Hannah

It’s too real!

I do this with long hair to avoid hurting my neck when I move in my sleep

Trans-inclusive trolling 🤣

You’re in an area where a binary gender model just breaks down. Whilst convenient for most people in most situations, this is like trying to use Newton’s laws of motion to understand the event horizon of a black hole. You need a different model of the world.

The model I use is this: humans have many independent systems/traits within their brains and bodies, several of which are typically found in a bi-modal distribution of states which we label “male” and “female”. In trans, non-binary, and intersex people the bi-modality of that distribution starts to break down. Some systems/traits are aligned with the “male” mode, others with the “female” mode. Not all are easy or even possible to change: some are baked into how the brain works.

In some of those people (trans men, trans women) it just happens that several less-visible systems/traits we cannot (or should not) change are aligned in the opposite direction to a bunch of more-visible systems/traits we can change, and that their lives become much more tolerable if they are allowed to make some changes. This usually happens via some combination of hormones & surgery, and really needs to depend on the individual because the systems/traits can be misaligned in a variety of ways and some of the treatments affect several systems in a way that cannot be quantified before treatment.

If the ultimate goal of a trans man / trans woman would be to transition to better fit the classical male/female mode they would prefer, then they probably want to be labelled and treated as their preferred gender with no additional qualifications at all, but some still want their journey to be recognised so sometimes you need to ask anyway.