I have never understood why the predominant understanding (by those who even acknowledge it's medical) is that transsexuality is a mental condition.

Any given cis man can have any number of developmental disorders, or just be statistically unlucky, and have one or more of the traits that trans men typically have. E.g., he could be 5'2", he could have hormone issues and need TRT, he could be infertile, he could have wide hips, he could have gyno, he could have a micropenis or some other genital disorder/intersex condition, etc. Of course, having multiple of those things in one person becomes more unlikely the more of those things you add, because they're typically independent events so the probability goes down for each new criterion you add.

However, sometimes a man can have all of those things at once. It's still rare, but it's much more common than it would be to have all of those things independently coincide, because they have a common cause. When this happens, we describe the person as "trans."

Due to society, there is a perceived immutable distinction between this man (whose traits were caused by transsexuality) and a cis man who has all the same traits (caused by other, independently-occurring disorders). The transsex man will be misidentified at birth as a woman, due to his disordered sexual development, but unlike another man (who happens to be cis) he won't be re-identified once he realizes the issue. And of course society does everything it can to prevent him from ever realizing at all.

The only distinction between cis and post-op trans is societal. The only reason to keep those words around at all, after the disorder is treated, is to describe the bigotry placed by society disproportionately on the "trans" man as opposed to the "cis" one. Ex: The only reason David Reimer is cis is because that's what society considers him to be.

--

A man who doesn't have his dick goes to the doctor for a referral to a reconstructive surgeon. He either had a birth defect, or lost it in a car accident or when serving in the army. He can still piss and isn't bleeding out, but he's missing his entire genitalia. He doesn't have any medical records proving that whatever caused it really did happen.

The doctor takes a look at him, sees that he is in fact missing his dick and balls, and refers him to a phallo surgeon for reconstruction. Or—they do this if he's cis. If he's trans, they send him to a therapist to prove he really needs his dick. Then they send him to another, to get a second opinion—in case he regrets it. Really: they send him to a therapist because he isn't a man. A man missing his dick constitutes immediate surgical care, because that is a serious medical condition. A woman who wants to be a man needs three psychiatric approval letters to prove she won't sue them later when she chooses to change her gender again.

--

A (cis) man who was infertile, had a mostly-nonfunctional micropenis and nondescended balls, and extreme hypogonadism and hormonal imbalance which (if not caught early) caused short height, wide hips, gyno, and other permanent skeletal effects, would immediately be classed as a serious medical condition.

He would need a prosthetic dick in the meantime before he could get reconstructive surgery, and would be distraught everytime he used the bathroom and over the fact he couldn't really have sex like he should be able to. He would have to take TRT for the rest of his life in order to treat his hormonal condition. He would need more reconstructive surgery if he wasn't able to catch the condition early enough to treat the damage it does during puberty.

Even after fully treating his condition, he wouldn't be able to get hard on his own with our current medical technology. He would never be able to father his own biological children. He'd have to worry about dealing with medication access and schedule for the rest of his life, and would have to keep track of his hormones in a way he'd never have to think about if he just had a normal daily hormone cycle.

Without treatment, his condition is usually fatal due to the amount of chronic pain it causes. He isn't able to have sex, to piss normally without (and sometimes even with) having to use a prosthetic. His body doesn't function properly because none of the hormone signaling is correct. I don't know what this would be if not a disability, and a fairly severe one at that. It's certainly more disabling than autism (at least, at the level I have it), which is acknowledged as a disability.

But the second that we call that same man "trans," it becomes a mental disorder.

--

The same obviously goes for women but I know way more about the male medical stuff so thats what all my examples were

One of the main issues with discourse about this subject is that currently, the word "nonbinary" is used to describe two completely distinct (though sometimes overlapping) experiences. To be clear what I'm talking about, I'm going to briefly explain the two different types below and hereafter will refer to them as type #1 and type #2 nonbinary. I'll go into more detail afterwards

Type 1: "Nonbinary" the social identity. Not correlated with whether a person is transsex.

Type 2: Transsex nonbinary people, i.e. someone whose brain is wired to have some sort of mix between male and female sex traits.

OBSERVATIONS OF TYPE #1 NBS

There are a few different reasons why someone would call themselves, or think they are, nonbinary, while not being type #2. (There are some type #2 nbs who also identify as (type #1) nonbinary... Usually it's because they're aware they're (#2) nonbinary, but sometimes they also do it for the same reasons as cissoids or transsex men or women do.) Ultimately, almost all of these reasons boil down to misunderstandings or misinformation about transsexuals.

