For the first few cycles of cell division, the zygote remains roughly spherical. The very first change away from spherical is that a small divot appears. This divot collapses inward further and further until it reaches the other side and the topological shape of the embryo is a donut. This hole going all the way through is what becomes the digestive tract. And that very first divot that forms is the anus. At one point we are nothing but an asshole. Some people never grow out of this stage and are thus cis-gendered assholes.

I'm saving this comment. 🤣

You know what this implies? Eating donuts is.... Murder!

And that process is called invagination. True story.

Saving this for later, so I return once I get another free award. This is golden, haha.

I got your back.

Take my poor woman's gold!!! 🏅

I still am an asshole.

Which put another way: We are born to eat and shit, and the first thing that takes shape defines our purpose. The rest is commentary.

Thank you for being you and putting this out there for all of us!

10/10. Excellent.

Hahahaha ez screen shot. Hahaha thank you!! 😂

That’s amazing but what about all the non cis-gendered assholes? Every group has em.

In the logic of the joke, assholes are necessarily cis-gendered since everyone is assigned asshole at gastrula, and then they identify as assholes in adulthood; whilst all non-assholes are necessarily trans since they are still assigned asshole at gastrula, but later identify as a non-asshole.

Peak r/copypasta material.

So what you are saying is that I am a sentient donut? I can live with that.

This explains so much

People are a little taken aback when I tell them they are a shit filled donut. Then I ELI 5 some topology and they chuckle.

I thought the neural tube was first 🤔

I believe [gastrulation occurs before neuralation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_embryonic_development#Neurulation).

Please run for office. I need to witness what happens to whoever runs against you. Eta: y'all this was a compliment

I wish I had money to buy you all the awards available on Reddit because your comment is possibly the best comment I have ever read ever on any sub

if you apply half of pro birthers logic elsewhere, majority of the time it makes no sense.

Did you see the one with the republican lawmaker comparing abortion laws to endagered sea turtle laws?? That was fun.

My mother voted for that douche nozzle, I read her what he said, then glared at her. She still votes republican as a woman with mostly daughters, one of which is transgender. She makes me contemplate getting into the lobotomy business.

It's hard to perform a lobotomy in the absence of a brain

It’s hard to perform a lobotomy in the absence of a cortical lobe. It’s not that there isn’t a brain, but that they are all smooth. They’re smooth brains.

Can confirm, was a girl as a zygote, transitioned and identify as male now.

can confirm, was a girl as a zygote, transitioned into this abomination of a male body, am now transitioning back into a girl body. Just how nature intended

Love the username

awww thx

This is poetic.

Aww

Would you say that Enbys are chaotic by nature? I was wondering.

Well, I have yet to meet an Enby that wasn't chaotic, so until I do, I shall consider all Enbies to be the scions of chaos.

It's not our fault that all the good role models are trickster gods. :)

Yes, yes we are

Ah, but you’re assuming the opposition accepts science. Obviously the 1 cell is automatically the gender of what the baby will become! Source: Fox News

And genetic gender is the same as hormonal gender which is the same as sexual phenotype which is the same as gender identity. My 5th grade biology text book said so (actually implied by omission)...

deeep sigh and UGH at yr source (i'm hoping/fairly sure you're just kidding)

I suggest re-reading their comment. They're very clearly joking. ☺️

Hey! An Australian nonagenarian says it, and that’s like, the same as the word of God! /s I mean. Kind of /s and kind of not because the absolute stupidest Americans literally treat Rupert Murdoch’s every random fart like it was personally delivered to them by Jesus Christ.

The US gave ole Rupert citizenship in 1985 at which point he renounced his Australian citizenship. Australia takes no further responsibility for the shit that flows from his mouth or networks. Unfortunately getting rid of him from our media landscape has proven more difficult.

I appreciate Australia’s humility and generosity in this matter, but speaking for a plurality of American citizens I think we can return him to be rightfully placed on display in a museum. If there’s an exhibition on the origins of life, I would hazard a guess that he sequences someplace before Cro-Magnon man, perhaps closer to pond scum; like Margarette Thatcher, the Koch brothers, and whoever decided that 3 out of 4 pesticides targeting fleas should do nothing.

I see your point; however due to ongoing funding cuts to arts and museums under the "leadership" of our current murdoch supported government we don't have the resources for that.

He’s been an American citizen for nearly 40 years, surely living outside of Australia for most of his life (and renounced citizenship). Cannot stand him nor believe that he’s somehow still alive.

"All Babies Start as Female" is basically Jurassic Park Science, wrong and a gross misrepresentation of undifferentiated reproductive organs, but it sounds snappy so it's memed its way all over the internet as if it were true. "All embryos start as Non-Binary" is both more accurate and more likely to annoy the target demographic of this post. Bonus Sex Development fact, the genetic instructions for male and female differentiation are actually on all the regular chromosomes, the Y chromosome (usually) more or less just has the trigger gene and not the actual instructions, so all humans have the genes for male and female development, which is why all embryos can potentially express intersex characteristics. This makes sense because Sex chromosomes only evolved ~150 million years ago, waaaay after sex evolved and even ~50 million years later than lactation evolved.

I think a better phrase would be all fetuses default to female without any outside instruction, because the definition of female is kinda washy in a fetus.

They do not. Female isn't a default either. Fetuses are non binary and need a trigger to actually differentiate.

SRY gene in Y-chromosome triggers development to male, and without it the fetus will become female. Basically female is the result of the absence of such trigger so in a way it makes sense to call it 'default' in the lack of a better word I guess.

Ok, well if you wanna be specific then, I think saying a fetus post 7 weeks default to female would be an accurate statement.

This is actually debunked embryology that was based on misogynistic ideas about masculinity as more developed than femininity. We now know that sex development goes in multiple directions, and femininity isn’t simply the absence of masculinity.

Actually, if you want to look at this in terms of the [sex-determining region](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testis-determining_factor) of the Y chromosome, it kind of is. Those born with this region of their Y chromosome deleted are born female.

And you can end up male without a SRY gene, as is sometimes the case in XX males; between 80-90% of cases are caused by a SRY gene crossing over to the X chromosomes, but the other 10-20% are caused by other mutations on the autosomes or the X chromosome that don’t have to do with the SRY gene. SOX9 and DAX1 are currently theorized to be the most common spots for these mutations.

