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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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🤓 Being trans has to do with gender identity, not sex. The whole foundation of transgenderism as a concept is that sex and gender identity are independent elements of a person. So as a corollary (I think, haven't used that word in a while lol), no non-sapient creature can ever be trans, because you need consciousness to have a gender identity in the first place.
if consciousness is imperative for gender. do sleeping people loose their gender?
Naptime is trans erasure 😔
everyone is agender atleast once a day /s
Not so much.
Sex and gender are distinct elements. So whilst they're not the same thing, they do interact with each other and influence each other to some extent or another. If they didn't, then the world wouldn't be full of people whose gender and sex are in alignment. For that matter, if they didn't, we wouldn't even understand the concept of sex and gender being in alignment.
Also, "transgenderism" is a term popular with transphobes, because it frames trans people as a belief/ideology, rather than acknowledging their identity.
But for all of that, strictly speaking, this is true.
What am I supposed to call it, when talking about this as a concept, outside of referring to a specific person. Transgendericity? Transgenderology?
Throw me a bone here, don't just insinuate I'm a transphobe just because I casually tossed 'ism' onto the end of a word to noun-ify it in a sentence, without even offering a correction.
Okay, so if I want a single word, "transgenderality"? That really just sounds bizarre, I have to say. Not to mention I've never seen any person talking about trans issues ever say/write that.
That's only one way that suffix is used, and it's assumption on your part that when you see that suffix, that that's the way it's being used. In other words, I think you should allow for the possibility that it ain't that deep. Was it not obvious from the context of what/how I was writing that I wasn't coming from a transphobic place?
-ism is used for all sorts of nouns that simply describe a state of being (e.g. autism, alcoholism, absenteeism), and that's all I aimed for. And from what you said in your comment, it seems like this is uncharted territory, if there's no actual single word term regularly employed for this particular state of being—all of your examples are multiple words.
P.S. By the way, I'm not at all dissuaded by something that is inherently benign being popular among shitty people—in my opinion, all the more reason to take it away from them, by using it benignly more often than they use it pejoratively. It was successfully done with "queer", I say keep that train running!
Okay but the tree is still trans.
I think you could say part of one's identity exists outside of the person. Their self-identity should be respected and often will align with what they project outwards, but that's where people get confused about a person and then stubborn ones get fed up with the whole idea.
Anyway, in this case since the tree lacks sentience, it wouldn't have an internalized gender that we could know, but we can see that its sexual characteristics have changed and give it a transexual label. The trans label can cover both.
That doesn't really make sense to me. It would imply that some part of who you are is defined by outside perception, and I definitely don't agree with that, especially considering that there are an indefinite number of outside perspectives, and some number of those perspectives could definitely be mutually exclusive with others, making it impossible for them both to be correct.
Simple analogy: if a triangle is viewed 'face-on' by one person and directly 'edge-on' by another, the former will perceive it as a triangle, and the latter, as a line. Something can't be a line and a triangle simultaneously, so how can these outside perspectives both be any part of what defines the identity of that object?
Every person who knows you has a concept of you in their minds. This is a part of your identity which you don’t have direct control over, you can only negotiate with them over that.
This concept is intuitively known by everyone. It’s why people are negatively affected when others misgender them.
It’s also true in a formal sense. Part of your identity exists in the formal documents and information about you. This is the part that is vulnerable to identity theft which is painful in ways beyond the financial losses people incur as victims of this crime. Having to prove you are who you say you are is extremely exhausting and traumatizing to deal with despite essentially consisting of a bunch of paperwork and phone calls.
Yes, of course.
I don't agree with calling that concept "identity". Others' "concept of you" is just that, their idea of you. That does not define you, in any way.
Actually, I think this bolsters my point, not yours. The whole reason being misgendered is a negative experience is because that person's "concept of you" is wrong. They see you that way, but that is not the way you are. Your identity comes from you, and you alone.
In the end, it's obvious we have different definitions of "identity" and that's what our disagreement is rooted in. I define identity as the sum of what comprises one's sense of self.
I think you're being too strict with your definition of an identity because it is not just one thing. Identities are multi-faceted and fluid. I think that you ignore an important part of the picture when you ignore perceptions of you as part of your identity. They add to a conceptual cloud around you that is you and how you come across to others. I rather like to avoid oversimplification which I feel you are falling for, although I still do believe that one's own identity is most important of those and ought to be respected by others.
Have you seen the Clayton Biggsby sketch on the Chappelle show with the blind black white supremacist? He had no knowledge of being black, but I think most people would still argue that it formed a major part of his identity regardless of his own concept of himself.
To nuance your previous point, being misgendered is a negative experience because that person's "concept of you" does not agree with yours, becoming a point of conflict between you two and even inside yourself, not necessarily because they are wrong (although you are free to have that opinion). Sometimes people close to you will know you better than you know yourself.
What happens when a person has a brain injury causing retrograde amnesia, or dementia, or Alzheimer’s disease and forget the details of their lives? Are those forgotten aspects of their identity just gone? Or can they live on through their loved ones? What happens when we die and lose all possible sense of self? Is it like we never existed in the first place?
You can indeed become a completely different person when afflicted with Alzheimer's, dementia, or a brain tumor. It doesn't retroactively change who you were before, of course...but it can absolutely fundamentally change you.
I never asserted that identity is immutable, nor that only that it is not defined by outside perception of other people.
Right but part of identity is our relationships to other people. If I get Alzheimer’s disease and forget who my mother is, she’s still my mother even though I no longer remember her.
Edit: similarly, my aunt passed way over a decade ago. She’s still a person and still has an identity, even though she’s no longer living.
I wouldn't agree, simply because I consider relationships as existing between people, not within them individually, and more as 'facts of the matter', as opposed to immutable aspects of individuals themselves. But again, this is simply a disagreement on the definition of "identity". I'm not saying your definition is wrong, but it obviously is different.
A familial connection is a fact about someone's lineage, but it is no more a part of someone's identity than to the extent that that individual chooses to make it so. If I was adopted and have never met the woman who birthed me, then yes, she's still my mother even though I never knew her. But that being a fact has no inherent relationship to my identity. The same is true if I was raised by my birth mother but am now estranged, and she has no part of/in my life—she'll always literally be my mother, but in this case, her existence is no part of my identity any longer.
Nonconsensual trauma that alters one's sense of self against one's will is the only thing that muddies this water at all, I think, but even in a case like that, it is only from within that whatever degree (whether zero or nonzero) those events shape one's identity, can change.