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Originally Posted by Genteel Death

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In the womb we all start off as female.* People who come out as little boys are changed during the pregnancy when testosterone is introduced.* The clitoris grows and becomes penis, and the labia becomes a scrotum.* Woman are so-called because they're meant to be like men, but with wombs- womb-man.* But in reality, men are women with big clitorises.* Bigclits.* Most people come out with either a vagina or a penis, but some people are somewhere inbetween- these people are 'intersex'.* As soon as we're born boys and girls are treated drasticallly differently- boys are given lego, girls are given dolls (and then people wonder about the lack of female engineers); girls are encouraged to care and talk about their feelings, whilst boys are told to be tough.* Every boy and girl, to some extent, has to grapple with the difference between who they are, and what a Real Man is.* What a Real Woman is.* Every body suffers from the invention of the Man and the Woman.* And I consider myself an extreme casualty of this- I don't really consider myself a Man- but I know, violently, that I'm not a woman.* I think that transpeople generally are an extreme casualty of this problem.
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Society is organised into men and women and I don't fit into either.* If I were to have to go to prison, I could either* be a man in an all female prison, or a man with a vagina in an all male-prison where privacy is not exactly a priority.* If I were to be arrested and strip-searched I've got a choice between a male officer or a female police officer.* But I'm not a man, that is not my sex, I am a transexual.* There is now a Gender Recognition Certificate so that I can be recognised as either a Man or a Woman by the state.* But I am not a Man or a Woman, I am a transexual.* I could be treated as a man, go to a male prison, be searched by a male officer, get married to a woman.* But I don't want to get married, I don't want to live in a society where people are sent to prison and strip searched by police.* I don't believe in leading a fight where we're asking to government to deal with us more efficiently, to oppress us better.* I don't want to be integrated better a rotten system, a want something different altogether.* I want to take part in creating a better world.

part 1, anybody knowing biology knows this.

part 2 is true, it's a social thing.

i have a transgender friend, and while she started life as a very feminine boy she's now a she. it's not hard to call her she because she's fucking gorgeous.

her partner is also transgender--formerly a woman. sure he doesn't look as macho as most, but he's still a he.

still, the pronouns do not contain all the nuances of their genders and their struggles to somehow "fit" into a gender container. they themselves struggle to identify with these polarities, i think.

it's hard to think of people in terms of little boxes. it's more of a convenience really, which is another word for lazy thinking. but i don't think it's a "rotten" system in itself. it's perhaps primitive, unsophisticated, unrefined, ignorant, dense, but not "rotten" in the way we think of this, as corruption-- that is a whole different story.

the word that bugs me (here in america) is "race"

"what race are you?"

fuck if i know. human? 5% neanderthal 95% cro-magnon?