this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Excuse you, I would never tell someone they are not really trans. If they say they were made trans by life circumstances, I would tell them that that is likely not true, but I would never dictate someone's gender.
I think it's worthwhile remaining open to this but not really valuable to trans people to like make it part of activism or anything. There are enough instances of people saying things like their sexuality has completely shifted for me to be open to the idea that what gender we're attracted to can change. I don't think we know enough about being trans to be certain one way or another, trans people however have a very understandable defensive reaction to this because we don't want it to be weaponised against us as "fake" or whatever.
My basic point is this: If it's inflictable, it's curable.
I for one knew my gender from about as young as I could talk (Edit: I repressed this for many years due to massive social pressures). I remember my assigned gender being inflicted upon me at a young age, when I did not immediately conform. If you asked me pre-transition but after I realized I was trans whether or not I would press a button and become cis in my assigned gender, I would say that that feels like losing a significant part of myself. If you were to ask me, if I could have pressed a button and become a cis in my actual, realized gender, I would have said yes and that it wouldn't have been a major loss of self at all. This is true pretty much my whole life. But I lacked the self awareness to realize this about my self, and that has changed, not my actual gender. We are quite literally gaslit our entire lives in regards to our assigned gender. Usually, before one comes out, one tries to embrace their assigned gender only to find that they do not feel comfortable (i.e. dysphoria).
I don't reject people having fluidity in their gender or sexuality. The way I view it, there is a multidimensional spectrum and people tend to inhabit different areas of it. If they did actually change sexuality or gender, and not just discover it, due to fluidity, then they might inhabit an area that includes something close to or exactly their assigned gender as well as their realized gender.
The leading theory for what makes people trans, and gay for that matter, is hormonal fluctuations during critical moments in fetal development. In other words, we are born this way.