Talk:Transitioning versus expanding

Would a linguistic distinction help explain this concept?
If we can agree that, even if they are not the same, there is a common notion throughout all cultures that defines gender or sexuality or what-have-you according to some fundamental principles, whether it be a binarily sexed system like the majority of Western society or whether it be a poly-gendered system like Hijra_(South_Asia) describe, then there also must be a common notion that to move from one state of being in such a system to another state of being is different from the notion of occupying a larger or more flexible area of the same system. Is that a distinction worth discussing?

Example: Why am I, personally, not transgendered? Because even though I don't fit inside of my society's traditional definition of "man," I chose to change the meaning of that word for me, rather than go to another definition. I figured I would have to do the same thing in the "woman" area because that, too, was not entirely correct for me. However, if I had been born to a culture that perceives gender differently, my choice of self-identifying may have been different one way or the other.

Regardless of the details, a common denominator is the idea of moving across a gender-system boundary versus finding oneself within a societal construction of gender that provides more freedoms of self-expression. On that note, I think this distinction is highly relevant to this concept of transitioning versus expanding "gender affordances," if you will. While I would disagree with an assertion that transsexuality is "wrong" or even "unique" to one culture, I suspect I would support the idea that a prevalence for transitioning is at least encouraged by living in a culture with few, rigidly defined allowable gender expressions.

Please share your thoughts about this here.

Thanks, --Meitar 00:10, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

Transition vs. Redefinition?
Meitar, I think the distinction you're making is very interesting if a little bit hard to explain. It sounds to me like you're asking about making a linguistic differentiation between two different ways of dealing with discomfort with one's assigned gender.

The first is that of a person choosing to transition from the point on their culture's gender scale which society originally assigned them to another point on that same scale, without asking for much, if any, redefinition of those points. An instance of this type of transition is the male bodied person who, being uncomfortable with societal norms of masculinity, chose to transition into a female body and subscribe fairly comfortably to societal norms of femininity.

The second is that of a person who, finding themselves uncomfortable with societal norms applied to their gender, chooses to redefine that same gender to be more comfortable to them, and damn society! An instance of this type of redefinition is the butch lesbian, who defines strongly as a woman while rejecting many of mainstream society's feminine norms.

I suppose the terminology that makes most sense to me, in describing these two different methods of dealing with gender, are "Transition" verse "Redefinition." The first applies largely to people who have no fundamental problem with how their society defines gender roles, only with the role they were assigned to play. The second applies to people like me, who are simply uncomfortable with any degree of rigid societal doctrine when it comes to my gender, and while staying a woman, choose to take aspects of all different gender norms in order to be comfortable with the person I am.

What I find most interesting is your question of how this interacts with different societies' notions of gender. Western society tends to be fairly rigid about gender, leading to a fair number of people who find themselves uncomfortable and deal with it either by Transition or Redefinition. I have very little experience with other societal views on gender, but wonder whether a more fluid society might not have wide variety of people who simply find their place organically, rather than feeling the need to either specifically transition or radically redefine their gender identity.

-- Best, --Emma 17:00, February 20, 2010 (EST)


 * Yeah, the different societal influences are kind of what I'm wondering about, too. Do you have, or do you know someone who can describe, instances of this kind of decision-making process? I've got experience, but few ideas on how to expand the Transitioning versus expanding page. Also, I wonder if these pages should perhaps be moved to Transitioning versus redefining for clarity. Anyone else have ideas? Thanks for your thoughts. --Meitar 01:10, February 21, 2010 (UTC)