Best general gender studies according to redditors
We found 349 Reddit comments discussing the best general gender studies. We ranked the 139 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 349 Reddit comments discussing the best general gender studies. We ranked the 139 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Hello! Cei here. Thank you for your question and for your willingness to learn and grow for your community!
Question 1.a. If you are providing a space (a group, a confirmation class, a retreat, a bible study, a weekly potluck, a movie night, etc) for these young people to be themselves- to use they name they choose, to use the pronouns that fit for them, and to create norms where the other youth in the space must be respectful of these identities- then you are creating a safe space for the youth to go through the process of self-actualization in their identity. Ideally the church congregation would also be asked to affirm these youth in their identity. Depending on your comfort level, you could address the congregation and explain that you would like the church to be a sacred and safe space for all, and that in the interest of achieving this goal, you would ask them to respect names, pronouns, and gender expressions of all congregation members. b. One of the best ways to advocate for young people to their parents is to explain that the young person is happy, responding well, and thriving in environments where they are allowed to be themselves. If you have a young person who comes to your group/bible study/etc. who is using the name they choose, the pronouns that fit their identity, and is affirmed by the group around them and they are thriving, tell the young person's parents so. It may be that at home the parents see a kid who is struggling and sad and they are scared that being gender diverse will make things harder for their already unhappy child. To show that gender affirmation can radically improve a kid's quality of life is often the best motivator for parents to adopt affirming language.
2. Here are links to a few resources that we've found helpful over the years: Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, The Transgender Teen, The Genderquest Workbook, Confi's Article on Gender, Families In TRANSition.
I hope this helps, and thanks again for advocating for the gender diverse people at your church!
I'm glad it helps. :)
Actually, this is mildly cathartic, having an outlet for all those "should've, could've" thoughts...
Involve others with more experience.
Learn about your community.
Heal thyself.
Finally, and most importantly, you do belong.
You don't have to be presenting in your preferred gender to go to a support group. You don't have to start HRT to comment on a board. There's a pervasive sense among trans folk that there are real trans people out there and we're not they. But the moment you recognize this part of yourself you're a part of our world whether you like it or not, and all of us feel just as different. Smile, introduce yourself, and share aspects of yourself among friends who have those same parts and who are just bursting for the opportunity to talk about it with anyone who understands.
Sigh, I could ramble on, but I need to get back to work... I guess I can sum it up in promising, cross my heart, the world is a beautiful and wonderful place, and you're going to love it out here. :)
Well there are all sorts of tribes that are matrilineal and matrilocal and even to degrees matriarchal. But its kinda a false dichotomy to say that ANY group is fully patriarchal or fully matriarchal. In almost every culture there is a split of power along different lines.
In matrilineal cultures there tends to be a split that women control basically the family, but men act on the behalf outside the home. So women control the home, the tribal activities. But men do the trading (and have control over that), men do the fighting (and have control over that.
A good example would be of the Mosuo. There is a lot of hype in feminist circles about them being Matriarchal but they kinda are missing the nuance for political gain. They are probably the most matriarchal culture out there. This is a pretty good ethnography on them, but I would also suggest reading This. It shows as more economic contact is made the there has been the culture is changing, so they aren't exactly the same as the ethnography put them.
It comes down to how the power is allocated really. I mean if you are in a small tribe where basically home life is the only political life and the mother controls the home then yeah its going to seem matriarchal. But even if that were the same model except most of the activity is outside the home and the men controlled that it is going to seem more patriarchal.
Here is a list of what is typically seen as matrilineal and matrilocal societies. As you will see they are incredibly diverse and cross the world. But matriarchy/patriarchy is something a bit harder to put your fingers on.
I don't mean to ruin this, but what GardeniaBlossom is saying here is just a paraphrasing of Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge in Professing Feminism (1995), although this line of thinking is more generally associated with second wave feminists like Catharine Mackinnon or Andrea Dworkin.
>"I am not Chinese, I am AMERICAN" attitude.
whites have created an extremely anti-Asian society through lies, stereotypes, violence, etc - bad enough to brainwash Asians into suffering self hate and they no longer wish to be Asian. Related quote below...
>An Asian American woman told me, ""I would especially treat the Asian American boys badly when I was in school because I wanted nothing to do with them, I didn't want to be associated with them. I was ashamed of [Asianness].""
>She wanted to avoid things that made her look bad, and to her it was Asian American boys. I think that that happens a lot. And it's not a coincidence that that is precisely what historically and in the present a lot of what white men prefer.
Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Rosalind S. Chou
http://www.amazon.com/Asian-American-Sexual-Politics-Construction/dp/1442209240
You can never "get rid" of your privilege. It's something you have that you didn't ask for and the whole point of having it is that you aren't necessarily aware of it. So, in your example, there's lots of ways for white people to be allies, but it starts with educating yourself about the nature of whiteness and white supremacy, and ultimately ends in white people becoming active, vocal anti-racists who work towards anti-oppression by changing themselves, institutions, and by supporting people of color. Some people aspire to the term "race-traitor" in doing anti-white-supremacy work.
This model works pretty well for all types of privilege. The formula goes like this: you realize you have systemic privilege or benefit from the status quo (the way things currently are) in a way that is unfair/undeserved based on some arbitrary and uncontrollable characteristic that maybe before you took for granted (you are white, you were born to a wealth family, you're a citizen, you are able bodied, your gender is not considered inferior, your sexual orientation is not illegal). At this point, you should begin learning more both about the history of this injustice as well as more about what work is already being done to address it. Sometimes this is hard because it means learning to listen to people we have been explicitly taught are not competent or valuable. It means learning to take directions and leadership from people who we have been explicitly taught are not "leaders".
Like any religion, wokeness understands the need to convert children. The old Jesuit motto (sometimes attributed to Voltaire) was, after all, “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” And so I was moved but not particularly surprised by George Packer’s tale of a progressive school banishing separate restrooms for boys and girls because this reinforces the gender binary. The school did not inform parents of this, of course:
>Parents only heard about it when children started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day. Girls told their parents mortifying stories of having a boy kick open their stall door. Boys described being afraid to use the urinals. Our son reported that his classmates, without any collective decision, had simply gone back to the old system, regardless of the new signage: Boys were using the former boys’ rooms, girls the former girls’ rooms. This return to the familiar was what politicians call a “commonsense solution.” It was also kind of heartbreaking.
As an analogy for the price of progressivism, it’s close to perfect. Authorities impose an ideology onto reality; reality slowly fights back. The question is simply how much damage is done by this kind of utopianism before it crumbles under its own weight. Simple solutions — like a separate, individual gender-neutral bathroom for the tiny minority with gender dysphoria or anyone else — are out of bounds. They are, after all, reinforcing the idea that girls and boys are different. And we cannot allow biology, evolution, reproductive strategy, hormones, chromosomes, and the customs of every single human culture since the beginning of time to interfere with “social justice.”
It’s also vital to expose children to the fact of their race as the core constituent of their identity. Here is an essay written by a woke teacher about the difficulty of teaching “White boys”:
>I spend a lot of my days worried about White boys. I worry about White boys who barely try and expect to be rewarded, who barely care and can’t stand being called on it, who imagine they can go through school without learning much without it impacting in any way the capacity for their future success, just because it never has before.
