[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Jamie89

The problem with a lot of this stuff is semantics and I think it's largely down to a lot of the wording we use coming about before we really understood much about transsexualism. I think there's truth in what both you and Withano are saying tbh. The current definition of gender only changed to what it is now as a way of describing certain stereotypes, however it's use for a lot of issues relating to trans people is very different, so ideally when we use terms like 'gender identity' for example, a different/new term should be used imo, or the definition of gender should be changed again. The problem is that when it was coined we didn't have the same understanding we have now and it creates so much confusion in all of this!
But like Withano says, when a trans person says they feel they are a different gender to what their biological sex is, they aren't referring to stereotypes at all (confusion comes again because they'll often describe the conforming of gender stereotypes as a way that helps their gender dysphoria - not because 'dressing like a woman' is innate, but because it helps society treat them as a woman and therefore alleviates their dysphoria.) But the dysphoria itself comes from the reality of their biological sex being different to the sex they feel they are, which doesn't actually have anything to do with stereotypes.

I think a similar thing goes for the word 'cis', it annoys a lot of people I've noticed but it doesn't actually mean anything that defines you or changes how you'd be viewed or anything. It's just useful in conversation like this to separate who's being talked about, a trans person or a non trans person, which is a distinction that sometimes needs to be made (and gets made also by people who seem to have a problem with the term but just worded differently). But in actual fact it doesn't mean anything different to saying 'non-trans person', ' someone who isn't trans' etc etc, it's not applying a label it's just used to make the conversations easier to understand. Again, it's just semantics.

I take your points Jamie but I guess I just don't understand how a person born in one sex can feel like an other when I whole heartedly believe that feeling like a woman comes directly from sex and how your life experiences go because of being that sex. I feel like I'm just repeating what I've already said now though but I guess that's just what I think about it. It's always a pleasure reading your views though, you put your points across very well