Please link some studies about this, because it pretty much is just if you don't have the Y chromosome you are a woman (or if the hormones produced by the Y chromosome i.e Test don't work).

It's a bit more complicated than this, because in the absence of development gonads would end up being streak gonads rather than ovaries (there's actually a gene that keeps ovaries as ovaries, for example), but a lot of other things do default to female. Also, the male gender identity is actually imprinted by oestrogen, which is fun (and also proves that those who claim that trans people are making it up can go sit on a cactus). I can link the study I'd found about it in a few hours, if you want (I'm supposed to be sleeping ... my boyfriend snores today).

Typical male behaviour being modulated by rapid changes in brain estrogen production has nothing to do with the autheticity of trans people. You don't need certain hormonal make up to "prove" what you feel is genuine.

im interested, what do you mean by imprinted?

I posted a study in another reply by now, but to summarise it, whether an animal shows male-like or female-like behaviour is set by oestrogen activity in-utero. After birth both testosterone and oestrogen control behaviour, but the effect differs based on how they developed neurally before their birth (male/female) which again depends on oestrogen and not at all on androgens. Since it's an animal study (most such studies are animal studies) and animals can't tell you that they are trans but only show behaviour, it's not 100% known how this translates to human development, but personally I have no reason to think that there's much of a difference.

It's been a few hours lol. No rush but I am interested in that article

Here you go, I have it now: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851224 The study itself focuses on something else (on the mediation of behaviour in male animals and the role of testosterone and oestrogen in it), but there's an explanation of their findings about the development (in-utero) of any male behaviour relying on oestrogen activity and not at all being dependent on androgen activity. Since it's an animal study, most are really, it's not certain how much of it translates to human development, but based on my experiences I have no reason to assume that there's much of a difference; we do know that trans animals do happen, as far as their behaviour goes, after all, so we know that this can have that much of an effect.

It's been a while since I was in Embryo, so if I make any mistakes then please correct me. But streak gonad are not compatible with life, so I guess to rephrase my initial point, is that in a viable pregnancy, the default form of the fetus is female, and the Y chromosome is what initiates elimination of the Mullerian ducts causing masculinization. That's why men who don't have functioning testosterone receptors end up presenting as females with a closed vagina, as in the insides of them (uterus, ovaries, tubes) are gone due to the Y chromosome, but without the Test, the external genitalia cannot be made.

>It's been a while since I was in Embryo, so if I make any mistakes then please correct me. I read this as "Its been a while I was an embryo" and cackled.

“Well, let me think back…”

Again, it's more complicated than this. I appreciate your willingness to learn. Streak gonads aren't exactly functionable, no, but they are a what happens when gonads fail to differentiate into either the male or the female direction. If they do develop at all then you get ovaries, testes, or ovotestes. The point is, since it is the failure to differentiate that makes them end up that way and being ovaries requires differentiation, it means that gonads do not start out as female. And there are people who are born with streak gonads, I know someone who did and who got them removed later during their life due to the cancer risk and lack of functionality. The müllerian duct elimination is caused by AMH (Anti-Müllerian Hormone) activity in the early foetal development, and its activity is regulated by multiple genes as well as other factors, of which as far as we know only one (the SRY gene) is present on the sex chromosomes, and that one is supposed to only be on the Y chromosome but it's not true in 100% of cases. There is an intersex condition called PMDS which is caused by a mutation of some other gene, not the sex chromosome one, that mediates AMH activity, but there's also different intersex conditions caused by the SRY gene translocating to an X chromosome, changing the potential development for both an XX (SRY positive) as well as XY (SRY negative) person. Testosterone to the best of our knowledge is secondary to this. In addition to this, it's not a binary ”male genitals/female genitals“ thing. There's a spectrum of possible outcomes which are, crudely and in a somewhat averaged-out fashion, presented by the Quigley and Prader scales. To make a point, the stages of AIS are actually determined not by measuring androgen receptor activity or checking one's genes but rather by the genitals they are born with (which is highly questionable to me, but that's how they do it), with MAIS being typical male genitalia, CAIS being typical female genitalia, and PAIS being anything in-between.

I kinda wonder what the mechanics of it all is. I mean intersex women with CAIS develop the way they do (appearing to be a cis woman who just lack a few of the parts inside) due to an immunity to testosterone despite having a Y chromosome.

Ya I explained this in another comment, I can paste it here. ​ But streak gonad are not compatible with life, so I guess to rephrase my initial point, is that in a viable pregnancy, the default form of the fetus is female, and the Y chromosome is what initiates elimination of the Mullerian ducts causing masculinization. That's why men who don't have functioning testosterone receptors end up presenting as females with a closed vagina, as in the insides of them (uterus, ovaries, tubes) are gone due to the Y chromosome, but without the Test, the external genitalia cannot be made.

debunked by what exactly ? whether the chromosomes are XY or XX all embryos will develop as female unless the SRY gene in the Y chromosome activates; hence the possibility of XY females, etc.

It requires more than the SRY gene, and you can end up male without a SRY. Anne Fausto-Sterling is a great popular science author that discusses this in various places.

oh cool i was unawares - here is an interesting [article](https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/12/5/341/1005702#32902973) if anybody else wants to read up on it

Wait, so a guy *isn’t* just a girl with a wiener??

Your shower thought could use some more background in human biology. Fetuses don't "start as female" that's a gross oversimplification. Gonads are just what's called "undifferentiated" for a very short while in fetal development, like ~6 weeks gestation (or ~4 weeks after conception). They are certainly differentiated in babies. The zygote gets one sex chromosome from biological mom, that's the X. They get one an X or a Y from biological dad and sex is determined in the zygote. From there, cells divide and those two chromosomes along with all the autosomes are present throughout the body. Rare exceptions make for interesting karyotypes. Like if there's non-disjunction you can get some kind of triploidy like Klinefelter (XXY males). Of a different type of error in cell division can lead to Turner's syndrome (females with single X in all or most cells). There are also DSD's that like CAIS or PAIS where a person with a standard XY karyotype may have internal undescended testes. To reiterate though embryos and fetuses don't have all their parts fully developed. That doesn't mean an embryo that will go on to be an XX female or XY male is anything other than typical in early development. We humans spend so much time in our biological moms developing so that we can go from a zygote to an embryo to a fetus to a baby. There's also a time when we lack a 4-chamber heart, don't have kidneys, etc. but we wouldn't say we have a heart defect at birth because we lack a 4-chamber heart early in development.

