not believe in gender, or make up a new gender term and define your gender for yourself. Not saying everyplace will always have a drop down for that, but there’s no reason you can’t do something other than pick “male” or “female”.
There’s a TED talk on gender (I forgot the exact ted.com URL but it shouldn’t be too hard to find with the search) that explains that human bodies can have soooo many variations when it comes to gender that there are hundreds of combinations and sometimes people can have both male and female parts and not realize it because they are internal. The video makes a pretty good case that our binary gender concept is a false dichotomy.
If I was you, I’d feel comforted to know that there are some who are attracted to people regardless of their gender. I am one of them. And I don’t just mean that there are bi people who date the binary “men” and “women”. There are also pansexual people who will date people of any gender (genderqueer, gender N/A, etc.) or most of them. I call my orientation “sapiosexual” because my attractions are to minds—physique and gender do not stop my attractions.
I am no gender expert but I hope I made you feel better.
I live to make other people happy. This is a very feminine trait—probably related to maternal instincts.
That’s great that you can be so clear about a goal like that! I am not sure what I live for, I like making people happy but I also like trying to encourage them to experience new things.
I have never been as aggressive as I want to be. [...]
If I behave too aggressively it makes me feel very uncomfortable so I kind of understand what you mean. When I’m aggressive, like when playing a competitive game, there’s always a certain playfulness to it that reminds me it’s all in fun. I think this is what let’s me be aggressive without feeling uncomfortable; the knowledge that everyone else knows I would never seriously be aggressive.
I am no gender expert but I hope I made you feel better.
You did. : ) And I’m still trying to figure out my sexuality but I’m probably some form of pansexual too.
That’s great that you can be so clear about a goal like that! I am not sure what I live for, I like making people happy but I also like trying to encourage them to experience new things.
Well… do you think encouraging them to experience new things is likely to make them happy?
I think this is what let’s me be aggressive without feeling uncomfortable; the knowledge that everyone else knows I would never seriously be aggressive.
For me, it’s just tiring. I want to be making people happy, not competing and winning. I like doing things that are awesome, and I like doing things that are challenging. But I don’t enjoy defeating people. I can get angry enough that I’m able to be very aggressive and not feel drained by it, but I almost never get that angry.
You did. : )
Oh good!
And I’m still trying to figure out my sexuality but I’m probably some form of pansexual too.
Well… do you think encouraging them to experience new things is likely to make them happy?
Yes, and I wouldn’t do it if I thought it would make them sad, but, I don’t do it just because it makes them happy. I feel I can understand a person more deeply if I am with them as they react to new situations; it makes them feel more human to me and increases my ability to empathize.
For me, it’s just tiring. I want to be making people happy, not competing and winning. I like doing things that are awesome, and I like doing things that are challenging. But I don’t enjoy defeating people
The more I reflect on them, the more complicated my feelings on competition and winning seem to be… I want to be valuable to other people and accomplishment proves that I have the necessary ability; for example, if I do well on an assignment relative to my classmates then they will ask me to help them in the future.
But I also feel like there are competing forces within me. Winning leads to praise which helps me with insecurity but this bothers me; I want to be at peace with myself so I can focus on other people. If I won and it didn’t make anybody like me, I would just feel empty. I know other people can value for me for who I am rather than what I can do, and it is really important to me to learn how to accept this.
As for whether any of this is masculine or feminine I don’t know… I’m mostly happy with how I am inside, but often not happy with how I express it. I do love feeling at peace, and so want to recover from my insecurities.
I want to repair myself in the way that produces as whole and real a person as possible.
Seems to me there is some tension between “repair” and “as real as possible”. I mean, at this moment, you are a real person, not an imaginary person. On the other hand, imaginary person is… well, at this moment it is the person you imagine yourself to be after the repair.
Make a list of traits that you know to have. That is real. Whether it fits some predefined category, that’s a completely different question. By the way each category has some range, not just one narrow specific model; and especially not just one “strawperson” model (a hysterical anorectic blonde woman in pink, or a silent frowning man with gigantic muscles). So if you have a trait or two outside of what you think is typical for the category, I would guess most members of the category are also like that.