This sounds to me as if he is describing, well, boys of any race. And when boys are labeled as “White” (note the capital “W”) and this requires specific rules not applied to nonwhite boys, they often — surprise! — don’t like it:
>This week, a student spoke up in class to say that every time a particular writer talked about White people and their role in racism, he would start to feel really guilty, and it made him not want to listen … I try to keep an arm around the boys who most need it, but it’s hard, because I’m also not willing to give an inch on making my room safe for my students of color. It’s not their job to keep hurting while White boys figure it out.
Children, in other words, are being taught to think constantly about race, and to feel guilty if they are the wrong one. And, of course, if they resist, that merely proves the point. A boy who doesn’t think he is personally responsible for racism is merely reflecting “white fragility” which is a function of “white supremacy.” QED. No one seems to have thought through the implications of telling white boys that their core identity is their “whiteness,” or worried that indoctrinating kids into white identity might lead quite a few to, yes, become “white identitarians” of the far right.
One of the key aspects about social-justice theory is that it’s completely unfalsifiable (as well as unreadable); it’s a closed circle that refers only to itself and its own categories. (For a searing take down of this huge academic con, check out Douglas Murray’s superb new book, The Madness of Crowds.) The forces involved — “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “heterosexism” — are all invisible to the naked eye, like the Holy Spirit. Their philosophical origins — an attempt by structuralist French philosophers to rescue what was left of Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s — are generally obscured in any practical context. Like religion, you cannot prove any of its doctrines empirically, but children are being forced into believing them anyway. This is hard, of course, as this teacher explains: “I’m trying. I am. But you know how the saying goes: You can lead a White male to anti-racism, but you can’t make him think.”
The racism, sexism, and condescension in those sentences! (The teacher, by the way, is not some outlier. In 2014, he was named Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year!) Having taken one form of religion out of the public schools, the social-justice left is now replacing it with the doctrines of intersectionality.
Not all of these are ML and not all of them are that recent, but here's some good Marxist books written by women & trans comrades:
According to at least one book I've read, transgender people were recognized in a number of civilizations that would predate the Greeks by a few thousand years. They tended to be widely recognized and respected among communal, matriarchal and hunter-gather type societies. It was the emergence of patriarchy that forced the division of people into male/female binary categories for reasons of power, inheritance and such in patriarchal cultures, and that's when the repression of trans began. Hermaphroditus came to the game very late...
>How do you talk about a group that often has individuals that work against AAPI well-being for personal interest, without being offensive?
Make sure to be clear about who is being addressed eg self haters. Do not generalize.
 
>We cannot override love.
Very wrong. You're assuming these relationships are love. I have facts and proof that very often, it absolutely is not. Do you realize that Af are preferred by sexist, racist, and misogynistic white men? Go read the redpill, hundreds of thousands of white men read that. Here's the latest..
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/4ojhit/how_to_stuff_your_white_meat_into_asian_girls/
 
If the Asian community is ever going to improve, they must face the fact that we're being divided and conquered by whites (mostly males). They are the enemy - not each other. See the list of crimes below. ALL done by wm who turn around and 24/7 show images of themselves "saving Af" from "evil Am". All Asians are being brainwashed constantly.
 
Some research below for support.
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>White hegemonic ideologies of masculinity and femininity determine who gets to have sex with whom …We do not make choices of attraction in a vacuum…Hegemonic ideology becomes our commonsense notions.
>Women were painted as perpetually sexually available to white men while Asian American men were constructed as castrated or impotent…
Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Rosalind S. Chou
http://www.amazon.com/Asian-American-Sexual-Politics-Construction/dp/1442209240
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>racialized images can cause Asian American women to believe they will find greater gender equality with white men and can cause white men to believe they will find greater subservience with Asian women. This dynamic promotes Asian American women’s availability to white men and makes them particularly vulnerable to mistreatment.
Asian American Women And Racialized Femininities 'Doing' Gender across Cultural Worlds
http://www.irows.ucr.edu/cd/courses/232/pyke/femininities.pdf
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>He defines internalized racism as “the ‘subjection’ of the victims of racism to the mystifications of the very racist ideology which imprison and define them” (Hall 1986 - 26).
>it is referred to as “internalized racial oppression,” “internalized racism,” “internalized White supremacy,” “internalized Whiteness,” and the much criticized term “racial self hatred.”
>The dominant group controls the construction of reality through the production of ideologies or “knowledge” (Foucault 1977 [1975]) that circulate throughout society where they inform social norms, organizational practices, bureaucratic procedures, and commonsense knowledge. In this way the interests of the oppressors are presented as reflecting everyone’s best interests, thereby getting oppressed groups to accept the dominant group’s interests as their own
>the subjugated inculcate, seemingly by cultural osmosis, negative stereotypes and ideologies disseminated as taken for granted knowledge.
>individual inculcation of the racist stereotypes, values, images, and ideologies perpetuated by the White dominant society about one’s racial group, leading to feelings of self doubt, disgust, and disrespect for one’s race and or oneself.
>All systems of oppression not thoroughly coerced through brute force and overt repression involve the dominant group’s ability to win consent of the oppressed.
>When the oppressed come to accept these identities as “real,” they are in effect internalizing their subjugated status
>One need not experience discrete, identifiable instances of overt discrimination to internalize racial oppression.
>White racism can infiltrate the world view of the racially oppressed without their conscious consent (Osajima 1993) in a subtle process some refer to as “indoctrination” and “mental colonialization” (hooks 2003).
What is Internalized Racial Oppression and Why Don't We Study it - Acknowledging Racism's Hidden Injuries
http://irows.ucr.edu/cd/courses/232/pyke/intracopp.pdf
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The origins of self hate and white worship are the same – racist stereotypes and lies that masquerade as “facts”…
>Even at a young age, the white racial frame that normalizes whiteness affects children.
>A study of sixty-five Asian Americans at an elite university found that respondents spoke more positively about their physical features when they seemed "less Asian" and more "white" or "American."
>Earlier research has shown Asian Americans being ashamed or attempting to hide their race or pass for white.
>At least I didn't have a Korean accent; then it would have probably been even worse.
>It made an impact over time, when all you hear is the negative instead of the positive. I always felt like the outsider and I was teased for just being Asian. They'd pull their eyes down, and they always thought I was Chinese.
>All sixty respondents had memories of being teased and feeling like a racial "other”.
>Asian Americans, especially girls and women, are disturbingly overrepresented with rates of depression and suicide. As recently as spring of 2011, The National Alliance on Mental lllness released a report that Asian American girls have the highest rates of depressive symptoms of any racial/ethnic or gender group.
Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Rosalind S. Chou
http://www.amazon.com/Asian-American-Sexual-Politics-Construction/dp/1442209240
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A sliver of the crimes committed by whites against Asians.
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Cambodia
http://www.amazon.com/Sideshow-Kissinger-Nixon-Destruction-Cambodia/dp/0671835254/
Laos
Hiding America’s War Crimes in Laos | http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/2715
Vietnam
● http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/1250045061/
● http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Program-Americas-Forbidden-Bookshelf-ebook/dp/B00KGMIW6Q/
Korea
● http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Korean-1950-1951-Nonconformist/dp/0316817708/
Philippines
● http://www.amazon.com/Benevolent-Assimilation-American-Philippines-1899-1903/dp/0300030819/
China
● China’s Rise, Fall, and Re-Emergence as a Global Power | http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/03/chinas-rise-fall-and-re-emergence-as-a-global-power/
● USA’s warfare against China ½ | http://www.voltairenet.org/article177063.html
 
Asians need to ask themelves....why are they talking about their "progressive afwm relationships" and taking foodie pictures and demonizing Am for their "toxic masculinity" while being TOTALLY SILENT on mass rape, genocide, the white male pedophile epidemic in Asia. I can provide sources for that too if required.
