I have the answer… Some children know about genitals, some don’t; most are lying about it. I think children can understand gender and absorb a lot of it very young, as babies even, but they don’t know about anatomy, no… Pretty much all my early childhood memories are “dysphoric,” lots of anatomical dysphoria about incoming male secondary sex characteristics, and have a strong feminine identity… but no “body map.” I did not know about vaginas.
“HSTS” “true trans” are known to as children believe they really are the opposite sex, and learn/realize older they are actually male or female… this generally happens, to ONLY CHILDREN. Aka, kids with no siblings, who aren’t ever seeing other kids/siblings or adults naked bodies. I was dysphoric and jealous of women as a little boy/toddler long before I knew what a vagina even was- didn’t know the difference between men and women besides superficialities, obviously didn’t know anything behind what a toddler or child understand. But I knew I was a boy, and I hated it.
Most “trans women” saying they had a phantom vagina or female body map as children are lying for some kind of “credit” or validity. I had dreams of being female having PIV before puberty, around age 7-8 I wondered what it would be like to have a sex change, plastic surgery, or if I was a hermaphrodite, or if I could become one… I’m not proud of it, it doesn’t give me “validity,” it’s not a “body map…” it’s a horrible disorder. What child thinks that- what adult is *proud* of it?
Children can certainly experience really odd, disturbing and apparently severe dysphoria, down to even believing they will one day grow the opposite genitalia… gender dysphoria and full GID is very rare with children, even more rare is the genital-fixated-childhood-dysphorics, most are lying about it all. Freaks.
I buy the “penis envy” thing making me feel a sense of lack or incompleteness especially when coupled with society’s obvious privileging of men and boys.
From there it wasn’t a long leap to developing a “phantom penis” fantasy that kept me dissociated from the traumatic experiences of femaleness and my upbringing.
If you practice a mental construct hard enough, you can convince yourself of almost anything. Doesn’t mean it’s true!
body map no i don’t believe in it. i think you create one as you live in your body ….i read that upwards of 90% of amputees experience phantom sensations of some kind. That’s a LOT! so i guess what i don’t believe is that one’s “body map” can truly be different from one’s actual body, until an outside force is involved that radically changes one’s body. Even a haircut can be jarring, tattoos too are known to cause a high anxiety mental reaction when you’re getting used to the change.
I’m talking about whether or not that knowledge is innate. There are people who claim that they would have come to the conclusion that they were born in the wrong body even if no one was around to teach them about different bodies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8627186/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698921000420
Infants can discriminate against male and female faces without having a solid concept of sex categories. We already know 3-4 year olds gain this concept later
Honestly I don’t know. For most people I wouldn’t buy it.
For me I just kind of knew the human body. I knew my anatomy and had a general understanding of others when I was like 4, it just didn’t matter to me because things like hot wheels, ponies, and drawing on the walls were more important.
I honestly think it's an education thing. Kids learn to distinguish themselves from others around that age, exploring differences. They probably saw their naked mother before they had conscious memories & later wondered if they would develop into the same thing.
Right after that stage, by the way, is the "poop" stage; they tend to become obsessed with excrement! We're supposed to teach our young. We're supposed to teach them to identify similarities & differences between categories of things, including body parts.
On the feelings front, I've heard so many stories from so many people who became dysphoric at different ages with different relationships with their gendered bodies. I'm convinced that many of us go through discomfort in our bodies. Sometimes it relates to objectification, & sometimes to how we're treated in accordance with stereotypes rather than diverse beings with diverse interests.
I will say this to add on to the idea of comments from young children (this may seem odd coming from my parents however but it can during the time I was talking about my own gender dysphoria during my transition so.. ) I talked to my baby boomer mother about gender dysphoria and genitals years ago. She once talked about her childhood and how she never felt terribly aware of those things however she had a brother and remembered such comments as “why don’t you have a penis” etc similar comments. And I feel she mentioned more a level of discomfort and maybe even aggravated feelings as a child towards the idea. I don’t know if she said it could be compared to dysphoria as people defined it now but sis did she grew up now easily could have co opted into it. Also she was very much a hippy and grew up into the idea of feeling othered as a girl and not fitting the more “mod” or au currant beauty standard feeling a bit bookish and off though not fully tomboy. She said feeling more cerebral and internal had she grown up now all those things could have made her feel like someone could have made her believe she was trans. Back to that innate question. No I don’t think many kids have a innate hyper focus on either their genitalia or their gender tbh honest
I think it's just 'cope.' Four years ago, when there was a subreddit that allowed for debate between GC people and trans people I asked someone who was a proponent of the 'body map' theory if he genuinely believed that he would have developed dysphoria if he had lived his entire life in isolation from other people and never became aware of the existence of females, and he justified his yes with a bunch of pseudointellectual nonsense. I looked at his profile and he was just another in denial AGP lunatic putting on a facade of rationality.