I also propose a hypothesis that intelligent people have it more complicated by the fact that intelligence makes them different from an average person, and consequently also from an average person of their gender. If stupid women spend 24 hours a day discussing shopping, gossip and boyfriends, a smart woman seems “manly” compared with them, just because she does not care about those topics that much. Similarly, if stupid men spend 24 hours a day discussing beer, football and women, a smart man seems “girly” compared with them, just because he does not care about those topics that much. Even if they care somewhat about those topics, just because they don’t want to discuss the topic 24 hours a day, makes them comparatively uninterested.
I feel that you are unpacking some of the statements in the quote incorrectly.
A “male person” here refers to the set of authors that Eliezer_Yudkowsky has read. The vast majority of these authors are cisgendered and do not suffer from any form of gender identity disorder, nor do they otherwise bend gender norms.
Statements made about said “male persons” do not reflect you because you are outside the set of (presumably cisgendered and non-GID suffering) male authors that Eliezer_Yudkowsky has read.
One of the side effects of bending gender norms is that generalizations about gender don’t usually apply to you. In any case, it seemed Eliezer_Yudkowsky was not making a claim, but telling his personal experience (which again, has no bearing on you since you presumably haven’t met him)
Regarding your other question, there is no reason that you need to necessarily put yourself in the masculine or feminine category. What makes a “whole and real person” has absolutely nothing to do with gender.
Lesswrong might be poorly equipped to address these types of questions. Have you explored any of the LGBT/transgender subreddits on reddit?
Lesswrong might be poorly equipped to address these types of questions. Have you explored any of the LGBT/transgender subreddits on reddit?
I’ve obtained much information from other sources but there is a lot of poor epistemic hygiene to sift through so I was wondering what I could find on LW.
I’ve never experienced anything else so obviously liable to cause motivated cognition. I have no accurate way of predicting how I will feel years in the future, because my identification is so strong it would influence me to believe anything in its favor.
In general, it seems to me that none of my thoughts are evidence because the hardware is so biased and I can conceive of no way of correcting for this.
1) Unless you are considering surgical or hormonal modification, there is no reason you can’t change your mind later—though it does get confusing to others, that’s far less important than your comfort.
Our society is not very accepting of people who don’t fit into gender roles. Hormonal modification is necessary to “pass”. Also, hormonal modification is much more effective the earlier you start.
If it is society’s acceptance you are after, it would be easiest to present as the gender that you display physically.
Society’s preferences will clash with your own in this regard. You have to decide the extent to which you care about that. Societal advancement is slower than technological advancement, and it is likely that the technology to pass completely will be available before society gets to a point where they do not judge people who don’t fit gender roles.
Have you tried presenting as the “other” gender socially for a few months? How did it suit you?
Also, have you considered that you might reverse the transition, if you change your mind? (Assuming you have the money)
It’s also possible that Eliezer is mistaken. It might be worth asking him what he means by male and female personalities, and what he thinks happens when someone transitions to the other gender.
Does anyone have advice for someone suffering from many of the subjective (there is no reliable objective criteria) symptoms of gender identity disorder?
This is very scary to deal with so I would really appreciate any help.
Maybe think of it as not a disorder, but rather an unusually weak match between your identity and your genitalia (and/or societal gender norms), assuming this is what you feel. Would you still be suffering if there were no behavioral expectations of you? Would you feel normal and happy if a lot of people were like you and you associated with them at will without any stigma attached? Would you still strongly desire sex reassignment?
Yes, that would not change my body
No, same as above
Yes
You have physical dysphoria independently from perception of gender by others. How does that not clinch it utterly and completely?
Because while it exists for both primary and secondary sexually dimorphic characteristics, it is much stronger for the secondary ones.
Also, can such feelings not be generated by motivated cognition? See body dysmorphic disorder.
Many of the trans women and most of the trans men I’ve known are okay with their primary sexual characteristics. Women’s T-shirts reading “I heart my penis” exist for a reason.) My sample is rather biased toward the less-than-binary, but still it goes to show that this isn’t rare.
BDD looks social, not physical, to me but I’m not an expert. (Not that social dysphoria is irrelevant, anyway.)
I’m in a similar boat as yours. What I recommend is:
Don’t panic. Litany of Gendlin; whatever your true gender (defined as the gender you would be happiest living as, to appease the anti-essentialists) turns out to be, it’s already itself and knowing it will make you happier than denying it or making something up for the sense of closure.