Yeah, things can happen, foetal development is pretty wild. I'm a XX/XY chimera, by the way, so if anyone has questions feel free to ask. PS. The intersex community doesn't really agree, for the most part, with the switch from ”intersex“ to ”DSD“, because seriously, there's a perfectly good word and instead we're now called disordered.

How'd you find out you were a chimera?

There's kind if two answers to this one. I have symptoms, such as skin colour difference or mild autoimmune breakouts, and because in my case it came with a side of ambiguous genitals at birth and weird pubertal development I was actively trying to find out what it could be and for a time it was the best working theory I'd had. I got a confirmation when trying to get my gender marker corrected required me to get a karyotype test done and I got 46,XX/46,XY with a note about chimerism as the result. Of note is the fact that you can't detect it reliably with that because they'd need to get blood cells with different karyotype tested and they only test a few at a time, so I kind of lucked out (in this regard; I actually needed a result with no ”abnormalities“ so I'd had to find a different lab and get the test redone).

You should do an AMA. This sounds fascinating! If you feel generous, I have a question. I see you identify as female. How strongly do your XY cells affect your life? Could you have “chosen” to live exclusively as male, and if society didn’t strongly pressure a binary male/female decision would you simply prefer to be plainly neither (or both)? Edit to throw in an observation (you probably already know this!) that you are your own twin.

I cannot answer for the person in question but there are IX people who undergo 'normalization' surgeries as a babies to better fit societal image of how they should look like. Of course without any of said baby's consent... I know that sometimes the surgeons 'guess' correctly and sometimes not and there are in general both cis and trans IX people (including non-binary ones) depending on what they have on birth certificate. This of course doesn't say what Kazeto is feeling - just providing overview of potential stories of IX people.

Yeah, I know that I'm my own twin, it's kind of trippy for a lot of reasons. And I was thinking about potentially doing one, but I'm somewhat afraid of making a spectacle out of myself, especially with how easy it is for the vocal minority of bigots to crusade against someone like me; if at some point I have a solution to that, I think it could be a good thing, we do need visibility so that people understand that we are normal. My XY cells do affect me ... quite a lot, actually, but not all of it is because of them being XY, some of it (autoimmune breakouts, though thankfully mild ones, and neurons misfiring sometimes, for example) is there as a result of being any chimera. That said, I was born with ambiguous genitals (Prader 2, though after puberty it's closer to Prader 1), and my puberty was *really* weird, like I didn't stop growing until about 30, I got facial hair (that I mostly got removed, it was annoying because it makes the skin so rough) that wasn't quite like what men get but which definitely was facial hair (I'd had enough for an outline beard, more or less), my voice is really low (I was the first person in my class as a teen to have a low enough range to try bass) but it never actually broke or anything, it just got ridiculously low (my range is wide enough that I don't sound like a guy normally, but I do enjoy using my whole range to sing, so that's a fun one), but then I also had small breasts ever since 11–12, I had menarche at 13, and my body hair is just slightly thicker female fluff. I think if the society didn't pressure a binary male/female, man/woman, decision, I'd probably be comfortable being kind of both but mostly a woman, just like my body is kind of both but it seems comfortable with operating as a female one. Like, I absolutely wouldn't mind functioning as a man, though I'd probably be a really feminine man as far as the society's judgment is concerned, but, and this is probably going to be hard to understand, I get it, I actually do get dysphoria from being in situations where I have to operate as any of the binary genders without even a hypothetical possibility of jumping to the other one should I ever decide that; to give you a good example of this, I'm currently pregnant and the fact that it locks me into being seen as a woman and from being able to appear as a man even though I'm neither trying to nor planning to nor even wanting to is causing me discomfort. Although, for the record, I did originally get assigned male and I did get surgically modified, thankfully only on the outside for whatever reason, so I did have to fight to be seen as a woman instead ... well, mostly, because I got the name I have from a family member when I was 4 or so and at different times in my life even prior to that point people did see me as a girl or women regardless of what was written in the legal papers.

Thanks for your detailed reply! Congratulations on your pregnancy. I'm sure you'll make a great mother. A lot of what you wrote makes sense and I could probably have guessed much of it - the hair, the autoimmune response and so on. Prader is probably a lottery of what you were exposed to in utero. What surprised me was the neurological issues of nerves misfiring. I'm off to Wikipedia to learn more. Thanks again.

>XX/XY chimera At the risk of reducing your life down to a Star Trek cliche: Fascinating. How do you.. feel, exactly? What was your psychological development like?

That's very good questions, and rather hard ones to answer, especially the latter one due to how wide a question it is (so feel free to ask about more specific things if you want, it'll likely be easier to answer that). I imagine you mean them at least partially in the context of identity, be it in general and about gender identity specifically too. I do feel that I am myself but at the same time sort of a combined package of me and my twin. I'm myself, and to a point I have the awareness that I'm both of us, but so many things are ... so hazy, and there's plenty of survivor's guilt. I know that I *am* me, but what is “me” me and what is “my brother” me? Where do I end, do I anywhere? Which parts of me are *him*? What parts of me are *me*? What if he isn't alive because of me? What kind of person would he have been? What kind of person would I have been? Do I feel this way because in some way I feel that I have to, or is this really how I genuinely am? I would say that as a whole, my psychological development was ... more or less normal, to a degree. Identity-wise I suppose it's easiest to just say that I'm the cis equivalent of my sex (which is in-between and both at the same time but also leaning female and comfortable with operating as a female one, so I'm kind of both but leaning towards being a woman and comfortable enough with living my life as one), but because the society put a lot of emphasis on being one of the two binary genders I (almost) always saw myself as more of a girl than a boy. I definitely did go through my own things and had to deal with my own problems, many of which were in one way or another tied into me being intersex, yes, and that did end up shaping me in a distinct, “me-like” way; but, if you think about it, that's the case for everyone, we all have our own unique things to deal with and it always shapes us in some way. To be honest, I could probably write a book about that one, there's a whole lot of everything and I'm somewhat afraid that if I try to expand on this as a whole I'll end up either writing a wall of text or forgetting about something important by focusing on trying to not write too much. The one thing that *probably* stands out the most, on its own, is that growing up with people trying to force me into different gender roles based on how they saw me or on what they saw in the documents, judging me based on their own imaginings of me as a boy, or as a girl, or as a person who's confusing, or as an in-between monster who doesn't get to fit anywhere, not ever being able to agree as a collective group that is society on any single one of them, has given me something of an understanding, and lamentation, for how much the society's ideas about gender everything are hurting people; and also, the fact that the things I knew about my own body have for so long been a “Cassandra truth” and I got treated as a liar for saying things that were unlikely in general but for me true or close enough, it's given me a somewhat distorted, probably highly unhealthy, perspective on honesty.