 
Really, how does the ONE group that commits BY FAR, the most horrific crimes imaginable come out looking like heroes. That's the question everyone should be asking.
 
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>how do you respond when people claim that we don't have a right to complain about discrimination due to the fact that there is racism/sexism within our community?
Ask them if the "tone police" would rather be born Asian than white. Or, you can point out the myriad of wm oppression like 620+ % MORE domestic violence than Am, 297% more raping than Am, etc. Point out their ludicrous "stop white genocide" campaign. Never get gas lighted by white hypocrites. They are absolute experts in bullshitting. I've seen it too many times.
I thought the article was bad, and then I scrolled down to the book recommendation:
> PUSSIFICATION: The Effeminization Of The American Male by Doug Giles
Yeah, that will solve all men's problems: shame them into be even more hyper-masculine, and magnify the view that anything "feminine" (a.k.a. emotions other than 'punch someone & chug a beer') is negative and weak. The answer was there all along!
Janice Raymond fucked over the trans community in 1980 with her bullshit and we are only just now starting to get our medical care covered by insurance again.
And this piece of crap literature was published this year by one of her cronies.
More academic trans claptrap, I see. Glad to see the commenters were more sensible. This libertarian FtT needs to get a grip and stop constantly shilling her skinny 208 pages of wasted-paper which hardly anyone but trans are lapping up. #315,863 in Books and #54 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Nonfiction > Civil Rights (Amazon needs to tease out trans from LG, since they're not even close)
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Trans-Does-Gender-Matter/dp/1479855405/ref=sr_1_1_det?ie=UTF8&qid=1493258529&sr=8-1#productPromotions
I badly want society to forget these comments.
I want to shout out "THESE ARE NOT TRUE!"
They don't represent me.
They hurt me, they hurt my fellow bisexuals, they hurt all of society suffering (the opressed and also those of privilage accuse of being opressors). They pre-judge a large group of people.
Yet, I think of the marginalized, those bisexuals who are non-monogamous, or flirtatious.
I think about where these stereotypes are coming from and who is saying them. I think especially about what FEAR they represent.
I'm currently reading Bi: Notes on a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner, and it is the best book that has made me think about what stereotypes say, how they can be turmed around to examine society. This book is so good at demolishing the conventional and reconstructing ideas, at reclaiming power and challenging the staus quo.
The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity
Not doing summaries/reviews, cause it's late and I'm tired. On request, I suppose. Mostly books, with a couple docs and a few blogs.
Less theory, more personal experiences:
Actually Theory:
And a couple links I make it a point to share whenever I can:
US Sony rn
I have many! Here are a few:
Gender Failure by Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote This is the book version of the authors' live show that toured in 2012. They both are nonbinary, and the stories they tell are about that.
Second Son by Ryan Sallans Ryan has been a role model of mine for a long time, so I was really excited to get his book. It's a pretty basic transition memoir, but he has a really great voice.
Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein This one is a classic, and one I wish I had read much sooner! It's a transition memoir, but she also has some awesome discussions about gender in general too. Also, check out The Next Generation which is a collection of the work of trans* writers and artists.
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg I think everyone should read this. It's a memoir/fiction sort of thing, and gender and transition are shown to be much more complex than in other transition memoirs. This one is quite old though, so maybe your library already has it?
Lastly, I will suggest Red: A Crayon's Story, which is basically the sweetest story about a blue crayon that was given a red wrapper by mistake.
Julia Serano - Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on the Scapegoating of Femininity
Leslie Feinberg - Transgender Warriors
You can read more about this question in the The Drag King Anthology:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1560233095/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_0aB4Db44X653Y
If I’m remembering right, it’s also addressed in Female Masculinity:
Female Masculinity https://www.amazon.com/dp/0822322439/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_wcB4DbMK3K39Q
Tell her to do the work herself. She is a professional therapist, that's her job! I guarantee you aren't the first or last person she'll see with gender issues.
Books:
http://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Emergence-Therapeutic-Guidelines-Gender-Variant/dp/078902117X
http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359
>I guess this is my kinda of my issue. How do you explain transwomen who date and marry ciswomen? If what you were saying is true all transwomen would be dating cismen and exclusively cismen. Right?
They’re heterosexual males with a sexual fetish.
Anne Lawrence
Blanchard
No. I said that they tell homosexual children (a small subset of trans) that they are the wrong sex and then sterilise them using cross-sex hormones after puberty suppression.
Then, we have transwomen telling lesbians (homosexuals) that they are bigoted for not liking penis or wanting to have sex with people that maintain or have previously maintained those organs.
There is a big hint in the word homoSEXual that would lead you to understand that sexual orientation for heteroSEXuals and homoSEXuals is based around the SEX of the person.
Telling lesbians (or gay men) that they must like people of the opposite SEX based on their “GENDER identity” is creepy and disgusting.
People are not obligated to re-evaluate their attractions because of someone else’s “identity”.
Years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists used to try and force homosexuals into liking people of the opposite sex. This is no different.
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>I think gender is a set of ideas on how someone acts and looks that is typically based on sex. That is to say that usually female people act and look in a certain way as a woman.
What.the.fuck? Act and look as a woman based on sex? That right there, straight up fucking misogyny.
What does a woman “act” like? You realise that is the antithesis of feminism. That women “act” and “look” a certain
way.
How does sex, one’s reproductive capability, have anything to do with how someone acts?
>I don't know if gender roles are innate, I really don't think they are.
Good. Because they aren’t.
>I don't know if its more real or less real. I think sex is pretty complicated in general and can't be decided by one characteristic but by using multiple different criteria simply because theres no real one defining characteristic that says you're either male or female. for this kind of stuff I typically look to places like the Olympics
Production of gametes. Bam. Simple.
Failing that? Structures for the production of gametes.
Failing that? Genetics.
Failing that? Organs.
Reproduction is real. Human biology is real.
How do you propose we classify people then? How is gender real? How does the way a person "acts" affect anything about their physiology? Things like rape shelters, bathrooms, prisons are all based around people's physiological needs.
Women can get pregnant to males, menstruate and pee sitting down. We have different cancers and different levels of medication tolerance (and alcohol tolerance) because of our physiology.
Men can impregnate and pee standing up. They do not need access to abortions or gynaecological medicine. They may need access to medicine based on their prostates and testicles. They have difference levels of tolerance to medicine and alcohol based on their physiology.
Why would you look to the Olympics? Why not ask a biologist?
>I think this would fall under gender roles again. I don't think a woman is really any one thing. Gender isn't based in your body and how it looks but rather in how you act.
Wrong. A woman is an adult female human.
How is gender then more important than a biological reality again? How is the way someone “acts” overriding this?
Am I no longer a woman because I don’t “act” like one?
The fuck?
Who governs these rules for how someone should act?
Why can't people act however they want? Just because you have certain bits doesn't mean you act any particular way.
