Madmarcus wrote:Why do transgendered people undergo surgery and hormone treatment? Because they want their external body to match their mental image and so that society will react to their external body in the correct way.
From what I understand, this is somewhat incorrect. The physical transformation is much more about matching their inner and outer reality, for themselves. It's about "fixing" their physical self, not really about getting other people to react properly to their inner self. Although I'm sure that is an element.
Madmarcus wrote:Clearly that is very different from your Auburn vs. Alabama example since that change can be done by changing your shirt. You might feel a little pressure from your family but society at large will respond properly to whichever fandom you want to express.
I chose that example because cultural identity is something that is completely made up, like sports fandom. Not "made up" in the sense that it's not real, but "made up" in the sense that it isn't part of you. No one is born as a member of modern black culture in the US. That's something that is imprinted on you by your environment. Will Smith was one way because of the environment in which he was raised, and Carlton Banks was another way because of the environment he was raised. And Uncle Phil started out one way, and then changed through his own life experiences.
No humans are born with a cultural identity. It's imprinted on you as you grow up.
Madmarcus wrote:You find yourself absorbed by a totally different culture; something that has a different look such that you can not pass as a native member. Just for example - no matter what I do with dress and speech I would never be taken as East Asian, Black, or Arabic. Everything is this culture calls to you the music, the food, the manners,the religious expression. When you learn the language you find that it seems to have concepts or usages that make more sense to you than some of what you learned in your original culture. You could adopt mannerisms and language, cook the food, follow the religion, and so forth but you will almost certainly be viewed as an outsider by the culture you want to get into and a poser by the rest of society.
I agree with you that this is a real thing. But it is *nothing* like the other thing. No one is BORN as one of these things or the other.
Madmarcus wrote:The psychological stress suggested above is clearly real since minorities have described that exact feeling of not fitting in because their external appearance doesn't match the culture they want to be part of while at the same time they feel little or no connection to the culture they look like. I would say that this is much closer to GID than to whether you support Auburn or Alabama.
Again, as with the other three people that I was discussing this with here in this thread - the issue appears to be you not really understanding what GID is. I assume you think that you do - but if you think this quoted paragraph has any relationship at all to GID, you don't.
For those suffering with GID, this isn't an issue of their dirty man/lady parts resulting in people not letting them participate in the gender that they want to be a part of. For those suffering with GID, the issue is that their physical parts don't match the gender that they ARE. That's the disconnect, that someone's gender is determined solely by their physical parts. For the vast majority of people, everything went according to Hoyle and their physical body developed in conjunction with their mental gender. For some, their physical body did not. It's not that they want to be a woman but have stupid man parts. They ARE a woman but have stupid man parts. They ARE a man but have stupid lady parts. And THAT is what causes intense internal suffering.
The suffering they are enduring is nothing like what Vanilla Ice had to go through. They are simply different things. Which isn't to say that Vanilla Ice hasn't suffered. It's just to say that there are easy and obvious reasons for how I can treat the plight of Caitlyn Jenner and Vanilla Ice differently.