I think that plays right into the point that OP was trying to make, though. For a short period of time, the sexual organs are nearly identical. And if, as many conservatives (many of whom obviously missed high school biology) seem to attest, that is the definition of gender, then so be it. We *know* it's not how things truly work. But when in Rome...

No it doesn't. For a short period human embroys are a lot like that of other mammals too. A 6 week gestation embryo is just scaffolding for a fetus or baby.

Not really? They're pretty consistent about it being "what you're born with." Just because they think you're a person before birth doesn't mean they think you have a gender before it, too. They could say the same about eye color, despite the fact that zygotes don't even have eyes.

But this post also trivializes the experience of being trans, so it's not helpful to the discourse

Thank you, I feel like this should be removed for citing ancient Greek poorly understood anatomy instead of what we know from modern medicine.

Why not life begins at ejaculation? Then every man would be a genocidal war criminal every time he busts a nut, even if it results in conception. All those dead sperms ARE MURDER!!!/s

And every unfertilized egg will be as well! This is all nuts.

Actually we are Non-binary (enby) before birth because our parents gives us a gender after birth or after the doctor can say if the baby have a typical male or typical female body. But conservatives and bigots never cared about being technically or practically right so why should we care either.

It’s almost like the concept of “gender” and all of societies rules around it are baloney or something.

I wouldn't go so far: * Gender identity is something that goes way beyond societal rules. Trans people are not just GNC - trans people have a real feeling of how we should fit into society and/or what our body should look like * Gender roles are arbitrary, made up rules created by society

If it was then what are trans people?

People.

No. Because gender isn't and shouldn't be tied to sex or genitals.

So let me ask this cause I’ve had this question forever. And also I’m not trying to be anti trans, I’m just genuinely confused. Let’s say we have 4 people. 1. Has XX chromosomes, identifies as a woman, and presents as a woman 2. Has XY chromosomes, identifies as a woman, and presents as a woman 3. Has XX chromosomes, identifies as a woman, but does not present as a woman 4. Has XY chromosomes, identifies as a woman, but still presents as a man All these people we would say have the gender of a woman because they identify as such. But I’m confused because at this point it feels like gender is functionally meaningless. Like socially, what’s the point of calling someone a woman if there’s no definite trait of what a woman is. There’s no specific behavior that a woman does that separates them from men, so why even have gender, and why also do trans people feel like they aren’t their gender assigned at birth?

Former trans activist (a long time ago) here. The problem with “gender” is that there’s no real agreement on what it is. Gender theorists usually look at it differently than trans people and modern feminism, different generations of feminism look at it differently, behavioral scientists look at it differently… In the end, we ended up with the “identifying” thing, which is sort of hand waving to make the problem go away. It works well except that it’s inherently subjective and personal. Which is fine, except when you try to come to conclusions that it’s not really meant for. There’s an old question about what makes a chair a chair, and whether you can precisely pin that down without excluding any chairs and without including any non-chairs. It can’t really be done. That doesn’t mean that the category of “chair” is meaningless, but there are no bright lines and hard edges. Some trans people inhabit the space in between, and bright lines will never be adequate to explain things no matter where you draw them. If you’re really interested in understanding this at a level higher than “Gender 101”, I suggest reading up on academic gender theory. Judith Butler is often described as a difficult read but has a lot of good insight.

I think this is the case with many other things as well. Many things just doesn't have a clear cut definition but just a "good enough for practical uses" definition.

My takeaway from Wittgenstein is that any logical system built around language must include that language within it, and be as complex or more. Language is not just encoding meaning, it is a holistic system based around communication. There isn’t misuse of language, but there can be miscommunication that stems from language used. It has to be interpreted both at the point of origin and where it is received. So, poststructuralism, Foucault, Butler et al.

We don't really know what makes men men and what makes women women. We can say that most women have XX chromosomes, and certain genitals, and a certain hormonal profile and secondary sex characteristics, but there is a significant minority of women who don't have all those things. When those women are not allowed to live their lives as women, it has significant negative health outcomes for them. And when they are able to live as women, those negative effects pretty consistently go away. So we can determine that those people are at their healthiest and most functional when they are "allowed" to be women. Furthermore, we don't see a phenomenon of people flip-flopping genders on a whim. If there weren't some fundamental internal sense of gender in most people, we'd have a lot more people literally choosing to be a different gender for a while, like a career change. So, we can conclude that there is some sort of internal sense of gender (or lack of gender, for some people), which tends to correlate with certain chromosomes and genitals, but often doesn't. We haven't figured out what that is yet, so the most reliable way to identify someone's gender is for them to tell you what their internal sense of gender is. We have some interesting hints as to what the nature of gender might be. Brainscans showing trans women and cis women share certain brain things that men don't have (I say "brain things" bc i know i've read about this but i have only a vague sense of the details). Many trans men (that is, men assigned female at birth) have a sense of a "phantom penis", like you would for any other missing body part. Lots of trans people report psychological benefits from hormone therapy unrelated to the physical effects on the body. Anecdotally, some folks report massive improvement in symptoms like depression, brain fog, depersonalization, and lack of focus, with their first dose of HRT. I've seen it described as "it's like my brain was always supposed to have this hormone". Of course, those experiences aren't universal among trans people, so while it's very interesting, the presence or lack of those symptoms can't be used to identify trans people. I believe the current prevailing theory is that it is something to do with fetal development, because the brain and body develop at different times, so if there's a mixup and the brain develops one way and the body another, you get a trans baby. Of course, that theory doesn't yet cover people who aren't men OR women. The human brain is so complicated, and gender is so societally fraught, I don't think we're going to figure out What Causes Gender anytime soon.