Your physiology is just a fact of nature and your ability to produce offspring through the exchange of genetic material.
>If you mean a woman again I don't know if that's a biological reality meaning that you can definitely say that you identify with and are more comfortable with that set of gender roles.
And what of the millions (billions?) of women who aren’t happy with the gender roles place upon us? What if we’re not happy with ANY gender roles for anyone?
What is a gender role and why is it even important?
>If you mean female, I think that's more of a thing that happens as you transition rather than something you just become.
Nope. Males cannot become females. We are not gastropods or fish.
How does a male born become female? That makes absolutely no sense.
>It gets a little worrisome because this kind of thinking can lead to transwomen being excluded from places that most other females are allowed to be. Bathrooms, locker rooms, etc and I'm not sure if that's ok to do, although I'm a proponent of non-segregated bathrooms and changing rooms, I think its a little silly that we separate by sex.
WHAT?
NO! Males cannot become female.
You DO NOT produce oocytes, have menses or gestate and birth young. (Yes, I am aware that not all females can either)
Males disproportionately attack females for violence and sexual assault.
Look at the FBI or WHO statistics if you don’t believe me.
And “transwomen” maintain MALE levels of criminality which makes them just as likely as any other male person to cause us harm.
Males and females are separated because SEX is the only thing that is different between us. We can get pregnant and get “gender” bullshit because of that. We are somehow "weaker" and "less capable". We're also vulnerable because of our ability to get pregnant.
Males and females have different physiology, different medical needs.
You propose what? We separate on “gender”?
How is gender real?
IT FUCKING ISN’T. It was created by society. Biology wasn’t.
Here’s some links to transwomen violence:
One
Two
Three
Four
(This is a person who gained access to a women’s rape shelter by claiming to be a woman and then SEXUALLY assaulted women)
And I have more.
> would that teenagers are typically below the age of consent, IE below 16 and thus can't legally make a decision to have sex no matter what age the other person is.
But teenagers and children are able to consent to hormones and puberty blockers?
And yes, the brain develops as it gets older. Atrophy and damage can halt and stop the development.
So, how is "brain-age" less real than "brain-sex"? How is it any different to "negro-brains" or "jugglers-brains"?
If I scanned my brain and it had the same volume in certain parts as a medical professional does that make me a medical doctor?
>I think the only difference is the fact that there is some actual research done on the brains of transwomen vs ciswomen which shows some of the same structures not present in cismen.
Yes. We’ve all seen those.
First off, NONE of those studies have been reproduced which makes for bad science.
NONE of those studies identify why they are able to determine what a “woman’s brain looks like”
Actually, here’s a really succinct link that breaks it down
And I’m more than happy to refer you to read Sheila Jefferies new book Gender Hurts, Cordelia Fine’s Delusion of Gender and Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen
>I tend to defer to medical organizations for things like this and typically take them at their word if they say that the cause of transgenderism is due to different brain structures.
Medical organisations used to advocate for lobotomies of the mentally ill, the castration of gay men, and the “hysteria” of women.
You also can see examples of bad pharmaceutical practice in Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science
I’m not saying I agree 100% with any of the above texts. It pays to be well informed and to complete your own research.
Do not “take them at their word” about things like “brain” sex when the methodology for their premise is so unbelievable flawed.
>Does that make sense?
It didn’t make any sense, even a little.
I mean seriously? Fucking gender roles in 2014? We’ve come a long way baby from Suzie-Homemaker and Captain America.
In addition to the other great suggestions in this thread, check out feminism, too. While these consumerist trends are certainly universal, I noticed that many of the topics you particularly felt pressured by were ones directed extra strongly towards women. Reading up on society's views of sex and gender and how it often tries to pigeonhole us, women and men, into sexist stereotypes, can give you the mental ammo to better deal with this consumerism.
Where to begin? A really good book about consumerism and beauty pressures is Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth. The blurb:
>The bestselling classic that redefined our view od the relationship between beauty and female identity.
>In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."
Sound somewhat familiar?
^Wow, ^there's ^a ^typo ^in ^the ^official ^blurb.
Leslie Feinberg's Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue is fantastic!
That fear may be overblown but this is a thing that some people are doing-- making certain strong women from history who were uncomfortable with gender roles or wore men's clothing into trans men.
Here's a New Yorker piece suggesting Carson McCullers was really a trans man for no good reason: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/white-writer/amp
Here's a book about "transgender warriors" that includes Joan of Arc: https://www.amazon.ca/Transgender-Warriors-Making-History-Dennis/dp/0807079413
>I like to think that I was raised right... "
What anyone raised in a totalitarian belief system is taught is that the 'ingroup' is good, and the 'outgroup' is not.
>" They taught me to... respect women no matter what..."
The ingroup are virtuous...
>"Whenever I see a man... I recognise that he could very well be a predator"
The outgroup are evil.
>"I weep for the women of the World"
Do you think that you have been programmed? Brainwashed? Before you say 'of course not', if you were brainwashed, what would you think that is different to the sentiments you have expressed here?
Try reading this book or read the men's rights sub-reddit, or some other resource to challenge the 'Ovaries good, testes bad' belief system into which you have been inculcated. Above all, the starting point is the recognition that you can only change yourself, not 50% of the World's population
I wish you well
I agree that radical feminism is ultimately a bourgeois and reactionary ideology, and we should combat it in all communist organizations. I have a couple questions though:
> "homosexuality is cultural"
I've never seen a radical feminist say this, I've seen the opposite more often ("homosexuality is something you're born with and is attraction to the same sex" and other transphobic shit like that)
I would say that gay behavior is not a socially constructed phenomenon but gay identity and the social position of LGBT people in capitalist society is. Thoughts?
As for articles and stuff from a marxist position against radical feminism:
Trans People and the Dialectics of Sex and Gender: Against Radical and Liberal Feminism by Alyx Mayer
Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto this isn't specifically a Marxist analysis, its influenced by several trends (queer anarchism, post-modernism, Marxism, and post-colonialism) but its easy to see that the analysis is easily adaptable into a more specifically Marxist framework.
Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto Sterling. This also isn't a Marxist book but it tears apart biological essentialism that radfems love and is a good book (its written by a biologist too so its not just some random person writing this, its a real scientist)
Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue by Leslie Feinberg. Argument for transgender liberation by a Marxist-Leninist trans woman. All of her stuff is excellent and worth reading.
Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement by Anuradha Gandhy. Another great piece that lays out the basis of Proletarian Feminism
> passing
One re-phrasing of this that I really liked(from a chapter of this book that also discusses why 'passing' isn't a great term, for the curious) was whether someone is read as their gender.
It moves the onus of responsibility from the transperson being the one who has to pass to other people being the ones who should read them correctly. It also removes the gross undertones that transpeople are somehow in disguise and 'passing' is just their disguise working.
Of course in a perfect world we wouldn't need termonology around it at all, but this isn't that world (yet) and people need some way to talk about their experiences.
A lot of it is just how you feel internally. I'm amab, but don't usually present in a feminine way in public due to how many assholes are out there. When I do, I make sure that I'm armed.
This book would probably answer all of your questions, and it does so in a very user friendly and easy to understand way, even for people who are straight and cis: How to Understand Your Gender https://www.amazon.com/dp/1785927469/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_txISDbVPY8001
The Na people of China are the only group I've read about that don't practice marriage.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1890951137?pc_redir=1398108671&robot_redir=1
There are, however, places in which marriage practices bear little if any resemblance to what you might think of as marriage.
