You don’t get it because you have never felt uncomfortable in your own body. Your brain’s perceived gender matches your physical sex characteristics. Wearing pants as a male or a dress as a female didn’t feel “wrong” to you. For some, it does.
If you’re trans and you know it you ideally want to start medical care in your early teens by going onto puberty blockers. I think there’s a legitimate discussion to have about delaying reassignment surgery until your early twenties due to how our minds and cognition develop[1]… but you absolutely want to stall puberty since it’s forcing a decision on you.
Different people develop at different rates, I didn’t come to the personal realization that I was pan until my mid twenties and, with sexual orientations, there’s no cost to switching teams mid-way through life (outside of existing relationships)… when it comes to gender identity my impression is that people who catch it early and go on puberty blockers in time are able to feel much more comfortable in their bodies.
I have the specific disclaimer below but I would note that I’m not trans so if I’ve misspoken don’t hesitate to correct me.
I am not trans myself nor an expert in the field, but I have seen reasonable arguments about the irreversibility and how adolescent cognition develops - I don’t mean to cause any offense to anyone who 100% knew they were trans at 13 and have no regrets two decades later.
Basically they are homosexual kids? Why people call them trans kids then? I had understood people need to have been on hormones(or even get s surgery) to be trans, people call them trans kids nowadays?
No. Being Gay and being Trans are two different things. When I came out as a gay man, my sister asked me if I wanted to be a girl. I told her no. I’m perfectly happy with my birth gender. I am just attracted to other men. I never felt like I was in the wrong body.
You don’t need surgery or medication to know you’re trans - some children know it from an early age even before any medical intervention. Also, I think you’re conflicting gender identity and sexual attraction. A trans woman can be straight, gay, bi, pan - or anything else. This is a question of how you feel comfortable expressing - not who you’re attracted to. There absolutely are aro ace trans folks who have no interest in any relationships or others’ perceptions or interests… They’re just making themselves comfortable with their expression.
No, they aren’t being called trans because they’re gay. They’re called trans because they express that they have a different gender than what the doctor said when they were born.
Just like you knew whether you were a boy or a girl before you turned 18, so do trans kids. There’s decent evidence that all kids understand what gender is and express their own gender very early, like before kindergarten.
It’s like giving the children the ability to choose how other people perceive them choosing their own gender? Like if a boy wants to be perceived as a girl or otherwise changing their clothes and hairstyle?
Edit: I had understood the name for that was crossdressing?
It’s not a boy who wants to be perceived as a girl but a girl who wants to stop being perceived as a boy.
Whereas crossdressing is basically playing with societal perceptions of gender roles and what clothing and traits are associated with different genders. Crossdressing isn’t wanting to be the other gender, it’s more like playing dress up or defying cultural expectations about what it means to be a man or a woman. Like role-playing for various reasons.
I’m gonna assume you’re a dude. If you want to understand what being trans is like, instead of trying to imagine what it would be like to want to be a woman, imagine if the world treated you as a woman. Everywhere you went, you got "ma’am"ed and people held doors open for you and told you that you’d be much prettier if you smiled more. People frowned at you when you talked sports or cars or whatever because that’s not the kind of stuff a woman should be interested in. They asked you when you were going to get married and have a kid when you talked about your career. You were expected to wear skirts and do your makeup every day and all the other little things that are expected of women but not men. And that’s just the cultural part. Now imagine looking in the mirror and seeing somebody else’s face staring back at you. Look at your hand and see how the fingers are wrong. They’re too skinny and your skin feels too smooth and thin to be right. Even the way your body smells is weird. No matter how hard you try, you can just never seem to build any real muscle, and there’s this literal weight in your chest that is constantly pulling on you, like a pair of tumors that you can always feel, shifting around and pulling on your spine.
Now imagine being a kid and watching this happen to your body against your will, like something out of a body horror movie. Your skeleton shifting and changing into a bizarre and foreign new form as strange new features start sprouting out of your skin and underneath your flesh. That’s what being a trans kid is like, going through the wrong puberty.
