Sending good vibes to all of my trans comrades 
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otherkin, trans racial discourse
My thing is like, I feel like transness is supported biologically. You have a lot of different hormone receptors in your brain, a lot of chemical machinery going on in your DNA, a possibility of a wide range of intersex conditions… the full tapestry of transness simply makes sense (enby identities, non-med trans people, not cis people in general, all included of course!). Is there anything that could be said biologically for something like an otherkin? No… humans can’t be part dog or whatever. You can empathize with dogs, you can feel like dogs are treated better than you so you maybe want to be one on some level?
I feel like this kinda taps on trans racial discourse a little too. Does increasing/decreasing your melanin medically actually make you feel better? Or is it they just empathize in an unhealthy way? Are they trying to improve their lot in some way? Have they internalized some sort of beauty standard?
Both are definitely something that needs to be studied at the least, to see if any sort of medical intervention helps or just harms. I know that a lot of surgeries and interventions relating to ‘increasing whiteness’ in Asia end up being highly regretted, at least.
discourse
What’s the biological support for being agender? Is there biological support for humans being genderfluid, or demigender?
In other news I really think framing otherkin/therian as being 1:1 with being trans is wrong, probably. Going purely on what I know, I don’t think most otherkin or therian people want to “transition to dog” generally.
discourse
I feel like this is as supported as any other trans thing really. We know your brain can change over time, we know that hormone receptors can change over time, we know that people have mood and personality changes, we know that people seem to like certain balances of hormones in them, person to person. I feel that these identities are understudied, but I do truly believe there is a biological mechanism of some kind for them. I tend to give an example of a person coming in to our LGBT center mentioning they are xenogender with relation to sunny/cloudy days. They feel feminine on sunny days and masculine on cloudy ones (including dysphoria related to each). I suggested they try vitamin D pills to see if it alters their experience, and it did, it made them feel more feminine. I feel like there might be some nugget there to study.
more discourse
Right so, does being agender or genderfluid have something to do with hormone receptors? Is there a balance of hormones the same way humans needed a certain balance of the four humours, at which point you lose Gender?
So the answer’s “no” then, I guess. Uh that probably seems kind of dickish on my part… I just feel like this “biological root for trans gender!” thing is very akin to the “gay gene” discussion topic, in that it’s goofy and not worth considering and we probably do not understand the brain well enough to even begin to poke at potential “causes” of queerness if they exist. I think it’s a really scuffed lens to view it through instead of just not using “scientific grounding” to differentiate one identity from another…
Fwiw this xenogender example you give feels like something brainfunny, since vitamin D is also used for depression treatment among other things. But I do not know if one anecdote makes biological cause.
spoiler
I mean, the thing is there are twin studies and theres a significant correlation for gender identity for binary trans people. The issue of course is they haven’t ever done twin studies on other identities.
I think any sort of thing like this isnt just one gene, just like eye color is not one gene.
I feel like this is reductive, people have really well measured rates of satisfaction when at certain hormone levels, perhaps agender people simply have a different reaction to hormones altogether. I can say for myself that I know when my hormones are off with 100% certainty, I’ve been able to test it with my doctor. ( I had a phase where I really fucked with my hormones a lot to see how I responded and I would get blood tests each time )
more
My instinct is that any sort of twin study like that for nonbinary or agender people would have deeply unfunny results. Either it gets used to cisnormatively box people into “UR [brain shape/hormone balance/etc] IS JUST [assigned gender or binary opposite of said]” type shit, or it completely destroys the idea of biological correlation to gender. Unless there really is a clear unique biological causation for every funny gender outside the binary.
Uh I don’t think I disagree with that? ‘More/right level of hormone you want = satisfaction’ makes sense, but I do not see how this is evidence for biological support of any gender.
spoiler
At this point its more of an argument if you think hormones should be in the gender box or the sex box for making you feel better imo. I think it can be both, hormones can alter your perception of the world, your gender, other peoples view of your gender.
Oh yeah, its always nervewracking to have any study done on us cause we just wanna vibe and don’t want to get shat on. You can describe it as a ‘faith’ or hypothesis thing I guess since I don’t have hard evidence on paper, its more just I’ve noticed too many patterns after talking with thousands of disconnected trans people at this point that I feel like something must be going on. Pattern seeking ape brain? Perhaps
suffering
I don’t subscribe to the gender unicorn model so I’m not sure how seperate the two are to me. It’s like, I Changed My Sex This Past Year. I think the boxes are silly.
Well there might be something to those patterns, but if you wanna start framing validity of identities through ‘biological support’ and sorting some things into the Biologically Supported box and the Not Biologically Supported box, we’d better start deciding what’s biologically supported and how. Otherwise it just reminds me too much of essentialism, Idk. I don’t really trust that sort of stuff because again it reminds me of “scientific” research into why people are gay. [The identity] is biological because it sprung from the human mind and is therefore biological in origin.
spoiler
I consider all trans / not cis / enby / etc. identities valid, I think theres just a physical reason for why people feel the way they do and why they resonate with certain labels. Have we dug into every identity and fully understood it? Will we ever? No, and probably not, given the number of identities?