It’s okay to be whatever you turn out to be. (Yes, even “someone who guesses wrong and tries to live as the wrong gender for decades”.) I never really had a problem internalizing that but Internet strangers telling you it’s okay seems to help.
Try it on for size! Use text-based support groups, with people sufficiently open-minded that they’ll happily comply if you tell them you’re trying names and pronouns to see how they feel and change those every few weeks.
You’ve probably tried all the things you can do in private with no medical intervention (with clothing and hair and changing your apparent body shape and posture and so on). If it’s feasible for you, maybe try to do them whenever you’re in private for long enough that it becomes routine, and see how it feels when it’s not an extraordinary thrill.
Some subsets of the trans community are binarist essentialist judges of Who Is Truly One Of Us. Avoid those.
Share your anxieties. I don’t know if that’ll help you, I just want to feel less alone.
All good points. I have two to add:
Genderfluidity is a thing, and some people do have ‘phases’ of feeling like one gender that eventually end. Neither of those things invalidate the individual’s feelings in the moment, or make it less necessary to have a way of handling the current situation so that it doesn’t take over your life.
It may be worth considering what happens in the worst case if you go through with a modification you’re considering, and how you might handle that. Like, to use a personal example, I’m genderfluid between female, third gender, and agender, and I’m considering top surgery; the worst case scenario is that my gender might solidify on ‘female’ in such a way that I find it unpleasant to be flat-chested. I don’t think that’s very likely—as of right now I’m perfectly fine with the idea of being flat-chested even when I’m ‘in female mode’ - but even if it happens I think I can handle it, and it also suggests that I might want to go with a reduction, to the point where I can comfortably wear a binder when I feel particularly inclined and not have ’em be such a big deal the rest of the time (kinda not an option right now) rather than an outright removal.
I may feel that the concept of the “other” gender applies more to myself than my own, but I don’t know that my concept of genders is in any way correct in that it matches what other people think, or even matches what I will think in the future.
I have some strong hang-ups regarding sex that I know are deeply influencing me and no way of getting rid of them to see how gender identity feels to me without them. There is no real reason for these hang-ups to exist, I received no unusual conditioning. For all I know they could be a result of GID.
If I expect that further analysis will produce a certain result, should I just update now to that result and act appropriately?
I don’t know what your hang-ups consist of, but wanted to note that asexuality is a thing—I’ve heard a few stories from people who [now] identify as asexual who had thought [previously] that they were broken.
* I have now read downthread and suppose it likely that you have already considered this.
Not necessarily, because training/becoming accustomed to things is an important human trait that decision theorists generally ignore. If you think you’ll feel something at a certain point, trying to force it now might still be the wrong choice. IE, trying something might be the best way to find out how you feel about it, because without trying it you might be stuck wondering or might have other problems.
That is actually not uncommon—I can only offer anecdata here as I’m not aware of any studies on the matter, but have met rather a lot of trans and genderqueer people who find secondary dimorphic characteristics to be much more emotionally-salient to dysphoria than the state of their genitalia. It also not infrequently shifts over time—some people seem to change on that after being hormones for a while, or after getting some major procedures (not necessarily GRS) done. I know a post-op trans woman who still gets very strong dysphoria because the secondary characteristics still feel wrong to her.
Even if these thoughts are “motivated cognition” as far as I can tell there’s not any cure for them. You can view surgery and/or HRT as a palliative answer for not hating your body.
Might not be. In the worst case (as in BDD), body mod doesn’t help. In the best case, you actually have a different problem (gender roles too stifling, some genderqueerness that only requires some accommodation rather than full transition, a different problems with your body or with social roles, a different psychological problem) and solving that helps.
This is why most things recommend transitioning slowly and/or in steps. HRT before surgery, living as whatever gender before surgery, etc.
I don’t understand how feeling like you’re in the wrong body manifests as suffering. If I woke up as someone or something other than what I feel like I am, I would react positively or negatively on a case by case basis. Whether my self-image matched my body would not be at all relevant.
If you were transformed into a being with no sexual characteristics at all, say, a magical non-anthropomorphic helium balloon, would you expect your suffering to be abated or partially abated or unchanged?
Me either really. It just hurts when I notice it. You may as well ask how feeling a wound on your flesh manifests as suffering.