There’s a difference between finding enjoyment in transgressing lines of expectation in outfits, and finding the experience of your body and social place as wrong, and wanting to change it to better fit with who you are. Yes, for people young enough, gender affirmation largely lies in changing clothes, names, pronouns, but over a lifetime it usually doesn’t stop there. Having your body start shifting on you, in ways that aren’t congruent with your experienced gender, is godawful and horrifying. Imagine your experience of puberty, but instead of the hormone you had dominant in yours, you got the other one.
You can go ahead and ask me anything about the experience; I was one of those kids, before affirming care was a thing for kids, and my goddess did it suck, and I suffer fallout from it still.
Transvestitism is a name for cross dressing, it is unclear how much of that is related to gender identity, and how much is sexuality, as well as how big the overlap is when you weren’t allowed to be transsexual.
What we’re talking about here is transsexuality, which roughly means not being of the gender you were assigned at birth. The name came before we had a widespread discourse that sex and gender are fundamentally different things.
Sexuality develops at around the age of 6-8, body and self identity starts a couple years before then.
I’m not a child psychologist, but I’d make a guess that trans realisation in children are rare before the age of 3, but after that are mostly a question of maturity, support of environment, and how harsh social norms are.
Also, aren’t you still legally a child up to the age of 18? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that sexuality and identity develop before then.
Oh, and in case you missed that part, trans isn’t about sexuality, it’s about identity; fitting in your own body, in your presentation of yourself, in how you are treated by others. Sexuality is it’s own separate beast, especially with all the stigma about it.
Generally speaking “kids” covers anybody under the age of about 18 so yes sexually developed kids are included. Remember that puberty starts around 11 years old.
Gender incongruence also doesn’t fully rely on sexual characteristics alone. An aspect of gender is that it is inate. Trans children are often confused by what they are told if they try and self identity and are told that they are not that gender by adults who represent an authority. It is actually very easy to essentially gaslight your child into self identiting as their birth sex if they are kept in situations where don’t know there are other options… But just because they don’t know being trans is a thing doesn’t mean that they aren’t trans or struggle with being trans. It just means they do so in isolation where they don’t have words. When I was growing up that was the case.
After a certain point a lot of the social siloing process puts you in a social category where you are segregated. For a lot of people this is fine. The silo puts them with other people who don’t mind being siloed. A lot of cis people don’t seem like they are comfortably cis because they have a gender identity that solidly matches their sex… It’s like they have a nebulous gender identity where they don’t really care. Whatever program they are given is fine so they have real issues understanding having a strong fixed gender identity at all. When someone with no real preference is told their social category is tied to their sex they have no reason to question treating the two as linked facts. If a cis person has a strong sense of gender identity and it matches then that’s great! They experience gender euphoria, actually joy from expressing and being that matchup. They can also better relate to a mismatch.
Trans people however have an intenal sense of what they are and also what they are not that doesn’t easy match with this concept of linked social and physical category. Other people of your birth sex never register to your brain fully as being “like you” so when people of your birth sex whose gender aligns or at least doesn’t chafe are your only social bonding options you just feel alone, oddly alien and like there isn’t really a solution for those things.
Being trans means trying to fit in with your birth sex makes just makes you feel more fake. You very quickly understand that there is a host of expectations about who you are, who it’s normal to be friends with, what things you like and what activities you get to participate in based on your genitals. I grew up with generally depressed, socially anxious and feeling invisible as being my baseline normal because nothing I was handed or expected to do along this category resonated… so I was rejected by everyone for essentially never being comfortable. Trying to fake being comfortable so you aren’t alone doesn’t ultimately make you feel less alone.
All this before puberty. Once puberty hits the shit really hits the fan because people at the same time your body is changing in a very body horroresque way start treating you in ways where your sex is highlighted and comes with a whole host of new social gendered expectations. Everyone treats it all as a difficult rite of passage for everyone but at the same time you can see in real time that your struggle and a cis person’s struggle are very different.
LMAO, but… what exactly are trans kids? I mean as kids haven’t their sexuality developed how can they be trans? Serious question not trolling at all…
When your body matches your brain, you don’t notice it’s wrong. When it doesn’t match, you notice pretty young.
Genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. I knew I liked girls at age 6.
As long as I can remember here
Not that sexuality is the same as gender dysmorphia like the poster above thinks
You don’t get it because you have never felt uncomfortable in your own body. Your brain’s perceived gender matches your physical sex characteristics. Wearing pants as a male or a dress as a female didn’t feel “wrong” to you. For some, it does.
If you’re trans and you know it you ideally want to start medical care in your early teens by going onto puberty blockers. I think there’s a legitimate discussion to have about delaying reassignment surgery until your early twenties due to how our minds and cognition develop[1]… but you absolutely want to stall puberty since it’s forcing a decision on you.
Different people develop at different rates, I didn’t come to the personal realization that I was pan until my mid twenties and, with sexual orientations, there’s no cost to switching teams mid-way through life (outside of existing relationships)… when it comes to gender identity my impression is that people who catch it early and go on puberty blockers in time are able to feel much more comfortable in their bodies.
I have the specific disclaimer below but I would note that I’m not trans so if I’ve misspoken don’t hesitate to correct me.
Basically they are homosexual kids? Why people call them trans kids then? I had understood people need to have been on hormones(or even get s surgery) to be trans, people call them trans kids nowadays?
No. Being Gay and being Trans are two different things. When I came out as a gay man, my sister asked me if I wanted to be a girl. I told her no. I’m perfectly happy with my birth gender. I am just attracted to other men. I never felt like I was in the wrong body.
Pretty clear, understood.
You don’t need surgery or medication to know you’re trans - some children know it from an early age even before any medical intervention. Also, I think you’re conflicting gender identity and sexual attraction. A trans woman can be straight, gay, bi, pan - or anything else. This is a question of how you feel comfortable expressing - not who you’re attracted to. There absolutely are aro ace trans folks who have no interest in any relationships or others’ perceptions or interests… They’re just making themselves comfortable with their expression.
No, they aren’t being called trans because they’re gay. They’re called trans because they express that they have a different gender than what the doctor said when they were born.
Just like you knew whether you were a boy or a girl before you turned 18, so do trans kids. There’s decent evidence that all kids understand what gender is and express their own gender very early, like before kindergarten.
It’s like giving the children the ability to choose how other people perceive them choosing their own gender? Like if a boy wants to be perceived as a girl or otherwise changing their clothes and hairstyle?
Edit: I had understood the name for that was crossdressing?
It’s not a boy who wants to be perceived as a girl but a girl who wants to stop being perceived as a boy.
Whereas crossdressing is basically playing with societal perceptions of gender roles and what clothing and traits are associated with different genders. Crossdressing isn’t wanting to be the other gender, it’s more like playing dress up or defying cultural expectations about what it means to be a man or a woman. Like role-playing for various reasons.
I’m gonna assume you’re a dude. If you want to understand what being trans is like, instead of trying to imagine what it would be like to want to be a woman, imagine if the world treated you as a woman. Everywhere you went, you got "ma’am"ed and people held doors open for you and told you that you’d be much prettier if you smiled more. People frowned at you when you talked sports or cars or whatever because that’s not the kind of stuff a woman should be interested in. They asked you when you were going to get married and have a kid when you talked about your career. You were expected to wear skirts and do your makeup every day and all the other little things that are expected of women but not men. And that’s just the cultural part. Now imagine looking in the mirror and seeing somebody else’s face staring back at you. Look at your hand and see how the fingers are wrong. They’re too skinny and your skin feels too smooth and thin to be right. Even the way your body smells is weird. No matter how hard you try, you can just never seem to build any real muscle, and there’s this literal weight in your chest that is constantly pulling on you, like a pair of tumors that you can always feel, shifting around and pulling on your spine.
Now imagine being a kid and watching this happen to your body against your will, like something out of a body horror movie. Your skeleton shifting and changing into a bizarre and foreign new form as strange new features start sprouting out of your skin and underneath your flesh. That’s what being a trans kid is like, going through the wrong puberty.
