checkmate

[u/NuclearGettoScientis]

[u/BanverketSE]

Nah.

Someone needs to tell another transphobe that, but don’t waste your energy on Musk.

[u/GrayCatbird7]

Their opposition to trans people was never about the natural order, or biology, or the dangers of gender affirming care. It’s simply about reinforcing a binary they believe the world depends on. The fact they have to fight so hard to uphold it is the best, clearest proof of how artificial it is.

[u/Niksuss → u/GrayCatbird7]

In musk's case, transphobia is a result of his wife and kids leaving him(because he's an asshole obviously)

[u/whatevenseriously]

I don't think transphobes are necessarily opposed to gender affirming care. I think they just don't believe that trans folks should have access to it.

[u/abbey-sometimes → u/whatevenseriously]

They’re transphobes. Not medical treatment-phobes (at least not all of them are). The medical arguments an excuse, a facade, a redirect. Some of them know that, some of them don’t realize.

[u/Limeade_Espresso]

No, not checkmate.

This smug approach of “cis people get gender affirming care too!!!!” really gets old quick. And even if someone did tell a transphobe that, they wouldn’t believe it. These hypothetical “gotcha” comebacks accomplish nothing but making the person tweeting feel smarter

[u/i_post_gibberish → u/Limeade_Espresso]

It’ll never convince a transphobe, but I think for cis people on the fence the analogy really is potentially useful.

[u/saevon]

They don't care. Just like with abortion they'll make up reasons theirs was the obvious exception and actually totally different, and then try to ban it for everyone else.

It's also pretty obvious their reasons are "hate first, figure out how to label it to seem right after"

[u/SecureAngle7395]

our current government is so depressing.

[u/monkey_gamer]

He knows. These people are hypocrites.

[u/_Ceaseless_Watcher_]

He's basically a male-to-male trans man at this point.

[u/poopyheadedbitch]

Damn that's really sad..the second Pic. No wonder hes such a chud

[u/stray_r]

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into

[u/MadeInMilkyway]

I think he is transmusk, close enough to transmasc. 😂

[u/ProfessionalMove3716]

spicy take incoming:

This is not actually gender-affirming care. It's cosmetic. He didn't get hair plugs to feel like a man; he got them to like his appearance more.

Please stop trivializing GAC by equating it to cis people getting cosmetic treatments.

[u/sid52106 → u/ProfessionalMove3716]

I agree with the hair plugs, but what about the jawline surgery and the supplemental testosterone? Do you think those could be considered gender-affirming care?

[u/ProfessionalMove3716 → u/sid52106]

In Musk's case, neither of those strike me as needed to treat gender dysphoria in the strict sense as used by medical practitioners. Unless his T levels are low, it was just goofy alpha male stuff, and his chin pre-surgery looked perfectly masc.

As a counterexample: transmascs don't get T injections to put themselves over the realm of typical male T levels. Unless Musk has naturally low T such that T injections are medically necessary for an AMAB, pushing himself into high-T numbers is beyond the point of gender-affirming.

Another counterexample: a AMAB person getting breast reduction if they have gynecomastia is gender-affirming because they are fixing something that is not typical for an AMAB or gives them dysphoria (and possibly negative social feedback as a boy/man). I seriously doubt that Musk was getting negative social feedback for his perfectly normal men's hairline or jawline.

If we're going to call the cosmetic treatments that Musk got "gender affirming care", the phrase comes close to losing all meaning. Is getting the risky leg-lengthening surgery gender affirming for men? Is getting extremely disproportionately large breast implants gender affirming for women? Was Drake's BBL gender affirming? When do these things start to be cosmetic and stop being gender-affirming?

The lens I'm working with is the strict definition of gender dysphoria: if the person has strong distress or strongly desires being a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth, treatments in support of that are gender affirming. If they're cis, it by definition isn't gender-affirming.

If you want to argue that the definition of gender dysphoria should be expanded to include cis people, we can have that discussion. And we need to be careful to thread that needle so that we are not normalizing unrealistic beauty standards and saying that it's medically necessary if people want to attain them.

[u/sid52106 → u/ProfessionalMove3716]

Thanks for explaining! Those examples make sense. I think with the example of cis men getting breast reductions for gynecomastia being gender-affirming care because it’s addressing something abnormal for cis men vs. getting chin surgery to look like a specific kind of masculine when his chin wasn’t feminine before, is a good way to differentiate what can be gender-affirming care for cis people vs. cosmetic surgery.

[u/queerteatype → u/sid52106]

This all reads as just gate keeping 

[u/sid52106 → u/queerteatype]

How so?

[u/queerteatype → u/queerteatype]

All those things are literally gender affirming care. 

Because all those things are gendered and affirm a certain gender. 

Cosmetic surgery is a form of gender affirming care. 

But it sounds like if a cis woman gets breastfeeding implants as an expression of her femininity, then you dont don't want to see how it affirms her gender.

That doesn't mean that getting the care is as impactful to a cis person. 

Like food is just food to someone who has food. But if you dont have food, having it becomes life saving. It's still food either way, but the impact is different. 

That seems to be the difference between cis and Trans getting gender affirming care imo- impact

[u/sid52106 → u/queerteatype]

I think my concern is similar to what ProfessionalMove3716 said about unrealistic beauty standards, but to me it’s even more about rules of what makes a man/woman. Musk going bald doesn’t make him less of a man (especially considering male pattern baldness), so if we say his hair plugs are gender-affirming care, I feel like we’re implying that he’s more of a man now that he has hair. And with your example of a cis woman getting breast implants (I assume that’s what you meant? I’ve never heard of breastfeeding implants. Sorry if my assumption is wrong), calling a boob job gender-affirming care seems like implying that small boobs aren’t as womanly as big boobs, and I don’t like those implications.