The Nandi for example have a really interesting tradition of female husbands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandi_people
I own these two books and they are currently on my to-read shelf. But, tell me, have you ever spent time reading actual feminist theory, or does what you know about feminism come from the media?
You're bi, you're awesome, live your best life.
One thing that helped me was learning about other famous bisexual people, reading their stories, hearing their words. It's very affirming.
Some books you might consider reading:
Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580054749/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_meWnDb4RYF9WB
Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0965388158/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_VeWnDbX28YXHB
Bi Any Other Name - Bisexual People Speak Out https://www.amazon.com/dp/1626011990/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ufWnDb1EWEQDE
Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men https://www.amazon.com/dp/0965388174/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_xhWnDbFK28M2N
I've heard of this book but never read it, so maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but I was quite surprised and disappointed to see this book by the same author in the Vancouver Women's Library catalogue.
https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Warriors-Making-History-Dennis/dp/0807079413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486467745&sr=8-1&keywords=Transgender+Warriors%3A+Making+History+from+Joan+of+Arc+to+Dennis
Joan of Arc?
Marcotte is certainly one of the most prominent SJW's, but SJWism was around even prior to the internet. See this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Professing-Feminism-Cautionary-Strange-Studies/dp/0465098274
Here's my list so far. It's a mix of FTM-specific, general trans, and gender studies books, including essays, memoir, and more academic works. In no particular order:
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein
Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman
Nina Here Nor There by Nick Krieger
Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam
Nobody Passes - Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
How Sex Changed: A History of Transexuality in the United States by Joanne Meyerowitz
Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green
Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer by Riki Wilchins
PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality edited by Carol Queen
Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary edited by Joan Nestle
From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond edited by Morty Diamond
Second Son by Ryan Sallans
Why are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
and the must-read fiction:
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
I'll edit this if I can find any others, I'm probably missing a couple. Been a big non-fiction reading year for me!
EDIT: Edited to add links, and a few more on my wish list I haven't picked up yet.
Letters for my Brothers: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect edited By Megan M. Rohrer, M.Div. & Zander Keig, M.SW.
That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men by Lori B. Girshick
Just Add Hormones: An Insider's Guide to the Transsexual Experience by Matt Kailey
The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male by Max Wolf Valerio
If you want a history that focuses on the U.S., Susan Stryker's book Transgender History is good.
If you want a world history, there isn't really one single book that covers specifically transgender history in the whole world. The best one is Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors, though it has some problems.
> I can't change those standards with the flick of a switch.
Long term project of bodily acceptance ahoy! Work on this slowly, don't beat yourself up for having bad days or wanting to make longer term changes, but try and think positively about what you've got. An important part of the project can be to try and give yourself positive affirmations and override negative self descriptors in your internal narrative, over time this can help even if at first it feels like you're just sort of faking it. This doesn't mean you have to like where you are, but trying to soften words like hate, or ideas like never being happy if you can't blend in immediately. You don't have to aim for happy, but aiming for unhappy but accepting and working towards changes can be a big shift.
> things aren't going my way right now and I'm at a last-ditch point where it's pass or give up on ever being happy. I know how I feel. People keep telling me how to feel but I can't just decide to be happy as I am.
Look you don't have to be happy as you are, but you have to try and accept how things are at the minute while working to change what can be changed. This is a long slow process and it sucks. Things will get better as transition goes on, but it'll take time and effort and the bit before then is going to grind and fucking suck.
Breasts: padded bras and home made breast forms are better than nothing. Go smaller rather than bigger, just something there to break up the outline of your body will do.
Clothes: two layers of not like painfully tight but snug underwear (optionally like leggings or whatever over the top as well), google search to learn the mystic arts of tucking, but TL;DR gently move testicles up/in, tuck penis down back, use underwear to hold in place, wear baggy trousers, multiple layers of skirt (look okay when I do skirts I'm into underskirts in addition).
Hair: Neaten up at hairdressers, use good shampoo/conditioning.
What am I forgetting:
Good luck, may the force be with you. Oh enjoy your studies as well :)
Gosh, I dunno if I can point to any one thing. Lemme just second "White Privilege" by Paula Rothenburg.
These decisions that we make are not created in a vacuum. We have all been socialized to accept skin "imperfections" on men more than women. The high standards of beauty have caused us to self police. So no one has to tell the woman that doesn't wear makeup that she looks tired---it might be on her mind anyway and that's not an accident. There's an entire billion dollar industry that tells us that beauty is self care, self esteem, and self improvement. And there are rewards for buying into this idea. So I wouldn't ever lay the responsibility on women for making these decisions---some people are more affected by this marketing than others but none of us are immune.
I used to think that I was "lazy" when it came to my appearance. But I had a therapist point out to me that that it's BS. All that is required of me as a human (regarding my appearance) is that I maintain good hygiene and dress appropriately for the occasion. I've realized that women are made to feel lazy if they don't go above and beyond because our appearance (unfairly) plays such a huge role in our status. Heels, makeup, hair appointments, waxing and on trend fashion are all ~extra~. Finding "flattering" clothing is all about hiding the things that we have been socialized to believe are unsightly. We are made to believe that we are supposed to be skinny, poreless, hairless art objects.
This book is not perfect, but The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf is about this very subject....published in 1990, critics saw it as heresy!
The book is basically an in-depth analysis on whether or not gender classification matters in society. The author looks at things like gender markers on IDs and gender segregation in public places like schools, bathrooms, and sports.
I got the book from my local library when I was first beginning to question my gender. The title caught my eye and I thought it might be able to help me sort my thoughts and feelings. It absolutely did not. This book focuses more on gender segregation in society and how it affects and hurts trans (and sometimes cis!) people. Still a good read, just be aware it's very scholarly and factual.
Link to purchase on Amazon: Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? https://www.amazon.com/dp/1479855405/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_v6p4AbER143XG
Awesome, and congrats on all the work you're doing! Good luck moving; I always find that process really stressful, but then settling into a new place is great.
Self-Reliance really helped me out early in transition, and so did the book Nobody Passes, in case you want to check it out once you're in your new place.
there's kinda two spectrums of beliefs on what is trans. some people adhere to social construction theories to explain trans stuff. some people adhere to peer-reviewed scientific research to explain things. i prefer the later, so i'd suggest searching this sub for research as well as reading the papers off pubmed. here's a nice overview of concepts from harvard: Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity. i also like the center of excellence for transgender health care as well as the world professional association for transgender health's standards of care document.. there's also an excellent book available called trans bodies, trans selves on amazon that covers a huge amount of information from the perspective of trans people. i really like this book a lot as it gives a very human touch to us as well as attempts to cover the vast diversity of the transgender experience. lots of people are given a voice in this book and it is very beautifully written. honestly, this is where i'd start with us.
the transgender community is incredibly diverse and it really is one of the best parts of being a part of the community.
I want to say something, but you seem to have so much already worked out that I'm unsure as to what exactly I should.
First of all, don't worry. All of us here totally have your back. I think you'll be surprised by how many people can relate to your feelings (a double edged sword really. Yay, I belong; Aww, I'm not special ^_^ ). If you want to put a label to yourself (and by all means, feel free not to), I suggest starting somewhere around here. If you'd like to read about other people's theories and experiences then Bornstein and Bergman are right up your alley.