• GNC people who don't like the social role (man/woman) associated with their sex. (This goes for both cissex and transsex GNC people.) Some of them likely are using it as a synonym for GNC, since that's how modern society tends to see nbs (similar to how "genderqueer" was used back in the day to cover both GNC cissoids and ordinary transsexuals). These people don't tend to think they're actually trans.
• People who have been fed misinformation about transsexuality, and thus mistakenly think they are trans. Sometimes these people identify as trans men or women, but usually they are either able to identify a discomfort with pretending to be the opposite sex, or they don't feel any "gender feelings" at all and so conclude that they're nonbinary. More often this type of #1 nb is gender-conforming, perhaps even exaggerately so (e.g. theyfabs). The misinformation usually comes in one of the following types, though I don't doubt that other misunderstandings about us might cause someone to identify as nb
  • They don't have any idea what sex dysphoria actually is. People describe it as though it's "feeling bad when someone calls you she," or "disliking your body"—both things that are entirely possible for a completely cissex woman to strongly relate to. People with body dysmorphia, eating disorders, women with painful periods or boobs that cause back pain, and anyone who generally hates their appearance will think they have "dysphoria" because there is no widely available explanation as to what it actually is. Also, women experiencing (and disliking) sexism will think of that, or their internalized misogyny, as "dysphoria" because they identify it as something that makes them feel bad, that's related to gender, and think that that's the definition.
  • Some also have been fed the lie that transsexuality (or, actually, transgenderism) is something completely unrelated to sex. They don't think they have dysphoria, but they also don't see that as being even remotely relevant to them "being" trans. They believe that transsexuals are "AMABs" who identify as woman, or "AFABs" who identify as men. (I still have no idea what causes someone to decide to identify as nonbinary (or, again less commonly but it does happen, a trans man/woman). If they're not doing it for one of the previous reasons, and not all of them do, then I have genuinely no idea.)
  • The "trans people feel like a woman on the inside" explanation. They don't realize that that's an inaccurate, vague, misleading statement (said by TERFs to discredit us...) and think it's genuinely why people transition—and instead of realizing it's nonsensical, because what would it even mean to "feel" like a man or a woman?—they determine that since they don't "feel" like a man/woman, that they must be nonbinary.
  • There is a distinct but related phenomenon of people misinterpreting the distress a transsex person feels at their gender/sex as this "gender feeling," which they obviously do not have (in the same way that you don't feel your bones unless they're broken), and determine that they must be nonbinary. This can happen to transsexuals as well, wherein their only "gender feeling" experience is sex dysphoria, which just causes distress, so they come to the same conclusion as the cissoids who think this.
• Some people just seem to like the way they/them sounds better than the other options. This I think does still stem from the idea that pronouns are an accessory rather than just a word which so happens, in many languages, to have a different form depending on the sex of the person you're referring to, but these people are usually no more transphobic than your average cissoid. I'm not sure actually how common this reason is.
• Transsex #1 nbs often identify that way, if not for one of the above reasons, because of some combination of impostor syndrome and dysphoria. Enbyrepping is a well-known phenomenon (here). A lot of transsexuals will think they aren't manly enough to be a man, or female enough to be a woman, especially if they've been told to socially transition before ever touching a drop of test or estradiol.
• It's also fairly common for transsex people to mistakenly think they're #2 nb due to a perceived lack of dysphoria somewhere. E.g. if someone has convinced themselves they're "okay" with their genitals, even though the reason they're "okay" with them is because of how successfully they've dissociated, they may think they're nb because they "want"/are begrudgingly okay with a mixed-sex body. And some people may have impostor syndrome, not for their gender/sex but for their trans status, thinking that other transsexuals have much stronger/more painful dysphoria, and so theirs (less bad in comparison) must not truly exist.

These are all much more common amongst women than men, likely because of how harsh womanhood is as a social role compared to manhood. Women who are tired of experiencing sexism, but without the words to articulate what's wrong, may also decide that their issue is being a woman rather than the way society treats women.

Women also have a lot more leeway in their social role than men do—they are forced back into femininity if they try to leave it (or fail to reach it), while men who try to leave masculinity (or fail to reach it) are violently forced out of it due to being "tainted" by their association to femininity and/or womanhood. This leads to women having the freedom, and often the encouragement, to identify as nonbinary, while men undertake a pretty big blow to their social status if they call themselves nonbinary.

Also, quite often people will identify as nonbinary for multiple of these reasons, to varying degrees.