The thought experiment is nonsensical to me. My brain would not be able to consider that my body and if it were modified to be able to do so, the method by which it were modified would entirely determine the effect.
I cannot imagine myself as a helium balloon. I can imagine a helium balloon and attach the label “me” to it, but this does absolutely nothing for me in terms of self-image or emotion.
Attaching the label “me” to the image I see in the mirror is essentially all I do when thinking of myself as my body. What are you doing apart from that?
I assume you meant the wound thing as an example of irreducibly simple suffering, but actually I’ve spent quite some time investigating things of this kind through meditation, and they do break down further, in ways that make them much easier to deal with. In fact, physical pain is one of the forms of suffering most amenable to this.
What I was trying to get at with the balloon question is are you troubled by your body being gender A, or by it not being gender B? Is it an aversion, or a desire, or a restlessness, or what?
I can’t speak for Liza, but what I mean when I talk about thinking of myself as my body (though I’m more likely to use the language “identifying with my body”) is something like attending to the experiences that come from that body.
The extent to which I do this varies greatly; in particular, in certain forms of meditation I attend to those experiences to the exclusion of almost everything else. That said, if I’ve been doing a lot of that sort of meditation in a short period of time, I find that my default level of identifying with my body changes without reference to how much attention I’m actually paying at that moment. (It’s also true that my default level of attention changes, but that’s a separate issue.)
So “I’m identifying a lot with my body” can either describe a right-this-moment altered state of my attention, or a more broad frequently-over-the-last-few-weeks altered state.
I really don’t know. Perhaps my ability of introspection is inferior to yours.
All three. It exists at every level of abstraction. If I try to ignore it, the aversions and restlessness do not go away.
Also some of Eliezer’s statements on gender have made me worried.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/bd/my_way/86u
Does this mean my personality has no depth? I feel very complicated and very confused but I don’t know how to tell if my personality is masculine or feminine.
I want to repair myself in the way that produces as whole and real a person as possible.
Or perhaps I am incoherent entirely, knowing both too little and too much simultaneously.
P.S. I decided to read Kushiel’s Legacy to which Eliezer keeps referring. The writing is intensely beautiful.
I doubt Eliezer has very thought out views on this issue and you shouldn’t take seriously things he says on the topic as condemning of your identity/personality.
As far as advice: From the people in my life who are trans it seems like the best way to feel better and learn is to talk to other people who are going through or have gone through the same thing. You can find forums or chats like #transgoons that are supportive, or look for groups to talk to in your area physically (though obviously this can be intimidating, especially if you’re uncomfortable with being public with who you are/might be).
From my point of view I will say: Don’t feel like any of your potential identities have to conform to very specific ways of being and acting. A lot of people seem to think you need to be a manly man entirely or a girly girl entirely, but that’s constraining the options open to you by A LOT. You can be attracted to men and like wearing skirts without having to give up being aggressive or car repair, and you can cut your hair short and wear oxfords and slacks and a tie without needing to change who you’re attracted to or how you talk. If you don’t already I recommend hanging out with lots of queer people to get a better idea of the kind of options open to you and also to the kind of acceptance that you can get for whatever you want to be.
In principle, personality issues are detachable from gender issues. You can just make a list of masculine personality traits and feminine personality traits, remove the gender labels and scramble them all together, and then try to assess which of those traits you have, and which of those traits you’d like to have. Voila, you now have a personality analysis and a personality ideal and it says nothing about gender.
Could it be that your real issue now is what philosophy of gender to believe? The basic divide is between “essentialism” and “non-essentlalism”. An essentialist says masculinity and femininity are something more than arbitrary groupings of qualities. A non-essentialist says they are fictitious categories, held in place by custom, privilege, etc. Halfway positions are possible. Also one needs to distinguish between descriptive and normative philosophy of gender. Essentialism can be regarded as the ideal and non-essentialism as the reality, or vice versa. (Or analysis and ideal can both be essentialist or both non-essentialist.)
Thank you for the information. Is Eliezer’s position gender essentialist?
In the thread from three years ago, there is definitely some rather strong gender essentialism present. He considers the categories meaningful, and he says that empirically he hasn’t ever seen them violated in a specific way. (“I have never known a man with a true female side, and I have never known a woman with a true male side, either as authors or in real life.”)