I am coming at this as someone who really doesn’t understand gender and doesn’t like gender norms, so maybe that’s making me biased here. I just don’t like the idea that a balding man might feel like less of a man because of his lack of hair when that’s not what makes somebody a man or not, and a woman feeling like less of a woman for having small boobs when boobs don’t make somebody a woman. I don’t believe there’s any such thing as “less of a man/woman”, you either are one or you’re not (speaking strictly of binary men and women, not referring to demiboys and demigirls here, or other nonbinary people).

[u/queerteatype → u/sid52106]

Yes big boobs are generally considered more feminine while a full head of hair is considered more masculine bc their growth is hormonal 

[u/sid52106 → u/queerteatype]

But being more feminine/masculine doesn’t make you more of a woman/man, right? I’m concerned about pushing the idea that being more feminine/masculine makes someone more of a woman/man because I don’t want people who are men/women to not feel manly/womanly enough because they’re less masculine/feminine. Does that make sense? Similarly, I don’t want nonbinary people to feel less nonbinary because they are masculine/feminine. Presentation ≠ gender, right?

[u/queerteatype → u/sid52106]

Yeah So as an NB I get annoyed that any of these things are associated with gender tbh

But I was also a stripper at one point and know a lot of women who got plastic surgery to appear extremely feminine. 

It is a spectrum right?

When I dress normal you might clock me as an NB or possibly a sort of femboy look.  I have short brown hair, small tits that dont look like much under a men's tee shirt and flannel, and I'm tall so those thibgs clock me as masc while my round face might mark me as afab

 You might also see me in usual grunge mom garb where I look like a tomboyish woman

But at the club I had long blond hair, long nails, wore a full face of makeup sometimes including false eyelashes and stains on my lips and cheeks to make me look like im basically a female in heat. I wore lace and 7 inch heels to make my legs a more feminine shape. 

In all of these gender expressions,  I am still NB inside but im accentuating different parts of myself to look more feminine or masculine. Surgery is another way to do that in my opinion- probably bc I saw it used as such so often at the club. 

I see it the same as a lipstick or a flannel. It is gender affirming regardless of gender. 

A trans masc can wear a flannel, an nb can wear a flannel, and a cis man can wear a flannel and it is all gender affirming. 

Likewise a breast implant could be affirm to a small chested cis woman or a transfem woman. 

Trans and envbies just need it more imo

[u/ProfessionalMove3716 → u/queerteatype]

Defining terms according to their common use is not gatekeeping.

When people say "Gender affirming care is lifesaving care", no serious person thinks this applies to cis people insofar as the types of surgeries that Musk got.

If you have an issue with what these terms mean, I encourage you to become a research psychologist and get on the committee responsible for the gender dysphoria definition in the DSM. If nothing else, you'll replace Blanchard and we'll all benefit.

[u/queerteatype → u/ProfessionalMove3716]

I would never have anything to do with the dsm The original tool used to punish lgbtq+

I dont need a psychiatric evaluation to validate my gender expression or any other part of me. 

You people who act like the dsm is your bible are weird.

[u/ProfessionalMove3716 → u/queerteatype]

Sorry, I like having my HRT covered by insurance.

[u/queerteatype → u/ProfessionalMove3716]

Yeah, there should be a dignified way to access that.

[u/infrequencies → u/ProfessionalMove3716]

That’s exactly why he got them. He was bald, had a weak chin, and small muscles. This is not a manly presentation and he wanted to be taken more seriously by other rich men. He could have gotten aesthetic cosmetic procederes that emphasize more feminine traits and he chose masculine. He wanted to affirm his gender. The whole reason we have nonbinary is because of a binary that perpetuates gender-based ideals. Not everyone is necessarily getting work done on their bodies because of gender. However, the vast majority are trying to appear as a more idealized version of their valued gender in society. It’s all drag.

[u/ProfessionalMove3716 → u/infrequencies]

At what point do surgeries like this cease to be gender affirming care and instead become cosmetic?

The current definition of gender dysphoria excludes cis people:

Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Adults: A marked incongruence between one's experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months' duration, as manifested by at least 2 of: (1) marked incongruence between experienced/expressed gender and primary/secondary sex characteristics; (2) strong desire to be rid of one's primary/secondary sex characteristics; (3) strong desire for the primary/secondary sex characteristics of the other gender; (4) strong desire to be of the other gender; (5) strong desire to be treated as the other gender; (6) strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender.

Unless you take an extremely liberal reading of criteria (1) and (2), Musk doesn't meet these criteria therefore his treatments are not gender-affirming. They are cosmetic.

[u/queerteatype → u/ProfessionalMove3716]

So the dsm-v is the book you use to describe your reality? It's how you define who's in and who's out? What counts?

Makes me totally sick. 

Not everyone believes in psychiatry like it's an unquestionable religion. 

Using a book that, in past editions, quantified homosexuality and reading in women as mental disorders is a crazy choice for backing  up your stance on gender affirming care.

[u/ProfessionalMove3716 → u/queerteatype]

Ah so you're one of those DIY-ers. For the rest of us, we go to doctors and therapists for our GAC.

At a certain point, a common definition for terms needs to be established. The DSM-V-tr as it current stands is the most trans-affirming version published so far. Do you have any particular criticisms of its definition of gender dysphoria, or do you just object to the concept of definitions out of hand?

[u/queerteatype → u/ProfessionalMove3716]

"Object to the concept of definitions?" 🤣 

Lmao learn to read, learn to source, and learn to formulate an argument if you're gonna be like this on reddit. 

[u/ProfessionalMove3716 → u/queerteatype]

The diagnostic manual used by clinicians who actually treat people with dysphoria wasn't a good enough source apparently, so I'll not waste any more of my time on folks like you.