fuzzy post-it

more convenient link: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gender-identity/

also, YES

NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE

i TOTALLY forgot about body integrity identity disorder!  that fits perfectly.  (if you are too lazy to read this good post, it’s the opposite of phantom limb: some people feel very strongly that they have a limb that’s extraneous and just doesn’t belong to them.  seemingly the only solution is to amputate it, after which they’re pretty happy.  hey that sounds kind of familiar!)

this post also muses on an idea i had last night but didn’t post: that only a small number of people feel strongly about gender, and about half of them are cis and will just never think about it.  implying that most people don’t give too much of a crap and are fine with whatever they’ve got.

the author ends the post with these two ideas, wondering which could be correct

but i see no reason why it couldn’t be both.  after all, not everyone who loses a limb experiences phantom sensation in it.

so maybe the intensity of the body map varies wildly from person to person, whatever that means.  either the map has a huge effect, or it can’t adapt to match physiology as easily, or whatever.  it might even vary from body part to body part for the same person.

and, sexual characteristics are missing from the map for some people.  so to experience strong dysphoria you’d have to have both a strong map and have it not match your body.  plenty of people could just experience one or the other and never really think much of it.

this leaves room for a gradient as well: if it’s not just a “male/female” switch, it’d make perfect sense that some people would have a moderately-strong map and only feel dysphoric some of the time, or only mildly, or meander back and forth between genders.

hell, there may not be a sex switch at all; if the map is merely about body parts, it could be possible that the problem is what’s extra, not what’s missing.  e.g. what if the core problem bothering some transmen is that their breasts specifically aren’t on the map (and phantom limb after a mastectomy is totally a thing), not that a penis is.

and this could be the role culture plays: not so much defining gender roles, but strongly associating body parts with sexes/genders.  if you possess a penis and wish you didn’t, living in a heavily binary society could very well suggest that the solution is to be female rather than to specifically not have a penis. after all, that’s quite literally how some people define “female”.

i’m talking out my ass here with these last two paragraphs and i totally know it; nobody can substantiate any of this without knowing some very deep and personal feelings of a lot of transpeople.  and cultural influence specifically is very difficult to separate out from…  anything else.

but this would account for the wild variations in how people experience and deal with their dysphoria.  it fits into a broader range of quirks we know the brain can have.  it makes perfect sense to me.  it even means truscum are full of shit!  what more can you ask for

thx for the link anon