Eliezer undoubtedly interprets all of this in an evolutionary way, and one of the ironies of evolutionary gender essentialism is that the gender categories are considered meaningful but still ultimately contingent—unlike older, more metaphysical essentialisms like yin and yang, in which masculinity and femininity are associated with a polarity of being that extends far beyond the animal kingdom. Evolutionary gender binaries aren’t supposed to result from essences, they are a contingent coupling of physiology and personality brought about by natural selection. So the humans with the wombs could have been the hunters, and the humans with the testes could have been the nurturers, but we got locked into a phenotype and a survival strategy that works the other way around.
What Eliezer’s normative views on gender are, I have no idea. He’s a transhumanist so he probably favors radical self-determination. He might be normatively non-essentialist while still employing essentialist categories. People who really disapprove of essentialism would think it a bad thing to even say “you can choose to be male, female, or any mixture thereof”, because it implies that maleness and femaleness exist.
I have I have!
flies over and says something to Eliezer
Absolutely not! It just means Eliezer is working from a biased sample and therefore his perceptions should not be taken as scientific fact.
I am sorry you’re having such problems, Liza. I kind of relate because I didn’t even believe in gender for a long time. Then I realized that there were a few things about me that I had never accepted and couldn’t seem to change:
I live to make other people happy. This is a very feminine trait—probably related to maternal instincts.
I have never been as aggressive as I want to be. I force myself to be aggressive when life demands it, and I’m very proud of this—but the fact that I have to force myself and that I feel proud of it are signs that I’m not naturally aggressive. Men often have a natural aggression that … actually allows them to have fun while being aggressive. I don’t get that, and I want to, but I don’t.
I hope you have encountered alternative gender labels like “genderqueer”. You do not need to choose between male and female! There are even more options. You can also be N/A, gender apathetic, not believe in gender, or make up a new gender term and define your gender for yourself. Not saying everyplace will always have a drop down for that, but there’s no reason you can’t do something other than pick “male” or “female”.
There’s a TED talk on gender (I forgot the exact ted.com URL but it shouldn’t be too hard to find with the search) that explains that human bodies can have soooo many variations when it comes to gender that there are hundreds of combinations and sometimes people can have both male and female parts and not realize it because they are internal. The video makes a pretty good case that our binary gender concept is a false dichotomy.
If I was you, I’d feel comforted to know that there are some who are attracted to people regardless of their gender. I am one of them. And I don’t just mean that there are bi people who date the binary “men” and “women”. There are also pansexual people who will date people of any gender (genderqueer, gender N/A, etc.) or most of them. I call my orientation “sapiosexual” because my attractions are to minds—physique and gender do not stop my attractions.
I am no gender expert but I hope I made you feel better.
That’s great that you can be so clear about a goal like that! I am not sure what I live for, I like making people happy but I also like trying to encourage them to experience new things.
If I behave too aggressively it makes me feel very uncomfortable so I kind of understand what you mean. When I’m aggressive, like when playing a competitive game, there’s always a certain playfulness to it that reminds me it’s all in fun. I think this is what let’s me be aggressive without feeling uncomfortable; the knowledge that everyone else knows I would never seriously be aggressive.
You did. : ) And I’m still trying to figure out my sexuality but I’m probably some form of pansexual too.
Well… do you think encouraging them to experience new things is likely to make them happy?
For me, it’s just tiring. I want to be making people happy, not competing and winning. I like doing things that are awesome, and I like doing things that are challenging. But I don’t enjoy defeating people. I can get angry enough that I’m able to be very aggressive and not feel drained by it, but I almost never get that angry.
Oh good!
Cool. (:
Yes, and I wouldn’t do it if I thought it would make them sad, but, I don’t do it just because it makes them happy. I feel I can understand a person more deeply if I am with them as they react to new situations; it makes them feel more human to me and increases my ability to empathize.
The more I reflect on them, the more complicated my feelings on competition and winning seem to be… I want to be valuable to other people and accomplishment proves that I have the necessary ability; for example, if I do well on an assignment relative to my classmates then they will ask me to help them in the future.
But I also feel like there are competing forces within me. Winning leads to praise which helps me with insecurity but this bothers me; I want to be at peace with myself so I can focus on other people. If I won and it didn’t make anybody like me, I would just feel empty. I know other people can value for me for who I am rather than what I can do, and it is really important to me to learn how to accept this.
