Half Baked Morning Rant

half baked morning rant

I do want to make it clear that the reason I talk about HRT and its biological effects so much is not because HRT or medicalization defines your gender.

Its because, for me personally, the interface of my biology education and my transition was mostly centered around figuring out what sex hormones do. I learned about basic biology principles like DNA organization, gene regulation, cell biology, and physiology in high school and undergrad. Taking that understanding and extending it to the mechanisms that hormones use to change gene regulation, and by extension, the rest of your body broadly, was something I did as my understanding became more complete in later undergrad and grad school. It was the key to me starting my own transition.

Why?

Because it was the first time I realized that the "basic biology" arguments of transphobes were complete and utter bullshit. From that point, it was a cascade. As in, wait, if dynamic changes in gene expression are considered "biological" to them, and I know that isn't true, then why am I believing anything they say about anything else? When they talk about gametes, and try to include infertile cis people in their definitions of biological sex by talking about what gamete you're "intended" to make, what do they even mean? Why does my current gene expression not define that "intent"? And wait, back up, why is the brain suddenly not considered part of our biology? Why are neurological differences suddenly not "biological"? Why can we say someone's thinking patterns aren't "biological"?

Backing up even further, why does any of this matter more than psychological gender, or sociological gender? If the way we navigate society is gendered, that affects a lot of our lives, and we're just throwing that away?

Basically, being educated about how deep the biological changes of HRT really go was the first domino to fall when I worked through my internalized transphobia.

This is one of many reasons why I hate, hate HATE the concession that uninformed allies and even many trans people themselves give: "well NO ONE is saying that you can change your biological sex, sex and gender are completely unrelated, sex is binary and gender isn't!!!!!"

Well. I am saying that you can change your "biological" sex, I am saying that biological sex isn't binary, and I am saying that misunderstanding of those points has set back transgender advocacy. It makes medical decisions surrounding us less informed, it poisons conversations about how we interact with society, and it makes trans people feel like their gender and sex are less "real" than cis people's.

Not to mention the horrific way it discards intersex people from the conversation entirely.

Recently, I've seen this point enter the mainstream a little, by using intersex people and variation of sex in other species as a "counterargument" to "binary biological sex" thinking. It still doesn't sit right with me. One, because it uses intersex people as a prop for trans advocacy while not actually addressing the needs of either group. And two, because it completely disregards that your current biology and physiology is not 100% predestined from birth, and using people who were "born this way" as a prop does absolutely nothing to increase people's acceptance of trans people who change their biology later in life.

Ugh. This got away from me but yeah. That's my sipping coffee ramble for this morning. If anyone wants to add comment or correct me on discourse here, please do. Especially if you're intersex- this is all the observations of a perisex trans woman.