You're already starting to explore, so I don't really know what else to tell you. Just remember that you are doing this for you. You don't have to conform to anyone's notion of trans any more than you have to conform to anyone's notion of female. Do whatever makes you happy.
For ancient stuff, Leslie Feinberg's book Transgender Warriors is a place to start. It's not really academically rigorous, but a good introduction to gender-variant people and stories from ancient history to today.
Anyone interested in what's written here might want to check out the book "White Privilege" by Paula Rothenburg, which discusses a lot of these issues.
I'm really sorry you are going through this tough time. Gender and identity can be tricky and heartbreaking for millennial in liberal cities (like me), it can be much harder for people in your situation. But that doesn't mean its impossible.
​
I imagine that this will be tricky to suppress for the rest of your life. Being in touch with who we are is important, even if it can be tough. But that doesn't mean it needs to happen all at once, or in a disorganised manner. Sometimes having a few people who know the 'real you' can alleviate some of the pressure. One of those people might be a therapist who can help you work through any other options that are available.
​
You might find this book helpful, Meg John Barker is an excellent writer on gender (gen x, I would guess). I've also heard good things about Kate Borstein's Gender Outlaw (and she narrates the audiobook so you could listen to it on your commute) - she's gen x as well.
​
I hope this helps, and my thoughts are with you.
I have to tell you, you would love this book.
Also http://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Warriors-Making-History-Dennis/dp/0807079413 , which isn't US-specific but has a lot of US-based content.
> I can't get you the exact pages because I no longer have the book, but this book goes into how Jews were considered "white" and also not white at times.
Here's how certain white people view this kind of 'white bashing' book written by a 'Jewish' academic (notice - non-white):
http://www.amazon.com/White-Privilege-Essential-Readings-Racism/product-reviews/1429233443/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R1CVVT1AE5KH94
> "White priviledge" written by a Jewish author. I've seen more than a few of these "whiteness studies" books written by authors of Jewish heritage. Interesting. They write anti-white bashing literature but will NEVER write a book about racist Jewish supremacism (aka Zionism). Gee, I wonder why. Whiteness studies is just the next phase of racist, anti-white (specifically non-Jewish white) bashing. It is the next phase in trying to brainwash people...
____
Take note, that the author is NOT viewed as white, but as an instrument of the elite... which will be used to destroy the "real blue collar white man"
This story is as old as Judaism. Jews trying to integrate with the majority society & certain elements violently opposing that "racial mixing".
Which brings us back to the linked joke in the submitted article (no one wants a Jewish baby).
Here are some that seem particularly relevant:
I would stay with them and see how you feel. Also it REALLY helps to learn as much as you can about the trans experience and trans issues.
http://www.youtube.com/user/tsdollhouse/
reddit.com/r/transgender
http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359
https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-History-Studies-Susan-Stryker/dp/158005224X
Transgender History (Seal Studies) (9781580052245): Susan ...
Used as the definitive Text at College and Universities.
https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Studies-Reader-1/dp/041594709X
The Transgender Studies Reader (Volume 1 ... - Amazon.com
Also used in college Gender Studies courses.
https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Warriors-Making-History-Dennis/dp/0807079413
Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan ... - Amazon.com
I don't know how they labeled themselves, but it was definitely under the Tran Umbrella.
It's not that new. There is a book about this from 1997 (source)
There are a couple of books that I think your library may have (or be able to get through interlibrary loan).
Nobody Passes,
Delusions of Gender,
She's Not the Man I Married.
The last book is the sequel to an earlier one, and is probably one that would speak most to what you seem to be asking in this post.
When I'm having a discussion about gender, one of the visual analogies I like to do is this (motions in italics, spoken is not italics):
(take a piece of paper, like 8½ x 11 or A1)
All humans have emotions and feelings and desires and hope and longings.
start tearing the paper into smaller squares
These pieces represent the feelings, hopes, desires and emotions we all have.
there should be one pile now
Each society and culture decides which of these human things is masculine and which is feminine
split the pile into 2 piles
One pile is for humans with penises, the other for humans with vaginas.
take 1-2 pieces from each pile and put them into the other
As long as one mostly conforms to society's idea of what belongs in each pile, a little difference is acceptable.
take a lot more than 1-2, but less than half from each pile and pop it into the other pile
But when too much of you is different from what society expects, you get called sissy, fag, dyke, queer, tomboy and other bad & cruel things. Bad enough that some people will attack and beat you for being different. Long before children know what sex is, they're beating each other for being too different while denouncing the victim as a fag or lezzie. And even as adults, the violence gets called things like "hate crime" and "gay bashing" and sometimes results in death.
now take almost all of it, more than half of each pile and toss them into the other pile
And sometimes, you get so far from what society expects that you get like this. Where you are convinced that you're in the wrong body. That's usually called "gender dysphoria*.
From there, there is usually a discussion with questions and answers, and it is OK for the answers to be "I don't know" or "I don't know yet".
I don't know if your SO was victimized in school, but that can make some folks think that they're really more of the wrong sex than they really are (as in they're really "just a sissy" and not "a woman trapped in a man's body"). This is grossly over-simplified, but I think it gives an idea of what a real therapist would be needed to identify. And please don't think I'm disparaging sissies, transgendered people or anyone in between.
It is normal for you to not be attracted if your SO transitions - because attraction and sexual identity is very important; and people rarely look into where it comes from and why. It isn't reasonable to say "well, it is still the same person inside" because it is extremely common to lose attraction (and become disgusted) when your partner gains large amounts of weight. It is still the same person inside, but the package is not what we're looking for. I'm sorry. You're sorry. We're all sorry.
TIL /u/bawkedybawk is the only other person in the sub wishing for this book! One day I will read it... seems almost a rite of passage lol.
My favorite term is "racialized", because it really highlights the fact that white is the default assumption.
edit: highly recommended source: Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution, by Shiri Eisner, which touches on lots of intersectional issues, including race
Buy her book if you like it: http://www.amazon.com/Flipside-Feminism-What-Conservative-Women/dp/1935071270/?tag=redditcom-20
Submission statement:
Ben Shapiro interviews Douglas Murray. It centers on Murray’s, The Madness of Crowds.
Shes pretty critical of feminist shenanigans and specifically the method that alarmed you.
This feminist is too a critic.
http://www.amazon.com/Professing-Feminism-Cautionary-Strange-Studies/dp/0465098274
I would first recommend reading the Beauty Myth.
https://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Myth-Images-Against-Women-ebook/dp/B0014H32D0
try starting with this and see if it helps.
I would suggest researching the Na people of China. They have polyamorous relationships and have been doing so for centuries.
Edit: This is a good anthropological book. The Na have traditions radically different from most other cultures, but they have very strict rules and customs. I think it's fascinating
https://www.amazon.com/Society-without-Fathers-Husbands-China/dp/1890951137
For Trans liberation I would read Leslie Feinberg's Beyond Pink and Blue.
For Gay and Lesbian liberation I'd read Harry Hay's Radically Gay
On Feminism there's a lot. So you may want to grab Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex and Silvia Federici's Revolution at Point Zero. Both will give you a historical and economic understanding of women's struggle.