OBSERVATIONS OF TYPE #2 NBS

Type #2 nbs are inherently transsex. They would be transsex regardless of what sex traits they were born with, unless they so happened to end up with a specific intersex condition that caused their sex traits to align (and weren't forced into "corrective" surgeries as a child).^(♧) A few people on here are type #2 nb and aware of it, but the vast majority of type #2 nbs that I've encountered are pretending to be transsex men or women.

Pivpoons, some hefabs (the others are cisfοids... or rarely incredibly cucked men), pivtr**ns, kikomis, and a large number of sneeds are #2 nbs. The only way to actually be seen as a third gender socially is to be, or pretend to be, a transsex man or woman.

This will be somewhat male-centric as I've interacted far more with #2 nb "men" then I have "women." If anyone has any insights into the female equivalents for these that I've failed to notice, I'd love to hear.

• The type of poοn who's proudly afab and relishes in his clockiness. These people leech off the transphobia targeting men (the third-gendering/degendering & emasculation) in order to be perceived socially as occupying a third sex. The vast majority if not all of these people truly believe they're men, but subconsciously they reject association with men, which you can see if you observe their behavior.
  • This person talks loudly about how stealth is hiding/being closeted, and how it's only acceptable if you do it for safety (they feel like they're closeted if they're perceived as men).
  • They continually insist that trans men are a separate gender to cis men (not in so many words, but...) and fight to exacerbate our third-sexing & emasculation, because if we started being perceived the same as any other man, they'd have no way to be accurately perceived by society. Being treated like a cis (real) man feels like misgendering to them, because they're not men.
• There is a female equivalent to the above, but they seem to be somewhat less common. Most discussion of degendering amongst women doesn't get very much pushback by other transsex women.
• Pivpoοns or otherwise trans "men" who are perfectly fine with their original genitals, but also need to be on test in order to function. This category applies to all the poοns who need some amount of male sex characteristics (top surgery, TRT, etc) but are perfectly fine with their other female sex characteristics. This has a large and maybe complete overlap with the previous category. There are also several different, oft-overlapping presentations of this type of person.
  • These people are the ones who insist upon transsex men undergoing female medical procedures without seeming to understand the issue. For a gynecological exam or a pap smear, they recommend numbing or doing it to youself at home (so the doctors won't misgender you!) but don't seem to grasp that the existence of that body part at all is the issue.
  • They insist on keeping an ovary "just in case" after hysto, as if having an estrogen-dominant endocrine system is somehow better rather than far worse than having no sex hormones at all. These are usually (though not always, and not all of them) the people pushing back on DIY, since they don't need it the same way we do.
  • They constantly talk about v*ginal atrophy, going on birth control, and pregnancy as if those things are relevant or even desirable to the transsex male population. When someone needs actual advice on atrophy of that area due to physical pain during daily life, they act blasé about the concept of touching that area and putting things inside of it, as well as imply that it should be a permanent rather than temporary solution.
  • The ones who go off of test after 10+ years on because they "got all the effects they wanted." These guys are horrifying to me personally because I can't imagine being forced to do that myself, but ultimately I suppose they're rather innocuous. Most of them after genuinely enjoying/needing the effects of test I think are not just cissoid detransitioners.
• Again, this phenomenon happens with women as well. The "women" who express vehement distress at loss of erections or ability to nut, or the ones who take test in order to regain functionality, and the "women" who gleefully use their dick during sex, all fall under the #2 nb category.
• Kikomis. These, like the first category of poοn, feel a subconscious need to be perceived as a third sex, but rather than leeching of off the transphobia towards men, they leech off the transphobia towards women. They, like pivpoons and (some) hefabs do to men, have a vested interest in keeping transsex women relegated to a third-gender status, and weaponize their privilege against them to do so.^(♤)
  • These are the most likely type of #2 nb to actually identify as nb, I think. They often believe that "trans man" and "trans woman" (or "transmasc" and "transfem") are just more genders that you can "identify" as, and so consider themselves to be transfem, or talk about how much they wish they were trans women (i.e. someone with facial hair, a penis, male skeleton, with boobs and an estrogen-dominant endocrine system)
  • Needless to say they're incredibly transmisogynistic (well, most of the examples here are ig) on top of being just transphobic. They relegate transsex women to sexual objects and idealize their bodies for traits they want to kill themselves for having.
  • Some of the "quitting test after 10+ years" pοοns from the previous bullet point also fit into this category. They view their own detransition as analogous to transsex women's medical care. "I want femininity to be as inaccessible to me as it is to you" type beat. Some of these are #2 nbs, and some of them are just regular cisfοid detransitioners (though the latter is more likely at 2 years or 5 years instead of 10)
  • Kikomis don't always want to have a dick, I've noticed. Some of them definitely do, but others are happy with their current genitals and would be disgusted at the idea of phallo or even meta. Almost always, though, they fetishize the idea of the "masculine frame" (or voice, or body hair) of their idea of transsex women.

