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Confused about gender labels?

1.Intersex; when a baby is born with genitals that can't be clearly identified as either male or female.

Sometimes, later on, the person will develop secondary sex characteristics from both genders, i.e. girls might become hairy, or boys might develop breasts.

2.Androgyne: a person whose prenatal BRAIN was initiailzed with both male and female hormones in the third trimester.

Everyone gets doses of both gender hormones, but in this case, the male and female hormone infusions are almost even.

Their bodies are perfectly normal, resembling their birth gender assignment, even if their thinking is hard-wired with characteristics from both genders.

3.Transgender: people who feel uncomfortable with any aspect of their birth gender assignment.

Sometimes this feeling is so extreme they suffer from "dysphoria" and get operations to "correct" the feeling of resembling the "wrong" gender.

4.Nonbinary: Transgender people who don't choose a male or female gender side. They don't identify with either gender, or they feel they are both genders at the same time.

5.Transmale or transwoman: people who "know" they are the opposite of their birth gender.

Most are born with this belief, but often don't realize it until they reach puberty (girls who are transmale) or the first time they try to wear a princess gown (boys who are transwomen).

birdingnut 8 May 26
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Androgyne is very interesting, don’t hear much about that one. I’ve recently begun questioning if it’s possible to have both too much testosterone and too much estrogen at the same time, because I’ve realized most of my particular quirks could be explained by a combo like that. Been meaning to ask my mother if my hormone levels were ever checked as a baby. I started going through puberty very young (like heavily interested in girls at 5), had to start shaving at 12-14 and I went bald in my early 20s, all seemingly suggesting a lot of T. Some anger problems but not typically super aggressive. But (and this may be the emotional influence of being raised by a patient mother and a shithead dad) I’m fairly overly sensitive at times, way more in touch with my emotions than most men, and I empathize more with women than men. Men are mostly pigs and although I am one I’ll make no case for it. My interest in sex isn’t to have many partners, I’m mostly just eager to please and have a hard time getting off if the lady isn’t. Consequently I like to give oral about as much as most guys like receiving it. I have likened my sexuality to being a lesbian in a man’s body lol. Perhaps I’m androgynous? ?‍♂️ I’d still consider myself all male but mentally and emotionally my feminine side is quite healthy, and usually if I’m in my right mind, somewhat in charge.

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Regarding #5:

I don't like the term transwoman or transman, and neither do most of the (many) trans women that I know. It's used by TERFs to devalue the gender of trans people. Transgender is an adjective, and should be used to describe a type of woman or man or person, not combined with a gender to form a noun.

I have transgender woman friends, and they refer to themselves as just "women." I am a partial transmale, myself.

This is from BBC: Transgender man/transgender woman

People assigned female at birth but living as a man may describe themselves as a "transgender man", while those assigned male at birth but living as a woman may call themselves a "transgender woman". These terms can be shortened to "trans man" or "trans woman".

Some may also use the acronyms FtM (female-to-male) and MtF (male-to-female). Many prefer simply to be identified simply as a "man" or a "woman".

@birdingnut I'm not going to police how anyone labels themselves. I know some trans women who label themselves as transwomen, and I've seen it on this site. I don't like it, and I've given the reason why. I don't care what the BBC or anyone else says about it. Same with tranny, or trap, or any other term I don't like, and feel is harmful to trans people. I'll state my opinion, because I think it's important.

@MollyBell LOL! You have yourself labeled "transwoman" on your own profile, yet you are condemning me? You sound like a troll.

@birdingnut No I don't have it on my own profile. There's a bug in the site's system where transwoman is the only choice, but those are not my words. Two more things.

  1. I said I'm not going to police how you label yourself.
  2. Get bent.
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We are dealing with a very complex issue here. Humans like categorization and labeling. It is just so easy to have a binary division of male and female. Think of the personality types that have been proposed. We tend to put ourselves into one of those categories: Extrovert, Introvert... etc... Yet each of belongs to a unique category. I belong to my category and you belong to yours. What makes it possible for us to interact is that there is a core set of conditions/values/things (?) that we share. So although our concept of love may be different, we know that to love is a good thing. If you are a pacifist, I am your friend. If you are not, I will shy away from you.

Gender, in my view, is the same. I grew up to believe I belonged to a gender. I did not question it. But I had to suppress the feelings and thoughts that did not harmonize with my attributed gender. That is until I started learning for myself and researching why we are what we are. Then I realized that I have a whole range of feelings and emotions that span the gender spectrum. It make me more tolerant, more understanding and more accepting of my feelings whatever they happen to be. No suppression, no rationalization, no hiding from what you are.

I feel sorry for my religious friends who are bound by the edict of their dogmatic religions!

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I'm afraid that Intersex definition is way off the mark. Someone with complete AIS is classified as intersex, but they will have completely female external genitalia, in spite of having the genetic markers that would normally be found in a male. Someone with complete AIS will have thoroughly female physical traits, since their body doesn't react to testosterone at all (both males and females have estrogen and testosterone, just at different levels.)

