The common framework (if you can really call it that) for understanding gender transition appears conflicted on how much of a "transition" it really is. Trans people typically insist on using language which regenders their past self, as well as present. That's to say, if I'm a trans girl now, then I was always a girl. But if that's the case, then your gender hasn't actually "transitioned", has it? Maybe a word like "realization" is more fitting.

I say "if you can really call it that", because I don't think there is actually much shared understanding of what gender or transition are, exactly? I don't think most trans people are very good at explaining themselves (cis people are no different, of course). Or rather, I should say that I'm not personally satisfied with the explanations I've heard. My experience is that most trans "defenses" are moreso just insisting really hard, that they're valid and so on. This bothers me, partly because it leaves a "propaganda" taste in my mouth, and partly because, well, I'm honestly not sure what is even meant by "validity". (I should probably just read Judith Butler...)

Anyway, this is all just my understanding, as someone who doesn't relate to the desire to pronoun-retcon myself. But I will explain my understanding, anyway. That's all I'm ever doing in these posts, of course.

[ 2024/11/19 Edit: I will note that I relate to this desire significantly more now than at the time of writing this post. I will also make clear that what I didn't relate to was not just gender dysphoria, but specifically retroactive gender dysphoria; that is, dysphoria from one's past self being gendered differently from one's present identification. ]

What bothers me is, when retroactive regendering is explained, it's often implied that there's some deep, internal fact-of-the-matter regarding what someone's gender is. Of course, retroactive pronoun use may as well be up to preference, just as present pronoun use is. My problem is with this insistence on understanding gender as an inherently permanent quality; never evolving, but rather, being rediscovered as what it secretly was all along.

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Here's some things I think are true.

Gender is a culturally developed human categorization system, no more or less. There is no deep, underlying, quasi-spiritual fact-of-the-matter about what your gender is. It's just an arbitrarily, culturally defined way of sorting people. It is "real", in the sense that categories are real, and in the sense that its influence on our behavior makes it a useful thing to model. But I don't think it "exists" outside of that.

When fitting gender transition into one's understanding, the critical thing to understand is that gender is arbitrarily defined. "Gender" and "sex" were one idea, but gender dis/euphoria exist, so we split the ideas apart. We can do that, because our language isn't passed down by God, or determined by experiment. It's entirely defined by us, and we're free to redefine things when it's convenient. So, sex is defined by chromosomes, and gender is defined by... well, what do we want to define it by?

Gender, as a categorization system, has a huge influence on the way you are percieved by others. Why should that influence be determined by a coin flip? It seems to me that the most useful way of defining gender is as an entirely opt-in system, determined purely by self-identification. A choice.

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Gender is ultimately only meaningful insofar as it influences the way others think of you, and the way you think of yourself. Men and women have different expectations placed on them. But these differing expectations are usually seen as a bad thing, aren't they? Differing gender expectations are sexist, definitionally (Not that people agree on how to define sexism...). In this sense, eliminating sexism is equivalent to eliminating gender.

That would be my ultimate preference, to dissolve the concept of gender entirely. I've rambled enough about how arbitrary I find it, so you can probably understand why I would feel that way. Femininity and masculinity are just aesthetics, they're open to everyone. And there's obviously no fundamental, inherent difference in the way men and women think or act. But if anyone can be anything, regardless of gender, then gender loses all meaning. Knowing someone's gender tells you nothing about them, in principle. It ceases to be a meaningful description of someone.

So what's even the point?

Identifying as a gender doesn't somehow allow you to do something you couldn't otherwise. You don't have to choose to be female to wear a dress, you can just wear it. The importance of gender is entirely artificial. It doesn't hold power intrinsically, it's relevant today because of its momentum from yesterday. If we all forgot about it tomorrow, we would never "discover" it again, because it doesn't exist outside of our understanding of it. It's brainworms in our collective consciousness. It's a meme that needs to die.

Gendered pronouns are an annoying wart in the design of our language (it could've been much worse, of course). I'm concerned seeing people disassociate with they/them. Gender being woven deeply into language is a problem, especially if you literally can't refer to someone without referencing their gender.

If they/them is just another set of pronouns, with its own set of implications (which it probably inevitably is), then escape from gender seems to be impossible. Nonbinary is just a secret 3rd category, because people's perceptions of you do depend on their understanding of your gender, and if you don't put yourself into a box, they'll just do it for you. The social importance and resulting inescapability of gender is an unfortunate truth.

Gender accelerationism... Save me... Save me gender accelerationism...