TLDR "Nonbinary" describes both a social identity (#1) and a genuine gender/neurological sex map (or, group of neurological sex maps) (#2). Type #1 is mostly cissoids so theyre transphobic; type #2 are (usually) honestly maybe more transphobic than type #1, and piggyback off of (& advocate for) the third-gendering of 🚄s in order to have a true third sex gender role.

^(♧)Ironically, based on the accounts of intersex cissοids who do have some sort of visibly mixed sex traits (rather than "mostly male with one technically female" or vice versa), this doesn't seem to make someone any more likely to identify as nb than the average cissoid. I guess technically they'd be type #2 nb but not transsex... though I admit I don't know how common truly mixed sex characteristics are in the first place.

^(♤)I am not sure whether to describe this as cissex privilege over transsexuals, male privilege over women, or non-trans-woman privilege over transsex women.

I don't think it can properly be considered male privilege, as they aren't men in any true sense of the word, but they are "more male" than are transsex women. If it only happened to women, I would think it was obviously the last option, but the same genre of person does the same exact thing to transsex men (as described in the first section of that part... the #2 nbs who think they're trans men). But I don't know if it can properly be considered cissex privilege, considering that they are transsex, just not men.

Mainstream doods are lowk too far gone but you'd think the guys in the 4tranosphere would know not cuck themselves with the woke misgendering transphobic ywnbam words

"Reasons" to use AFAB/AMAB and why theyre full of shit:

1. "It's a good shorthand to describe people who've experienced male/female socialization"

Ok well I wasn't socialized as female. QED

First off, even if trainees did all get treated identically to the opposite sex all their life up until they stopped repping, and we were indistinguishable from cis people of the opposite sex, we do yk actually come out. Ig this point technically ignores reppers but—once you change your sex/start the process of changing your sex, you get treated as the correct sex or at least a third gender freak... neither of which are "birth-sex" socialization.

But also we don't get treated the same as the opposite sex growing up. Speaking as a man, I couldn't have interacted with girls as a "girl" if I'd wanted to; they could smell the 🚄 on me and excluded me from all the groups I was forced into joining. (Or well ok I'm also autistic so that may be part of it as well...) Other boys excluded me as well bc I was trans & cissοids are transphobic. I don't know what misogyny is like except from hearing women explain it, and I lowk was a bit of an idiot in high school & literally thought catcalling was fake and that women were exaggerating how much they got SA'ed. That's female socialization right? 🫩

And I've heard that transsex women (as one would assume) experience the same sorta thing. Except worse I would argue bc a girl being forced into groups with boys, and she's trans so nobody gives a shit to protect her, yk doesn't end well usually. The idea that trans women "start" experiencing misogyny after they come out is just straight up not true

But, you may argue—socialization is also about the messages you internalize; we still have that! (À la the terf idea that transsex women arent affected by misogynistic messaging no matter how young they come out bc they "know" innately that those messages don't apply to them.) Speaking for myself again, as a kid anytime someone told me that "women do [x]" or I heard them tell someone that "men do [x]," I spent a lot of effort trying everything I could to keep myself from doing the 'girly' thing (e.g. crossing my legs, putting my hands on my hips, crying/being emotional, asking for help, skipping, etc). And mind you, I wouldve vehemently denied being a guy at this point (I was like 7 lol) and didn't even know transsex people existed until high school. Maybe I'm an outlier, who knows, but I kinda doubt it

2. "But AFAB/AMAB is useful to describe your body parts without misgendering!"

Yeah ok fuck off

TLDR we change our sex. If you're going to be using those words as generalizations, can't we just say male/female? It means exactly the same thing if you're using it to describe someone's physical sex traits, but the "A_AB" part makes it explicitly clear that you think trans men have female sex traits & trans women have male sex traits.

Trying to "avoid misgendering" doesn't do shit when the acronym literally says male/female inside it. And besides, if we're using it to describe sex traits, it doesn't matter what words you use to call them, that doesn't change what they are. If you're trying to avoid exacerbating someone's sex dysphoria, maybe just don't fucking mention that trait rather than assuming calling it something else will do genuinely anything at all. We could rename all testosterone-induced secondary sex traits as "female" tomorrow & that wouldnt make nonpassing women feel a single bit better.

