I remember learning about trans people in the late 1960s in Time and/or Life magazine. It made me think that they were talking about me. After all, I was a loud, large, competitive, argumentative girl who loved reading and chemistry sets. Within about a minute, I realized no, there was no reason those characteristics shouldn't describe a girl. My issues over gender were never about the biological parts, they were over how SOCIETY dictated girls and boys should present themselves. Particularly through the '60s, society obsessively pushed girls towards marriage and motherhood, and men towards careers with much less involvement in their children's lives.
In college, I fell in love with a smart guy who was funny but generally quieter and less assertive then I was. Over time, he's become more gregarious and more assertive. He's also a much better cook than I, something he enjoys flaunting now as he's retired and has more time to cook.
We raised our daughter to let her know she could do whatever she wanted to do so long as she went to school. Like us, she gravitated to computer work and is an avid online gamer (with a gender-neutral name online).
I have mixed feeling about the very technical term "gender dysphoria," as it sounds too much like an illness. Given the extremely complicated issues around gender and genes for some people, it's not an illness but it is a difference. With a small percentage of babies, it's impossible to immediately assign a gender at birth. Instead of only having female and male on birth certificates (and many other forms we fill throughout our lives), there should be at least a third choice. "Other" isn't the best name for this. "Intersex" is accurate for some infants where the sex cannot be immediately observed. But many intersex children eventually do adopt one gender or the other seeing as our culture is so rigidly defined by two genders?
We do we have to have two genders? This notion has really upset a very loud minority, especially in the south. Many people in the south have always been rigidly attached to old ideas.
If people want to adopt their own genders, why not? I know "they" is becoming more common as a pronoun, but it mostly seems to be used by people assigned female at birth. In some ways, I should adopt "they" as my pronoun as I believe we over emphasize gender. There is way too much fussing over it. BUT, I don't want to see "she" become invisible either.
It probably would be better to worry about gender less often.