There’s a difference between finding enjoyment in transgressing lines of expectation in outfits, and finding the experience of your body and social place as wrong, and wanting to change it to better fit with who you are. Yes, for people young enough, gender affirmation largely lies in changing clothes, names, pronouns, but over a lifetime it usually doesn’t stop there. Having your body start shifting on you, in ways that aren’t congruent with your experienced gender, is godawful and horrifying. Imagine your experience of puberty, but instead of the hormone you had dominant in yours, you got the other one.
You can go ahead and ask me anything about the experience; I was one of those kids, before affirming care was a thing for kids, and my goddess did it suck, and I suffer fallout from it still.
I can bet that suck AF, I will get more into it with the information everybody provided me in the replies thx.
I usually doesn’t give a fuck about what other people do or not included children but I had to clarify about this topic.
Have a nice day!!
Transvestitism is a name for cross dressing, it is unclear how much of that is related to gender identity, and how much is sexuality, as well as how big the overlap is when you weren’t allowed to be transsexual.
What we’re talking about here is transsexuality, which roughly means not being of the gender you were assigned at birth. The name came before we had a widespread discourse that sex and gender are fundamentally different things.
Sexuality develops at around the age of 6-8, body and self identity starts a couple years before then.
I’m not a child psychologist, but I’d make a guess that trans realisation in children are rare before the age of 3, but after that are mostly a question of maturity, support of environment, and how harsh social norms are.
Also, aren’t you still legally a child up to the age of 18? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that sexuality and identity develop before then.
Oh, and in case you missed that part, trans isn’t about sexuality, it’s about identity; fitting in your own body, in your presentation of yourself, in how you are treated by others. Sexuality is it’s own separate beast, especially with all the stigma about it.
Here’s a simple explanation.
Thx for the info 👍.
Generally speaking “kids” covers anybody under the age of about 18 so yes sexually developed kids are included. Remember that puberty starts around 11 years old.
Gender incongruence also doesn’t fully rely on sexual characteristics alone. An aspect of gender is that it is inate. Trans children are often confused by what they are told if they try and self identity and are told that they are not that gender by adults who represent an authority. It is actually very easy to essentially gaslight your child into self identiting as their birth sex if they are kept in situations where don’t know there are other options… But just because they don’t know being trans is a thing doesn’t mean that they aren’t trans or struggle with being trans. It just means they do so in isolation where they don’t have words. When I was growing up that was the case.
After a certain point a lot of the social siloing process puts you in a social category where you are segregated. For a lot of people this is fine. The silo puts them with other people who don’t mind being siloed. A lot of cis people don’t seem like they are comfortably cis because they have a gender identity that solidly matches their sex… It’s like they have a nebulous gender identity where they don’t really care. Whatever program they are given is fine so they have real issues understanding having a strong fixed gender identity at all. When someone with no real preference is told their social category is tied to their sex they have no reason to question treating the two as linked facts. If a cis person has a strong sense of gender identity and it matches then that’s great! They experience gender euphoria, actually joy from expressing and being that matchup. They can also better relate to a mismatch.
Trans people however have an intenal sense of what they are and also what they are not that doesn’t easy match with this concept of linked social and physical category. Other people of your birth sex never register to your brain fully as being “like you” so when people of your birth sex whose gender aligns or at least doesn’t chafe are your only social bonding options you just feel alone, oddly alien and like there isn’t really a solution for those things.
Being trans means trying to fit in with your birth sex makes just makes you feel more fake. You very quickly understand that there is a host of expectations about who you are, who it’s normal to be friends with, what things you like and what activities you get to participate in based on your genitals. I grew up with generally depressed, socially anxious and feeling invisible as being my baseline normal because nothing I was handed or expected to do along this category resonated… so I was rejected by everyone for essentially never being comfortable. Trying to fake being comfortable so you aren’t alone doesn’t ultimately make you feel less alone.
All this before puberty. Once puberty hits the shit really hits the fan because people at the same time your body is changing in a very body horroresque way start treating you in ways where your sex is highlighted and comes with a whole host of new social gendered expectations. Everyone treats it all as a difficult rite of passage for everyone but at the same time you can see in real time that your struggle and a cis person’s struggle are very different.