Explain to my Grandpa Gender Indentity
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Anonymous
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My 88 year old grandfather was asking me about sex and gender identity, as he is confused by things he hears on TV and in the news. He understands “sex assigned at birth” but what he gets stuck on is how people define gender. He said, “what is the definition of a woman?” I explained the perspective from me, a cis-gendered person. I tried to explain differing cultural and societal norms, and the importance of not having roles defined by others… but he gets tripped up. He wants to know what it means to “be a woman”.
I don’t know how to explain it in another way that might help him understand. Can someone more eloquent and articulate than I am help me out? I believe he truly wants to understand. |
Anonymous
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He's been watching Fox News and is trolling you.
Ted Cruz asked the recent Supreme Court nominee in her confirmation hearing "What is the definition of a woman?" and the nominee just sat there and didn't answer him. Amazing that 88 year-old's have devolved into trolling their own family members. |
Anonymous
| This is OP. Yes, he saw that, he talked about it for a bit. |
Anonymous
NP. I read comments like this on DCUM a lot. I wonder what people will be saying of people in our generation when we hit age 88. It may be humbling. |
Anonymous
| Can’t you just say that some people are born with a sex that they don’t feel is “right” for them? Like, they were born a boy but feel as though they identify as a woman? Or others don’t necessary feel tied to any gender identity, and think of it more as a spectrum. My grandparents are of similar age and understand that fine, although I have cousins who identify as trans and non-binary, so I guess that may help. |
Anonymous
| I think he’s being awkward on purpose. Like a lot of conservatives or older people. He’s not really trying to understand. |
Anonymous
Ask him to consider when he decided to be a boy/man. Then imagine the entire world telling him he is wrong, that he was a girl/woman. Ask him how horrible that would feel. There is not one definition of "being a woman". The key part is that IT DOES NOT MATTER that we don't have a definition. Your chromosomes make you male or female at birth, but your brain may get programmed differently. But of course conservatives want you to give a definition of "a woman" so they can point fingers about how you are being compassionate to someone who CLAIMS to be a woman but has male anatomy. Or has XY chromosomes. In the end, the number of people who this happens to is MINISCULE. TINY. It's like 0.05% of the population. All people are asking for is some compassion for them to live their lives. No one is asking Ted Cruz to be a woman. |
Anonymous
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Okay so I have a child who is trans and I have studied this for a while. And I don’t understand. If you look it up, you’ll usually hear something like “gender is a complicated mix of factors like emotion, gender expression, environment….” I forget what else. And don’t take my word for that, it has been a while since I looked it up. But it is complicated and even though I have tried to understand all the terms, as a whole concept, I don’t understand gender identity and what makes somebody identify as a certain gender. Most drag queens are not trans, but they have a much more feminine gender expression than most transgender women. A cisgender woman might hate anything coded as feminine and even look like a man but is still a woman.
The only thing I can do that helps me understand a teeny bit is imagining what it would feel like to have somebody constantly call me “sir” or “he.” I wouldn’t be able to explain exactly what felt wrong about it. But it would just feel wrong. Anyway I don’t think you have to try to explain it or even understand it. I think you can just believe people when they tell you who they are. |
Anonymous
| I think the very fact that it’s impossible to answer the question “what is a woman” points to gender being a completely made up social construct. If people want to buck off that construct and be non-binary or just themselves, go for it. |
Anonymous
| I think it is hard to understand. If someone asked me what does it mean to be a woman aside from the fact that I had female parts, I am not sure I could answer easily. I don’t want someone telling me that a woman has to be a certain way. So I guess for me a woman = female (?) |
Anonymous
| Adult female or female identifying homo sapiens. |
Anonymous
| I would go with "honestly, I struggle with this, too. It's hard for me to identify what "makes me a woman" outside of the physical. But I know I've always been comfortable as a woman. Trans people don't feel comfortable like that I guess, but I don't need to fully understand it to accept it. Other people have different experiences, they're telling me this is who they are, who am I to judge or get in the way? Life is hard enough." |
Anonymous
| I think your grandfather is rightfully confused because for years we’ve been fighting against gender stereotypes. It’s ok for men to dislike sports and power tools and to be more into fashion and baking. It’s ok for women to like working on cars and to hate makeup and dresses. But now we have people saying, I’m really into the things stereotypically associated with the opposite sex, so that means I actually am the opposite sex and I need to physically transform myself to make my outside match the interests and behaviors driven by my “opposite sex” brain. It’s stereotype reinforcing. |
Anonymous
Transgender people are not transitioning in order to perform stereotypical behaviors of the opposite gender. Some don’t even have interest in those behaviors. Some have some interests from each stereotypical gender’s behaviors. |
Anonymous
| What does he think it means to be a man? Or a woman? |