And that is also sort of what I’m getting at. Of course the identity is always biological because it sprung from the human mind, but what is the mechanism? Its a question of neuroscience. Why are people different? How do we make them feel better? I feel like its a fundamental question for the field.
I would like to ask a question
If you don’t think there is a connection between gender and your biology (genes, hormones, funny brain things) what do you think makes a person want different hormones then what their body naturally makes? Or are you separating that from gender?
I suppose I feel like everything that makes me… me is from some sort of physical process, I don’t believe in a “soul” or anything and I don’t see how society could make me want to take hrt. I don’t know, what does that leave you with?
Q and A corner
Okay firstly society isn’t really making people wanna take HRT, I think. Extremely rare are cases of anyone pressured into other sex hormones I think.
But uh I dunno, what does make you want different hormones, BountifulEggnog? You don’t like what testosterone does, right? Of course you also don’t like being in the “male” gender role, which could be anything, maybe you just innately prefer being the other binary gender. Why? Who knows! I think people want different hormones because they like what those hormones do, what they make the body like. Or maybe because the hormone their body makes is something they goddamn hate. Just so happens those things line up with some genders!
You could certainly say that something happening in your brain makes you want estrogen, because I mean probably. It’s probably at least as complicated as autism is neurologically, it’s just how you are, innately. Idk, you have the desire to take estrogen and hate testosterone, hate being a man, simple as kinda.
talking about dysphoria
Yea I definitely don’t see that being the case.
My brain (a biological thing) has a deep seated aversion to the rest of my body/hormones (more biological things). To be completely honest, it feels like something in my biology went a little fucky. I want hrt to appease my brain by bringing my body in sync. Its the only way to resolve this (what seems to me?) biological issue. (If you are going to say this is not an issue, my brain and rest of my body being out of sync has obviously caused me great pain and I would like you to explain.)
This is a lot harder for me to understand or explain. I do feel a draw for certain feminine things. Plushies, bracelets, obviously I think I’d like how my body looks on hrt and in fem clothes. I think the fact I get gender euphoria from that and not just like, them being things I like is because of society gendering those things (well and I suppose fem outfits are made to look good on fem bodies, so once I have the fem body
) I do remember liking a lot of them before I realized they were kinda gendered though, and just liking them in a normal way.
As far as not liking being in the male gender role… I guess its mostly body stuff? I don’t like my male body hair. That feels (mostly) like a biological sex thing though. I don’t like a lot of the toxic garbage that gets added onto being a man, but I’m not a fan of the toxic garbage women have to deal with either. I’m struggling to think of many “man” things I don’t like because they are manly.
Oh definitely, everything in biology is complicated, especially the brain. I’m not suggesting there’s some “woman” gene I got on accident, just like there’s no single “autism” gene I got. But from my perspective, it definitely feels like a deep part of my brain just… disagrees with my body and my biology needs to be fixed (one way or the other, but obviously changing the body is what actually works). And like with autism its just kinda how I came out, my biology being a little off.
Thank you for talking about this with me, I definitely wandered off a bit but I hope this makes sense.
I sorta assumes agender is often (but not necessarily always) a result of autism/asexuality intersecting with other gender stuff. Partly because that’s my personal experience. But probably also because on reddit, a lot of people on the agender subreddit found their way through the aroace communities (because of things like AAA battery jokes). So… it was practically 100% ace & autistic people and that might not be reflective of the general population.
…is that biological support though? Plus, I’m certain people arrive at agender without being autistic or ace now and then, has to be. Idk, “biological support” goofy…
The idea of “biological support” seems to be overly black/white thinking imo. Just another way of talking about “nature vs nurture” when its usually more of a “nature & nurture” for everything (although questions of how much observed variations occur to observed variations in inherited factors vs pre-birth environment vs post-birth environment are essentially still looking at trying to look at the same underlying question of “nature vs nurture” without making it a binary).
So I don’t really mean to talk about the biological support issue. But if its the intersection of autism and gender, then whether agender can be explained as a biological would depend on your explanations of autism and gender.
Yes that was my thinking too :3 I wasn’t a big fan of the concept either, hence my annoying hammering. And yeah that’s pretty much what it all comes back to, Idk I just did not dig “biologically supported” as a concept.
spoiler
Transness probably has more of a biological root compared to the therian phenomenon, but there are obviously sociological factors as well. It’s like how some people think if we abolished sex as a social class then people wouldn’t feel dysphoric. A lot would probably still want to change their body, but yeah it’s fair to say they’d likely have less dysphoria at least. Eg, there’s a difference between a face feminized be estrogen and one masculinized by testosterone, but then there’s also cultural ideas of masculinity and femininity related to facial hair and makeup. I’d imagine in such a society you’d have people going on hormones but having a lot less anxiety about passing.
The issue is we don’t fully understand the brain and we can’t make societies in a jar. So all we’re left with is attempts at reasoning.