The term 'intersex' is deprecated, medically, with the current preferred one being 'Disorders of Sexual Development.' It's never been clearly defined what Intersex actually is. It's impossible to get a straight answer over whether it covers all DSD's, or only a particular subset (genital ambiguity or inconsistency between chromosomes and external sexual characteristics.)

I was born with glanular hypospadias. I've been searching for nearly two decades to determine whether this makes me intersex or not. There are no definitive answers, just opinions both ways. It seems most medical professionals say 'no', but a handful say 'yes', including one doctor who has the condition himself. It seems that, traditionally, hypospadias alone has not warranted an intersex diagnosis. Neither does one or more undescended testicle(s). But combine the two, and you typically qualify. One theory is that, since hypospadias is so common, the medical profession simply doesn't want to saddle 0.5% of the male population with the stigma of an intersex diagnosis.

Even the Intersex Society of North America is non-committal on the subject, however hypospadias makes it onto their intersex statistics page: [isna.org]

Interesting. I'd never heard it being included in the intersex definition. But medical definitions and gender issues get shuffled around as more information is gained.

Wikipedia: Hypospadias can be a symptom or indication of an intersex condition but the presence of hypospadias alone is not enough to classify as intersex. In most cases, hypospadias is not associated with any condition

@birdingnut There's the thing. Some medical professionals say it is, while others say it isn't. Perhaps there's even a distinction between being intersex, and being diagnosed intersex.

Anyhow, the Wiki page on Intersex defines it as follows, and makes it quite clear that genital ambiguity is not an absolute requirement:

"Intersex people are born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies".[1][2] Such variations may involve genital ambiguity, and combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female."

Wikipedia is often more opinion than fact. Even with references, there's bias towards sources that confirm the author's perspective.

A typical male does not have hypospadias (best estimates are that roughly 0.5% of male births have the condition) and it is a genital deformity. On the other hand, it's specifically a birth defect of the penis, so you could argue that it's inherently a male condition, as long as there are no other genital ambiguities.

The focus needs to move from the condition itself and arbitrarily deciding whether it's intersex or not, to actually having a robust definition of the word 'intersex' by which it can be determined whether or not various specific disorders of sexual development qualify or not. The trouble being that the medical profession has largely washed its hands of the term, preferring DSD nowadays. (Though having just read that Wiki article, it seems some people don't like the 'disorders' element of the DSD terminology.)

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Totally agree with your views. We all have some male and female hormones. It is a matter of the ratio of these hormones that make us fee if we are wholly male, female or somewhere in between. But some cultures want clear-cut categorization, other cultures accept the differences.

Hi, Jaymr and welcome to the website!

When you made that unusually informed comment, I quickly checked your profile but you've not written one yet. If you do, and answer the profile questions you earn website points. When you reach level two you can private email people, but you've made comments, so you already can!

So did you spend time in Asia to realize this? Here in Thailand people can express gender as they choose and nobody cares.

@Palacinky Officially they are restricted, but practically, nobody cares about their gender presentation because Thai Buddhism accepts a Third Gender. If there is any persecution it is probably in Bangkok or places with more Western influence.

School officials, teachers, staff in the mall, etc., can present with beards and women's clothing and make up, pretty women can dress and act exactly like men, someone can be half dressed as a man, and half as a woman.

Since the Thai language allows people to label their own gender pronoun with each sentence, you don't have to guess which gender label they identify with. People even change their self-gender labels according to their moods, or circumstances. This is perfect for me, although with derris scandens, I no longer have gender dysphoria.

@Palacinky I usually live in far flung places where I seldom see a white person, so I don't know about tourist, western places like Chiang Mai, and Bangkok. Where I've lived, they were not persecuted, just accepted.

One of my school administrators wore make up, coiffed hair and a glittering female pantsuit, but wore men's shoes and a goatee, yet nobody seemed to think anything of it. Everywhere I've worked there have been transgender teachers and students, and nobody cared.

If one of my students identified as a gender other than the school uniform they were wearing, the other students would inform me before I divided up the classes for contests between the girls and the boys, and I'd count that student as that preferred gender.

But it's the same with acceptance of race, taught by Buddhism; the people accept others but the government persecutes immigrants. I've heard of families up north kicking out transgender children, but it's not been done where I've lived in worked; Lopburi, Lamnarai, Nakhon, and Songkhla.

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Thank you, very informative! ❤

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Very interesting, thank you for the lesson.

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THANK YOU! I love this list and will save it...if you don't mind! I've known several transgender people and know it's a genuine condition and that we ALL need to support them!

I'm a partial transmale, but stay androgyne by taking the Thai herb derris scandens.

I'm also nonbinary, since I don't strongly identify with either gender but before I took the derris scandens herb, the male side dominated, so calling me a "girl" or "woman" elicited a feeling of outrage, even though I suppressed it all my life, not knowing why I felt it.

Now I don't care what people call me..

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Thank you for the information.

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