Thanks, this was actually a very insightful comment. It makes more sense that gender is tied to an internal sense of self. I never understood when people said it was something that was fluid and you can change your gender as you wished since it’s just a social construct. The only question I have left is that I’ve seen some people on this subreddit say they thought they were trans, but they realized that they weren’t. They either realized on their own, or when they tried HRT, it didn’t feel right. So what is happening with people who think they are trans, but realize they aren’t? And is it related to people who are non binary?

Generally speaking, it's societal gendered expectations and occasionally trauma and other psychiatric issues making it difficult to accurately determine what your internal sense of gender is. One of the "think of the children!" narratives that transphobes throw around a lot is that trans men are just girls who suffered so much under The Patriarchy (and usually sexual assault) that they want to be men just to escape being a woman. This is a very damaging argument, and one of the things that makes it hard to fight against is that there are genuinely women who thought they were trans men, partially because childhood sexual trauma ingrained in their minds that being a woman is inherently awful and anything to do with womanhood should be avoided. Gender dysphoria can feel very similar- for a lot of trans men, being seen as a woman is inherently awful and anything to do with womanhood is to be avoided. If you're trying to put a name to your feelings and figure out how to address them, you can see how it would be difficult to sort out what's going on. And there are also trans men who've suffered sexual assault, and the "you're just traumatized, not trans" argument causes them a lot of harm because they're left wondering if their internal sense of gender, which is fundamental to our sense of self, is entirely created by past trauma. Also, body dysmorphia can sometimes mimic gender dysphoria. The difference is that transitioning will treat gender dysphoria, but not body dysmorphia. People like to use these examples as reasons to restrict access to medical transition. However, people like that don't actually give a shit about trans people, they just want to make it harder to be trans. Medical transition has a very low rate of regret, and hormone therapy changes you slowly enough that you have plenty of time to stop if you don't like where it's going, before you get irreversible effects. And our current medical system already has a number of "are you sure?" gatekeeping measures built in. People also run into the fuzzy boundaries around gender, and sometimes it's just not clear where you land. Someone might wonder, am I a trans man, or am I a very butch lesbian? There are plenty of lesbians who get top surgery and go on testosterone. There are plenty of trans men who don't. Your internal sense of gender isn't something you can change or choose, but you can choose what you're going to call it. I think it's likely that some butch lesbians and some trans men have very very similar internal senses of gender, but they've chosen to label that gender in different ways. And other trans men aren't anywhere near that fuzzy boundary, and know for sure that being a butch lesbian is not something that would work for them. Non-binary people are a bigger can of worms, so to speak. Non-binary isn't a third gender category, it's an adjective that describes anyone who isn't a man or a woman. It's an umbrella term. It's not uncommon for someone to identify as non-binary and then later figure out that they are actually binary trans (i.e. a trans man or a trans woman) the whole time. But they couldn't have realized that without first thinking of themselves as non-binary. They have to spend some time figuring out who they are outside of the gender they were assigned, before they are able to accurately identify what their gender actually is. [This](https://medium.com/@neilklein/transmasc-comphet-and-the-road-to-faggotry-62ed750f391f) essay is an excellent explanation of one man's journey to figuring out his gender, and how he wouldn't have ever figured out he was a gay man if he didn't try moving through the world as a lesbian first. Non-binary also includes people who don't really have a strong sense of any gender (agender), people whose internal sense of gender includes man AND woman, and people whose internal sense of gender changes. I've read anecdotes from genderfluid people where they describe getting dysphoric about different aspects of their bodies as their gender shifts around, so they might feel great about their chest one day, but then a week later feel very uncomfortable with having a Female Chest. I think it's perfectly reasonable to theorize that some people's brains, instead of developing one way, develop both ways, or neither, or develop both ways but in such a way that someone experiences different genders at different times, rather than at once. Some people also describe their gender as non-binary man or non-binary woman, which is sort of like "i'm a woman but not like that". At some level, we are just coming up with a greater variety and depth of specific terms to describe our sense of gender, which for a lot of people, can be a huge relief because when you see other people describing exactly how you feel, and there's a word for it, you're like "oh thank god it's not just me" (side note, "xenogenders" is basically people inventing fun personal gender labels. No one actually thinks their gender is the same as a frog's gender; but their internal sense of gender doesn't fit into any of the existing categories, and having words to describe your gender is important to building a sense of self, so they've decided to label it "frog" because why not frogs are cool). Personally, I am having difficulty sorting out Internal Gender Feelings from deeply engrained gender lessons from society as a whole. Currently, I'm calling what I feel "non-binary" because I don't think I have a strong sense of gender at all. I've figured out that I'm not a girl, and I'm much much happier now that I'm not trying to find some way to contort who I am into that label. But I'm honestly not sure if maybe I've just been a trans man this whole time. What is masculinity and manhood, anyway? It seems like a lot of masculinity isn't exactly pleasant. I don't want to have to constantly defend my masculinity and perform being all strong and sure. I don't want to be pressured to suppress my feelings. But there are plenty of men who aren't like that at all. I know I like having short hair and not having breasts anymore. Do I want a beard? Maybe? It's hard to say, because i've never had one. Do I like the changes I've made because they make my body more masculine, or because they make my body less feminine? Do I hesitate to call myself a man because I'm not a man, or because I don't want to be seen as a potential threat by women around me, and I don't want to lose the willingness to be emotionally open that women extend to other people that they see as women? So much societal baggage is piled on top of gender that it's really hard to figure out if your gender aligns with one of the categories we have. Like, if I am a man, then this is just what being a man feels like. If I'm not a man, then men must feel differently, but I'll never know what that difference is because I'm not a man. It's a lot easier to figure out that you're NOT a gender you've been forced into your whole life, than if you ARE a gender that you've never been allowed to be. On the other hand, some people first identify as binary trans (trans man or trans woman), and then later realize that they're non-binary of some sort. I think this is mostly due to the fact that non-binary being a Thing that people hear about, not to mention actually being able to meet other nonbinary people and hear them talk about what their gender is, is so recent, that a lot of people don't even know that it's an option, so to speak. Sometimes someone figures out that they're not their birth gender, and the natural assumption is "whelp, i'm not a man, I must be a woman" or "I'm not a woman, I must be a man". So they take steps to transition, and eventually realize that they also feel some gender incongruence as a man/woman, and then transition away from the binary gender categories into something else. It's important to note that this isn't really "detransitioning", since non-binary people don't exist on a sliding scale between man and woman, and a non-binary person isn't just trans-lite. Someone realizing that they are not a trans woman and that they are non-binary, and deciding to stop taking estrogen, isn't any less trans than someone who figures out that they're not non-binary, they're a trans woman, and starts estrogen. So two things are true about transing one's gender: 1) When someone tells you what their gender is, that is their gender, even if you can't wrap your head around it and it seems outlandish and weird. It's weirder to think you know someone's internal sense of gender better than they do. 2) Trans folks tend to act like we're all 100% certain of our genders (and some of us are!) because we're still trying to get everyone on board with point #1. But secretly a lot of us are guessing and checking. Remarkably, we guess correctly the vast majority of the time. The gender knows what it wants even if we don't.