On the African struggle I would read Thomas Sankara's The Burkina Faso Revolution.
For the Indian struggle, I suggest Anuradha Ghandy's Scripting for Change if you can find a copy somewhere.
That's it for stuff outside of the purely economic sphere.
As for fiction that intersects with communism, I suggest Iain M. Banks's Culture Series. Considering Phlebas, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons. The late Banks did a tremendous job at portraying a classless, stateless, moneyless, post-scarcity society with access to cornucopia technology.
For generally entertaining Sci-Fi that'll keep you turning pages, and is also written in a non-traditional way, you have to read the Warhammer 40,000 Ciaphas Cain series. Get yourself the two omnibi Hero of the Imperium and Defender of the Imperium you'll enjoy yourself to no end. Commissar Ciaphas Cain just kicks all kinds of arse.
If you enjoy Fantasy, and want a bit with a Marxist Dragon, then I recommend Alan Dean Foster's The Spell Singer Adventures series. Specifically books 1 and 2, Spellsinger and The Hour of the Gate. It's also laugh out loud funny.
If you're more into old fashioned adventures, like Conan the Barbarian kind, then you need to read Michael Moorcocks's Elric series. You can get your toes wet with Elric: The Stealer of Souls. The stories are great fun, Elric is an absolute Byronic anti-hero, he's physically weak, he has to dope himself up, he causes the downfall of his own civilisation, and yet he's a great swordsman, poet, philosopher, and so on. Very much a nihilist, very much a tragic hero.
Finally if you want to delve into the Paranormal, and specifically into the romance category (and why not, I say?). I think you should absolutely read Jeaniene Frost's Night Huntress series. Starting with Halfway to the Grave. Written by a woman, with a female protagonist, all from her first person perspective. It's a vampire story, and as far as the lore is concerned follows very closely to the White Wolf idea of the Masquerade. It's nothing like Twilight, you'll enjoy it and if you're like me, get hooked on the series.
I think what you posted is a really good start if it's specific to your area. For additional resources, this website has a lot of info for providers on prescribing T (http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=guidelines-masculinizing-therapy) & the WPATH Standards of Care would be a good one (https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc), but I know there's some disagreement about some of its recommendations. The book Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (https://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359) is a really good comprehensive overview & would be a great place for a psychiatrist who wants to learn more to start. It's basically a textbook but costs around $30 on Amazon, they keep the price low to make it as accessible as possible.
There's a really good book called Nobody Passes. The basic idea is that ALL of us are trying to pass as something, and have fears about whether or not we're succeeding. Some of us are just attempting to pass on things that are more ... controversial, I suppose? I am not trans*, but I am a Lesbian married to a dude, I was raised Mormon, and I have always felt like I don't fit in anywhere. Reading the book was a great dose of solidarity for me, to know there were others out there who felt out of place.
Yes, you are attracted to men and women, so you fall under the bisexual umbrella. That's great. That's your part of bisexuality. However, I'm bisexual, and I am attracted to loads of different gender expressions - I am attracted to SAME and OTHER genders that myself. I am not pan, because this is what bisexuality have always meant:
"Bisexuals are people with the (some include "inborn" or "innate") capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, (some include "spiritual") and/or emotional attractions to: (1) those of the same gender as themselves (2) those of different genders/gender presentations from themselves."
You should definitely check out this book, I think you'll find it very interesting. The author goes over the history of bisexuality, and how the community's widely accepted definition have been surpressed by academia and the lg community.
I don't really think it's an extraordinary claim to say that many Jews are considered white in society but that we'd also be dumped quick from the white club if shit hits the fan. I can't get you the exact pages because I no longer have the book, but this book goes into how Jews were considered "white" and also not white at times.
I also don't get your comment about Jews being liberal and philanthropic. I don't disagree, but I don't get it either.
I'd second that book. Interestingly it is over 20 years old now, I'd like to see her update it. This one also looks good
https://www.amazon.com/Flipside-Feminism-What-Conservative-Women/dp/1935071270/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1464835193&sr=8-7&keywords=who+stole+feminism
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is pretty much an encyclopedia of trans.
good starting points can be found
http://www.amazon.com/Queer-Theory-Gender-Instant-Primer/dp/1555837980/ref=pd_sim_b4
and
http://www.amazon.com/GenderQueer-Voices-Beyond-Sexual-Binary/dp/1555837301/ref=pd_sim_b5
although of course the real issues are far more diverse than two starter level books can convey.
Thanks everyone for the feedback and support! I now have a much clearer picture on how to proceed if / when I do get around to writing ("thinking about starting" is the key phrase in the topic title, ha). I think I want to read a few more books (such as Unpacking Queer Politics and Gender Hurts ) before diving in, though, so it might be a while. But I will post a link when I start. It will be interesting to get feedback from this community. :)
Sorry for the late reply, I only now stumbled upon your question.
Here are some more books that I haven't seen mentioned. All of them are non-fiction, all of the authors have published more on the topic.
Hope some of that sparks your interest.
I suggest checking out the Book "Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter" By: Heath Fogg Davis. Covers many of the reasons behind what you are talking about and why they are not needed or necessary.
https://www.amazon.ca/Beyond-Trans-Does-Gender-Matter/dp/1479855405/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=beyond+trans+does+gender+matter&qid=1562207507&s=gateway&sr=8-1
​
What it comes down to for ID, IMO, saying 'sex' or 'gender' doesn't matter because in the end what they want/ are saying is 'gender' they use that marker to make assumptions about how you should look. If you do not present 'obviously' as 'M' or 'F' they can say that you are being 'deceptive' and etc. Markers on ID can be used very maliciously to discriminate against people in many ways. For one just think about what having ID stating 'F' may result in when opening an account, they will now put Ms. or Mrs. on you mail and account, refer to you as she/her during any transaction and etc without any care for these being incorrect. They will often also state that this is the only option as its 'what your ID says'.
Plus - Sex assigned at birth takes into account much more that External Sex Organs and people regardless of sex or gender can have varying sex characteristics.
It's not about Stonewall, but Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 explores a lot of interesting stuff most people don't know about. I took Chauncey's queer history class at Yale. It was amazing.
As for trans* stuff, I'd recommend a lot of theory. Judith Butler mainly. I'd also recommend Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity.
His daughter worked with James O'Keefe on the Acorn busts.
His site
Book - Pussification
Essay time! This and this are kind of like the primer essays for 'so you're questioning, now what'. They answer a lot of questions about the experience of gender dysphoria and how it is through someone's life as well as help to reframe the situation in various ways, would strongly recommend.
Books wise, I know Whipping Girl gets recced around a lot - whether you're MtF or FtM, it has a lot to offer and is pretty good. Gender Outlaws is another great read that is pretty current / up to date in terms of what it offers and has a ton of perspectives on the situation that you might find handy. I would also highly recommend Trans Bodies, Trans Selves as a great resource to pursue.
Edit: Couple more! Check out The Genderbread Person for a quick handy look at the different ways to think about gender identity and what it means, and if that interests you then you might also be interested in the accompanying book, Guide to Gender.
Full disclosure: I have not read any of these books. They are all in my Amazon Smile wish list :) Also, some are specifically for transgender issues, but some are geared toward the client or LGBTQ community. You can read them and integrate the information to support your practice.