There's no discernable group of people described as "AFAB" that would be useful to denote by this word. What does a post-phallo man have anything in common with a cissex woman, that he wouldn't have in common with a transsex woman? What does he have different than a cissex man? If you say oh, well he's not AFAB anymore, then you're genuinely using it the same way as we currently use the word female, so just say female. And if you spout some shit about chromosomes or natal whatever, then you don't think it's possible to change your sex & thus don't think transsex people actually exist & are the sex we say we are. (And also are using it to mean the same thing as female, but you're an idiot who thinks trans men are female & trans women aren't, which is just factually incorrect. Ywnbam but woke so its ok this time)

There's literally a weekly post on there about how the OP is incapable of dapping people up & is worried it's gonna out them or something. And then the entire comment section is full of people complaining about how difficult it is, or saying their cismoid friends (or worse, their cis bf) spent hours trying to teach them but they never got it quite right, or asking what a dap is... or in short they act like a bunch of women who just found out that it's a thing guys do.

Or instead sometimes they'll brag about how smart they are for figuring out the dap. Or adjacently they'll do the same thing for the nod, acting like they're some sort of genius for figuring out that it's a greeting guys do to each other.

Embarassing asf that they're acting like women who are trying to figure out how guys interact with each other but don't really know how it's implemented, & this is how people think of us. (See all the cismoids coming in to eff tee em or wherever & writing up a whole post acting like an older brother tryna teach a young boy how to be a man.) Why are we convincing people doods are outsiders to male friendships & don't know how guys talk to each other & don't do it naturally even if they do know.

Also dapping someone up is not hard. You don't see doods posting about how they don't know how to wave, or shake someone's hand. I saw one of them call it a "complex secret handshake guys do" or something like that. Dawg be fr

Maybe this is a cold take but I just realized this

They act like transsex women existing in their own (post- or mid-transition) bodies is predatory to women. Like that post from the other day where a woman showing off her own body was "sexualizing women"... which was a bad thing bc she was a "man"... except it was literally her own body she took a picture of. It doesn't matter to them how far our medical technology has come bc they think that somehow transsex women are indelibly male, even if we had the tech to change every single sex trait + your genes, & the woman in question had transitioned at the age of like 2 so never had the opportunity to absorb any male socialization (even tho obviously transsex women don't get any male socialization, even if theyre an ancientshit)

TLDR they do believe in "gendered souls" despite telling us & insisting they don't

I honestly wouldn't even be near as annoyed if it was just regular MRA shit. I mean obviously they shouldn't be doing that either but it's no different than when any other man does it, so Im not any more pissed at them than I am at random conservative man #29474 who thinks women should stay in the kitchen. And those types of guys do exist, transsexual or not, I've seen a bunch of them over on ftmmen

But for some reason the main argument that's made about why transsex women & men have it the same, or "our oppressions can't be compared," or the one I hate the most ""oppression olympics"" which is the most fembrained tumblr shit known to man, is that society sees transsex men as women so we can't say we have male privilege. I mean even aside from the fact that that's just demonstrably false, why are we literally saying bar for bar the same thing terfs do? Why are we just agreeing with the AXAB shit that cissoids are pushing on us? 'Transsex men will always experience misogyny & know what it's like to be treated as a woman,' 'transsex women have to deal with transphobia but both of us also have to deal with sexism so transmisogyny applies to both'... etc.

We're one step away from doods in here literally unironically calling themselves AFAB. What other reason could you have for saying that trans men don't have male privilege over trans women, if not that you don't think transsex men are really men, & that transsex women are really women? And they always pull the "muh society" as if we don't both get treated as a third gender instead of an "AFAB" or "AMAB." Trans women are treated as degendered and demonized women, we're treated as emasculated men... both are shit obviously but there is a difference if you're not a fucking idiot. Hold on to your so-called afab socialization if you want bruh but some of us are actually men. I didn't get "female socialized" and transsex women didn't get "male socialized."

Especially if you as a stealth man are pulling that card you're genuinely just an idiot. If you're stealth you get treated as a cis male except by the government or doctors or whatever (unless you get lucky). The only time this argument genuinely has even some weight is when you're comparing two reppers of opposite genders. But even then not really bc look at how difficult it is for women to stop boymoding vs men (or let's say getting on HRT bc men can't girlmode for long with the voice drop).