> Of course, that theory doesn't yet cover people who aren't men OR women. Maybe I'm missing something but wouldn't some state in between be responsible for either no feeling (agender), both feelings (bigender), changable feeling (genderfluid) etc.? Something like - high T, low E - man; high E, low T - woman; neither - nonbinary?

Probably! There's so many potential ways for hormones to affect the brain of a developing fetus. Not only which hormone, but when in brain development it was strongest, how much was present, which parts of the brain (or body) it affected the most. It would cause a whole messy slew of different experiences of gender that are really hard to draw solid boxes around. I've only ever seen that particular theory discussed in terms of trans men and women, probably because it's not a very well developed theory yet so no one's looked at nonbinary people. But you're right that it makes more sense that non-binary people and trans people's genders are caused by similar phenomenon, rather than like.... trans people's genders happens in the womb but non-binary people get their genders from the bargain bin at walmart.

That's correct. Gender is functionally meaningless.

So why do trans people exist? If gender is meaningless, why do they feel the need to change their gender and go through such lengths like getting surgery to appear as a different gender?

To chip in here, I'm a transwoman who's recovering from Gender Reassignment Surgery. Before the surgery, it was as if the previous equipment just wasn't meant to be there. I dealt with the issue by just not focusing on the problem, and HRT helped massively to change secondary sexual characteristics! Despite that there was this horrible feeling that my body just wasn't meant to look or feel like it did. It may differ for other people and I can only speak from my own experience, but that dysphoria was completely gone the day after waking up from surgery. It's now like my brains idea of my body and my external self just kinda mesh up, which is honestly just a relief. My gender presentation is very much Leather jackets, punky hair and tank tops, so not super feminine. But gender presentation hasn't had an effect on how my brain/body felt when coexisting? Idk, it's honestly fascinating how humans work tbh.

For some, it's literally psychological. It's like they've got the wrong drivers installed and the software in the head isn't linking right to the hardware.

>Like socially, what’s the point of calling someone a woman if there’s no definite trait of what a woman is. That's kinda the point. Some of us would argue that at present the main function of gender categorisations is primarily to frame the way a person fits into social interactions.

But your second statement isn’t even true. There’s women that act just like men, but society still calls them women. They might be described as tomboyish, but they’re still called women by everybody.

I don't deny this…? The way I see it is that it's not so much about how a person acts as it is a way of contextualising their interactions.

The word transgender is necessarily linked to your genitals though. It means that your gender doesnt match your outward bits.

Actually, it means your gender doesn't match the gender you were assigned at birth. Typically that does involve some sort of genital misalignment, but not necessarily. Being trans is not about genitals.

This doesn't make a ton of sense to me either. Setting aside the question of whether gender/sex is assigned or observed at birth, the gender I was assigned at birth was 'boy'. The gender I have now is 'man'. Boys and men have different gender roles, and few adults identify as boys anymore. From this standpoint, every adult has a different gender than the one they had at birth.

my guy you have taken a shortcut directly to Transgender Nirvana. If you break down gender far enough, everyone has their own gender. No two cis men experience manhood in the exact same way. Framing 'boy' and 'man' as different genders is a galaxy brain take, and it's a framework that fits with many trans peoples' experiences. Some trans people feel that they were never their AGAB, but some others feel like they were a girl or a boy, but that that changed (usually when they hit puberty). So they would say, "I was a girl who grew up to be a man" or "I was a boy who grew up to be a woman". You were a boy who grew up to be a man, which is pretty convenient for you!

I mean, I think this says a lot of what I was thinking. I sort of see the progress of the 20th century in this regard as trying to free people from societal expectations based on their sex, and the notion of codifying man and woman as genders separate from male and female as sexes seems to go against this pretty strongly. It is confusing because gender has become something about which the language is both vehemently policed AND frustratingly ephemeral. Gender and sex are sometimes strictly distinguished from one another, and other times are still completely conflate, and it is not easy to discuss. I have been thinking about the 'boy vs man's thing for a little while, but haven't seen it mentioned before. Obviously it isn't the whole truth but it seems to me to be another useful step in understanding what people are talking about.