As for whether any of this is masculine or feminine I don’t know… I’m mostly happy with how I am inside, but often not happy with how I express it. I do love feeling at peace, and so want to recover from my insecurities.
Seems to me there is some tension between “repair” and “as real as possible”. I mean, at this moment, you are a real person, not an imaginary person. On the other hand, imaginary person is… well, at this moment it is the person you imagine yourself to be after the repair.
Make a list of traits that you know to have. That is real. Whether it fits some predefined category, that’s a completely different question. By the way each category has some range, not just one narrow specific model; and especially not just one “strawperson” model (a hysterical anorectic blonde woman in pink, or a silent frowning man with gigantic muscles). So if you have a trait or two outside of what you think is typical for the category, I would guess most members of the category are also like that.
I also propose a hypothesis that intelligent people have it more complicated by the fact that intelligence makes them different from an average person, and consequently also from an average person of their gender. If stupid women spend 24 hours a day discussing shopping, gossip and boyfriends, a smart woman seems “manly” compared with them, just because she does not care about those topics that much. Similarly, if stupid men spend 24 hours a day discussing beer, football and women, a smart man seems “girly” compared with them, just because he does not care about those topics that much. Even if they care somewhat about those topics, just because they don’t want to discuss the topic 24 hours a day, makes them comparatively uninterested.
I feel that you are unpacking some of the statements in the quote incorrectly.
A “male person” here refers to the set of authors that Eliezer_Yudkowsky has read. The vast majority of these authors are cisgendered and do not suffer from any form of gender identity disorder, nor do they otherwise bend gender norms.
Statements made about said “male persons” do not reflect you because you are outside the set of (presumably cisgendered and non-GID suffering) male authors that Eliezer_Yudkowsky has read.
One of the side effects of bending gender norms is that generalizations about gender don’t usually apply to you. In any case, it seemed Eliezer_Yudkowsky was not making a claim, but telling his personal experience (which again, has no bearing on you since you presumably haven’t met him)
Regarding your other question, there is no reason that you need to necessarily put yourself in the masculine or feminine category. What makes a “whole and real person” has absolutely nothing to do with gender.
Lesswrong might be poorly equipped to address these types of questions. Have you explored any of the LGBT/transgender subreddits on reddit?
I think this graphic is pretty helpful in conceptualizing gender and sexuality constructs, if it helps. http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Genderbread-2.1.jpg
I’ve obtained much information from other sources but there is a lot of poor epistemic hygiene to sift through so I was wondering what I could find on LW.
I know what you mean. Maybe if you give more specific details about which aspects of GID you are struggling with, we can give more helpful advice?
I’ve never experienced anything else so obviously liable to cause motivated cognition. I have no accurate way of predicting how I will feel years in the future, because my identification is so strong it would influence me to believe anything in its favor.
In general, it seems to me that none of my thoughts are evidence because the hardware is so biased and I can conceive of no way of correcting for this.
I’m afraid I’m not following. What is the judgement you are attempting to accurately make which your identification is interfering with?
Whether I would actually prefer being the “other” gender socially long term. Especially say, 10 years from now.
1) Unless you are considering surgical or hormonal modification, there is no reason you can’t change your mind later—though it does get confusing to others, that’s far less important than your comfort.
2) It’s okay to be in a socially in-between state. There are other identifications, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer
This is really more a matter of preference than a problem that can be solved through logic.
Our society is not very accepting of people who don’t fit into gender roles. Hormonal modification is necessary to “pass”. Also, hormonal modification is much more effective the earlier you start.
If it is society’s acceptance you are after, it would be easiest to present as the gender that you display physically.
Society’s preferences will clash with your own in this regard. You have to decide the extent to which you care about that. Societal advancement is slower than technological advancement, and it is likely that the technology to pass completely will be available before society gets to a point where they do not judge people who don’t fit gender roles.
Have you tried presenting as the “other” gender socially for a few months? How did it suit you?
Also, have you considered that you might reverse the transition, if you change your mind? (Assuming you have the money)
That’s just another issue to throw into the pot, and then decide whether it matters and how much, and what options exist for dealing with it.
It’s also possible that Eliezer is mistaken. It might be worth asking him what he means by male and female personalities, and what he thinks happens when someone transitions to the other gender.
He was asked and neglected to respond.
Wasn’t he talking about authors?