It looks to me like The Flip Side of Feminism suggests exactly the opposite of what OP is saying: that feminism resulted from women not having enough guidance/discipline/attention when growing up.
Sure, susans.org is a huge forum with allies and partners and trans people of all stripes.
This website is part of the Silvia Rivera project who is a rather well known leader in the community, since Stonewall, who died of cancer.
https://srlp.org/resources/trans-101/
There’s tons of trans vloggers you can go to. Most but not all have a 101 video, and/or talk about their experiences being trans. Here’s a list:
https://blog.feedspot.com/transgender_youtube_channels/
There’s a number of authors you may look into as well, here’s some books:
https://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580056229
https://www.amazon.com/Redefining-Realness-Path-Womanhood-Identity/dp/1476709130/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543615079&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=janet+mock&dpPl=1&dpID=5179e6QMxzL&ref=plSrch
https://www.amazon.com/Surpassing-Certainty-What-Twenties-Taught/dp/1501145797/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543615079&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=janet+mock&dpPl=1&dpID=511ZZslW8TL&ref=plSrch
https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-History-second-Todays-Revolution/dp/158005689X/ref=pd_aw_sbs_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=158005689X&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=dZYLz&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=926ebe02-3236-40c6-ac63-01ad178f498a&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP
https://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_of_15?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0199325359&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=mqDub&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=57b46099-d750-4d74-83ee-63ad64b310a4&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=7T7APJ7MA85RWVJHJW5T
https://www.amazon.com/Shes-Not-There-Life-Genders/dp/0385346972/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_of_17?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0385346972&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=mqDub&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=57b46099-d750-4d74-83ee-63ad64b310a4&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=BNNAHM1QDG52M4D25XX2
https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaw-Men-Women-Rest/dp/1101973242/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_of_20?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1101973242&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=mqDub&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=57b46099-d750-4d74-83ee-63ad64b310a4&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=WC57YE4ZTSS8XPR20CRY
Here is the desktop version of your link
Yes, waiting can be hard. It took 4 months to get into a gender therapist in Boston. It is worth it though. In the meantime there are some books that may help them to better understand their feelings and options. There are two workbooks that I read that were okay:
A Guide to Gender - The Social Justice Advocate's Handbook and the author is great and this Ted Talk he did is awesome.
Some others are:
Perhaps these will help them and even yourself find your answers.
How old is she?
I haven't read it, but this looks interesting: Trans Bodies, Trans Selves
Or, if you want to go for clothing, opaque black tights are easy to fit, go with everything, have a place in all but the butchest wardrobes, and nobody ever has too many.
You're awesome.
Trans bodies trans selves is a pretty good resource for trans folk and allies alike. There is a lot in there and can be a bit dense but it's really informative. https://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359
Gender Hurts.
We need copies of this for our OL ... required reading ... first one to finish reads it to Flowers.
https://www.amazon.com/Pussification-Effeminization-American-Doug-Giles/dp/1618081454
Straight up, you need to tell him you love him, you care about him, and that you’ll be there to support and accept him whatever he decides. You can’t control what he does, but your love and support will mean a lot to him. It’s important that you demonstrate that you’re truly willing to listen to him and understand him, rather than telling him what you think he needs to do without truly understanding what he’s going through.
A couple more things:
I noticed in one comment you doubted he could be trans because he had been sexually attracted to women in the past. This tells me you may not actually know much about the trans experience, as gender identity and sexual preference can be entirely separate from each other. (Plus, he’s still quite young and it’s possible that he hadn’t yet figured that part of himself out yet.)
If you haven’t already, you ought to read over the APA’s page on transgender people:
https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender
I also highly recommend you read one or both of these books to familiarize yourself better with trans issues and the trans experience.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199325359/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231157134/
(At the very least, download the free samples through the Kindle app and read through the first couple chapters.)
Also, resist the urge to make this about yourself. Im not sure why you gave details about your career, salary, and romantic life, but please don’t use those facts to guilt or shame your brother. It’s an unkind this to do and it won’t help your relationship with him. It’ll only make him feel worse.
Finally, try to understand how challenging and scary it would be to come out as trans. No one chooses to do this because it’s easy or fun. As cis straight guys, the world is kinda built for us; our experience is totally the norm. For trans people, not only are they different than 99% of the population, but they’re routinely stigmatized and ridiculed but large swathes of society. Imo, it’s pretty fucking brave to come out as trans.
Anyway, good luck, man. My little bro is also in his early 20s and struggling to figure things out. Just try be a good brother and help him move forward in a positive way 💪💪💪
WRITINGS
OTHER CONTENT
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You should read Queer Theory, Gender Theory by Riki Wilchins! http://www.amazon.com/Queer-Theory-Gender-Instant-Primer/dp/1555837980
It summarizes gender and queer theory pretty well. It gave me insight into my own sexuality and gender identity. It may help you too... If not it's definitely interesting to read anyway.
Ted Nugent - November 17, 2016
>Pussies on Parade are bad for America
>We’ve got a lot of work to do in America to make it great again.
>Job #1 is to de-pussify all of the entitled, arrogant, ignorant, spoiled pussies created during the last eight years. That won’t be easy.
>These entitled little rose pedals didn’t get their way in the election so they’re now whining, crying, protesting, bitching, squawking, complaining, walking-out of school, and demanding their sniveling, spoiled pussy voices be heard instead of manning up, putting on their big boy pants, and wading into the white-water rapids of life where pussies get swept away and drowned.
>Interestingly, I don’t recall any young people on the right-hand side of the political aisle throwing temper tantrums like these crying pussies after Mr. Obama won the White House in 2008 and 2012.
>What kind of parents raised these whining, spoiled, entitled pussies? Did they actually raise these little pussies to believe that when something doesn’t go their way that acting like a pussy will make people feel sorry for them and to let them get their way?
>In addition to parents (and I use that term lightly) our colleges coddle these spoiled pussies instead of toughening them up and getting them ready for the rough and tumble world of the highly-competitive private sector where only the smart and tough get promoted.
>What parents, colleges and our culture have done to these spoiled pussies is a disservice to them and our great republic. What America needs are tough, hungry, competitive and smart young people to make it great again.
>Note to pussies: Hillary lost. Get over it, and get in the game of life. Quit being pussies. You’re embarrassing yourselves & America.
NOTE:
A related book
Pussification: The Effeminization of the American Male by Doug Giles
The best book ever I think for trans is "Trans bodies trans selves" http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359
Its kind of like the bible of transition.
If you think he is still suicidal there is the Trevor line http://www.thetrevorproject.org/section/donate?gclid=COKv-OPRxsQCFdcSgQod5mkAdA
There number is 1-866-488-7386 and you can call text or chat with them.
The following sub reddits are good r/ftm r/asktransgender r/transeducate and r/TransCommunity
For his parents http://transparenthood.net/
Sorry I don't have more for you. I know he's family to you and Im sure you would never consider otherwise but thank you for helping him. Thank you for taking the time out to prepare. The next year is going to be really hard, probably the hardest in his life and he's going to need every bit of support from everywhere he can get it.
While I'm not FTM I am MTF and if you or he want to talk or need some general pointers Im happy to help just shoot me a pm.
Yall should check out White Privilege by Paula Rothenberg. It explains why youll see cards that say "Young gifted and black" but never "young gifted and white". And it explains other things regarding race of course.
Snapshots:
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