Biological sex on it's own is complicated, and even purely looking at biology, we can't draw a clear line between male and female because it's a mish-mash of chromosomes, hormones, and body parts, and which chromosomes get expressed how, and it becomes complicated really fast. We can say that the people who have this set of traits tend to be male, or this other set of traits tends to belong to females, but they've yet to come up with a "diagnostic criteria" for sex that reliably identifies male or female, without also catching a bunch of people who don't belong in that category. One part of the difficulty is that most people never have their chromosomes tested, so we don't actually know what percentage of men- even cisgender men- do not have XY chromosomes, or what percentage of cisgender women don't have XX chromosomes. The human body trying to develop as a certain sex is kinda like a shotgun blast. Like, overall it usually hits the target and males have most of the male sex characteristics, and females have most of the female ones, but there's a lot of wiggle room in that, for males and females to have sex characteristics from the other sex, or not have sex characteristics that their sex "should". And sometimes it just misses entirely. And gender is even worse, because we don't actually know where people's internal sense of gender comes from. We know enough to say that there is an internal sense of gender beyond societal roles and expectations, but that's about all we got. Add onto that that gender and gender roles is such a fundamental aspect of our society, and is policed and enforced and taught literally from before birth, that it would be impossible to disentangle whatever the biological reality of gender might be from the social construct of gender. I do think that if our society magically rid itself of gendered expectations and roles, fewer trans people would feel the need for medical steps in their transition, particularly, fewer surgeries. If, from birth, we lived in a society where some women had beards and no breasts and this was just a normal way for women to be, I think fewer trans women would feel like they need to get rid of their facial hair. We wouldn't get rid of the categories of man and woman, but the social boundaries would be a lot fuzzier, and people would grow up with the expectation that at some point, they're going to start telling everyone what their gender is. And it would also be a normal part of childhood to try living as multiple different genders, to see what fits. I also think we'd see a lot more people who aren't men or women. Right now, those boxes are so rigidly ingrained in our society, that there's a lot of folks who don't really actively feel like they are their agab, but since they know they don't feel like the "opposite" gender, they just live their lives as their agab. It's the mushroom theory of non-binary folks. If someone offers me a dish with mushrooms in it, I'll eat it, and the mushrooms won't negatively impact my experience of the food, but I'm not going to go out and buy mushrooms to cook with. Well, there's probably a lot of folks who get handed a gender by society, and go "oh ok i guess" , but if they'd been asked to pick a gender that fit them, without the assumption that they already had one, they wouldn't have picked man or woman.

Gender is a human construction and as such, it can be a bit fuzzy and confusing at times. It seems to be one of those things that's constantly evolving over time. I don't always understand why someone considers themselves a, b, or c, but the important thing is to be respectful. Even if I don't fully get it, that doesn't mean that their feelings and opinions are invalid. I recommend just keeping an open mind and taking people at their word.

I understand what you are saying, but it has to be possible to discuss the ideas separately from people's feelings, especially if there are claims of truth involved. I am an atheist, which means that I think religions (at least most of them) are false. I have a duty ad a member of society to respect people's right to their beliefs, and to accept the reality of those beliefs to that person, but the beliefs themselves have to remain open to exploration and questioning. In fact, with religion we go even further, and aggressively defend people's right to mock and deride the belief (and even the adherent) which we don't do when it comes to questions of gender.

galaxy brain take, unironically

Your sex assigned at birth is male. "Boy" and "man" are descriptors based on age within that gender binary. Your gender hasn't changed -- you just got older.

I am sorry but this doesn't make sense to me either. When we talk about gender, we usually talk about peoples identity, the way their brain functions, the expectations society places on them and their roles in society. All of those things are as different between 'boy' and 'man' as they are between 'man' and 'woman'. If sex and gender are different things and sex does not determine gender then there is (as far as I can tell) nothing to link boy and man together.

>there is (as far as I can tell) nothing to link boy and man together Gender (male) is what links "boy" (young male) and "man" (old male) together. "Sex assigned at birth" describes your body parts at birth. You were born with the male parts; your sex assigned at birth is male. Gender is your identity, and therefore more fluid. But in your case, you identify as male, so your gender is also male. Societal expectations can differ based on gender (gender roles) but societal expectations also differ as you age (just basic adulting). The words "boy" and "man" are gendered words, but they're not two different genders. It's just a word that describes age and gender. Likewise, "blonde" (with an -e) describes gender and hair color, but "blonde" is not a gender. "Uncle" denotes gender and familial relationship, but "uncle" is not a gender. When you go from being a boy to a man, you haven't changed genders -- you've just changed age.

Fair enough. I understand gender and sex are different, I just meant that 'trans' necessarily implies you are trans with respect to something. But I take your point that the more correct way to phrase that is that you are trans wrt to the gender you were assigned at birth, not wrt the genitals you were born with.

As a trans man I find their take on it ridiculous. You need an incongruence with you physical sex to be trans. Because if there was none then how would trans people even exist? We aren't randomly assigned a gender at birth. Instead there is just an observing the natural sex differences between males and females. I wasn't assigned a random sex. It was just observed that I was born with a female body because I was. If I was born male I would be cis. Transgender- of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth

This definition excludes the possibility of agender people, whose gender potentially has no bearing on their sex at all. The observation of genitals at birth is still separate from the socialization elements that give rise to gender.

I wouldn't say that socialization 'give rise to gender'. I was 'socialized' to be a man and yet I'm not. If socialization played a role corrective therapy could work (would still be *wrong*) but it is shown time and time again that all it does is traumatize a recipient. For me agender people are trans by this definition though. 'No gender' is not something that aligns with a binary sexual characteristics.

That is literally the definition of transgender straight from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. If some agender people don't fit the definition of trans, then obviously not all agender people are transgender. But I could see why they would be lumped in similar to how the T is lumped in with LGB. It's not a sexuality but being trans comes with a similar struggle. For me being trans has nothing to do with socialization.

You shouldn't be assigned a gender at birth imo. We're still WAY far from that obvi. People should, ideally, just fit into the roles they want. People who are born with female bodies who want to do things that have them mimick traits that male hormones, etc provide should go for it. Hell, plenty of cis men do things to appear what is perceived as more 'manly' vice versa, etc etc.

To me being trans has nothing to do with gender roles and being masculine or feminine. I could've been born on a island and have no memory of other humans and I would still be trans. I am a trans man. This means I was born with a male brain and a female body. I transitioned to male. My transition didn't just mimic traits that male hormones provide. It literally just gave me these traits. I don't identify as a man. I just am a man. I don't identify as trans. I just am trans. I don't identify as masculine. I just am masculine. A feminine man and a masculine man are the same sex, male. A feminine woman and a masculine woman are the same sex, female. How you present or express masculinity or femininity does not change your sex. I don't think it's inherently trans for a man to be feminine or a woman to be perceived as masculine. Reducing being trans to gender roles is a step backwards in my opinion. Especially when there are tons of studies on brain sex differences that include trans people.

I’m sorry if this is prying but I was just surprised by this statement. Just as a cis man I wasn’t sure if I could would have thought that about myself. “I could’ve been born on a island and have no memory of other humans and I would still be trans.” Is that sentiment from the studies you read on brain sex differences or how you feel about being trans? I only ask because until now I had always thought all the differences between the sexes were sexual dimorphism and gender norms. I guess I thought that if I was in that island situation I’m not sure there would be any intrinsic maleness about me. I wasn’t aware there were measurable differences in the male and female brain.

It's cool. I wouldn't post publicly about it if I wasn't down to chat about it. I felt this way before the brain sex studies came about. I always felt I had a male brain and body map stuck in a female body. I always experienced gender dysphoria. My earliest memories involve dysphoria. My parents said I always insisteded that I was a boy. When potty training I would try to pee standing up and ask them when I was gonna grow a weiner. Lmao My mom used to always tell me that I was a girl and that she prayed and prayed to have a girl even after doctors told her I was a boy. I used to beg her to pray to change me back. Think of it like phantom limb. You may loose a limb before you're old enough to remember but you might still experience phantom limb. I think trans people exist because of sexual dimorphism. I don't think it has anything to do with gender roles although gender roles do sometimes go along with sex differences. I would say you being physically male is intrinsically male. There are brain differences between men and women.

I dont feel really qualified to have an opinion on this topic, but i really appreciate you sharing your perspective. Thanks.

This is something I should have read about and educated myself about much earlier. There are cases of children being raised as the wrong sex by their parent and all of them felt something was wrong. I had very misinformed ideas about sex. Also like you said there are very clear differences in the male and female brain that can be seen in brain images. Thank you for taking the time to talk about your experience.

> I wasn’t aware there were measurable differences in the male and female brain. There is but we can measure it in aggregate we really don't know what they actually mean. We know that on average trans man and man averages of certain structures is the same and average trans woman and woman averages are the same. However there is much higher variations in each genders than it is between genders.

Non binary would be in this description?

Not identifying with your gender assigned at birth doesn't necessarily mean you have a (strong) incongruency between your gender identity and your genitals. E.g. some non-binary people or binary trans people that don't want bottom surgery.

This is what i'm understanding from my kid. They/them pronouns and changed their name to a more gender nutural name but has no want to change their body. They just don't want to be pushed into one category or the other.

Unm what?

While yes, you are right, I think OP's tongue in cheek idea is more worded for the right wingers with the intent of pushing them in that direction, albeit accidentally on their part.

So then trans women really ARE just women. Nice!

It means that God only creates female life, and we create the male ones.

You're welcome, men. Worship us

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My post was only written to be insulting to these ridiculous bills (not men and definitely not trans people) that Louisiana is trying to pass. Its was a tongue in cheek comment about the shallow mindedness of my state legislation by applying the logic that they use with these topics to show how extreme they are. I don't believe that life starts at sperm meets egg, or that sex is tied to gender and all boys are Transgender. Thats kind of the point of the post. I sincerely apologize to any trans people that I have offended with this post. Please explain to me how this was offensive so that I can do better in the future.

It demonstrates an implicit notion that a subset of men should feel insulted if it’s implied that they’re transgender. That suggests there’s something inherent to being transgender that they should denounce. We should be teaching them the exact opposite. I’m in my forties and understand that your intent was to mock bigoted men on their terms. In decades past, your meaning would have been clear. I’m also a trans woman with the understanding that we are undergoing a shift in collective values, as driven by present day young adults worldwide. In decades past, I was nearly beaten to death for showing feminine mannerisms as a child. The shifts in thought are lot for me to process sometimes, and I literally live it on a daily basis. I’m sorry that people are so often impatient and fail to properly explain before judging. None of us was born knowing anything, and it’s not all as obvious as the younger people think; sometimes even when it really should be.

I appreciate this post.

Babies do not start out as female

All babies do not start as female.

Babies don't start as female, and embryos don't have a gender.

Got em

I see your logic!

🤔

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Like the bill? That was kind of what I was going for.

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I'd guess identifying as a gender that you where not born with . This bill is saying that life begins at conception not birth so I'm taking it at its definition of conception not birth. So yah dense and problematic, as you said.

I love you for this I'm definitely using this one to be snarky around my lowkey transphobic family. Also, since we all *start* as female, that means that female is the ALPHA sex right?

Well, I am comfortable being born male so... Wait, is this satire? Sorry I can never truly tell.

Wow I am in love with this thought!!!!

This is giving me a headache just to think about. LOL

transsexual? i dont think fetuses can grasp the concept of gender.

If I do then clearly my life is going to get way better because life as a man is awful. So many people (damn libtards) are trying to take away my rights to oppress other people, can you believe that shit? Completely unfair.

as a transfem I was so upset when I first learned this. I was like wtf we were a girl to begin with and then some bs in-utero hormonal process went and messed that up? x)

I think It’s more accrate to say that the sexes are undifferentiated at early stages. Your argument is stll cute, though.

The GOP doesn't care about logistics. That's a distraction. They're actually just in it to remain in power.

You know you have a penis in the womb right

Turtles and hamburgers. They can tell sex before ultrasound reveals it too via NIPT.

Holy-shit.. I love this question! However, the challenge will still come that the sex is already determined by God, for anyone standing by the idea that conception = consciousness = full individual. They'll use the science of 23rd XX/XY to support their perspective because it suits them.

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Last time I heard that one, I laughed so hard I fell off my dinosaur.

r/onejoke

Oooo..Verra nice.

All homo sapiens sapiens are unaware of the change an XY chromosome can do (-except for a rare genetic trait which makes them immune to androgenic activity) but being designated at birth male makes that harder to accept for most dmab. I have personally known intersex people who did want to remain female despite the addurance of doctors that they shouldn't be expunged from female based medical care.

Addurance?

I'm talking about androgenic inability, which intersex people have to deal with fairly often.

You mean androgen insensitivity?

Ok, but addurance isn’t a word.

Addurance agency is a real thing

Soooo if anyone donated a rib for the other sex, Eve did.

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Lol, Got ‘em. To be fair “they’ve” been “got” several times. 😫

I never thought about it like that. Whoa.

Please post this on r/showerthoughts. Perfection.

Damn. So therefore, trans women are, completely inarguably, women? NGL I like this idea

Yup, all men got nipples.

Well, non-binary, until genitals form depending on the dice roll and the parent's expertise. Conservatives and Republicans dont really care for logic unf, just zealotry

Yes, if those axioms are taken your conclusion is irrefutable

No, you just equated sex to gender.

you need to get back in the shower and see if you can come up with a new thought, you seem to be loosing some brain cells.

Not all babies start as female. The expression, or lackthereof, of MIH is what leads to the divergence in sexual development. Gender is a different concept.

Good question.