That said: I did experience dysphoria in pretty early childhood, but I would have been aware at that point have been aware of sexual dimorphism from having bathed with female relatives and being in the women's changing room at the pool with my mom or whatever, etc, etc. I do think my baby brain just developed an extremely phobia of maleness very early on and latched onto this desire to escape from it when I was too young to understand it.
I have the answer… Some children know about genitals, some don’t; most are lying about it. I think children can understand gender and absorb a lot of it very young, as babies even, but they don’t know about anatomy, no… Pretty much all my early childhood memories are “dysphoric,” lots of anatomical dysphoria about incoming male secondary sex characteristics, and have a strong feminine identity… but no “body map.” I did not know about vaginas. “HSTS” “true trans” are known to as children believe they really are the opposite sex, and learn/realize older they are actually male or female… this generally happens, to ONLY CHILDREN. Aka, kids with no siblings, who aren’t ever seeing other kids/siblings or adults naked bodies. I was dysphoric and jealous of women as a little boy/toddler long before I knew what a vagina even was- didn’t know the difference between men and women besides superficialities, obviously didn’t know anything behind what a toddler or child understand. But I knew I was a boy, and I hated it. Most “trans women” saying they had a phantom vagina or female body map as children are lying for some kind of “credit” or validity. I had dreams of being female having PIV before puberty, around age 7-8 I wondered what it would be like to have a sex change, plastic surgery, or if I was a hermaphrodite, or if I could become one… I’m not proud of it, it doesn’t give me “validity,” it’s not a “body map…” it’s a horrible disorder. What child thinks that- what adult is *proud* of it? Children can certainly experience really odd, disturbing and apparently severe dysphoria, down to even believing they will one day grow the opposite genitalia… gender dysphoria and full GID is very rare with children, even more rare is the genital-fixated-childhood-dysphorics, most are lying about it all. Freaks.
I buy the “penis envy” thing making me feel a sense of lack or incompleteness especially when coupled with society’s obvious privileging of men and boys. From there it wasn’t a long leap to developing a “phantom penis” fantasy that kept me dissociated from the traumatic experiences of femaleness and my upbringing. If you practice a mental construct hard enough, you can convince yourself of almost anything. Doesn’t mean it’s true!
Nice answer
body map no i don’t believe in it. i think you create one as you live in your body ….i read that upwards of 90% of amputees experience phantom sensations of some kind. That’s a LOT! so i guess what i don’t believe is that one’s “body map” can truly be different from one’s actual body, until an outside force is involved that radically changes one’s body. Even a haircut can be jarring, tattoos too are known to cause a high anxiety mental reaction when you’re getting used to the change.
Probably because they knew the differences between the sexes at a young age
I’m talking about whether or not that knowledge is innate. There are people who claim that they would have come to the conclusion that they were born in the wrong body even if no one was around to teach them about different bodies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8627186/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698921000420 Infants can discriminate against male and female faces without having a solid concept of sex categories. We already know 3-4 year olds gain this concept later
Idk what that means but I thought everyone had a penis until I saw otherwise.
Honestly I don’t know. For most people I wouldn’t buy it. For me I just kind of knew the human body. I knew my anatomy and had a general understanding of others when I was like 4, it just didn’t matter to me because things like hot wheels, ponies, and drawing on the walls were more important.
I honestly think it's an education thing. Kids learn to distinguish themselves from others around that age, exploring differences. They probably saw their naked mother before they had conscious memories & later wondered if they would develop into the same thing. Right after that stage, by the way, is the "poop" stage; they tend to become obsessed with excrement! We're supposed to teach our young. We're supposed to teach them to identify similarities & differences between categories of things, including body parts. On the feelings front, I've heard so many stories from so many people who became dysphoric at different ages with different relationships with their gendered bodies. I'm convinced that many of us go through discomfort in our bodies. Sometimes it relates to objectification, & sometimes to how we're treated in accordance with stereotypes rather than diverse beings with diverse interests.
I will say this to add on to the idea of comments from young children (this may seem odd coming from my parents however but it can during the time I was talking about my own gender dysphoria during my transition so.. ) I talked to my baby boomer mother about gender dysphoria and genitals years ago. She once talked about her childhood and how she never felt terribly aware of those things however she had a brother and remembered such comments as “why don’t you have a penis” etc similar comments. And I feel she mentioned more a level of discomfort and maybe even aggravated feelings as a child towards the idea. I don’t know if she said it could be compared to dysphoria as people defined it now but sis did she grew up now easily could have co opted into it. Also she was very much a hippy and grew up into the idea of feeling othered as a girl and not fitting the more “mod” or au currant beauty standard feeling a bit bookish and off though not fully tomboy. She said feeling more cerebral and internal had she grown up now all those things could have made her feel like someone could have made her believe she was trans. Back to that innate question. No I don’t think many kids have a innate hyper focus on either their genitalia or their gender tbh honest
I think it's just 'cope.' Four years ago, when there was a subreddit that allowed for debate between GC people and trans people I asked someone who was a proponent of the 'body map' theory if he genuinely believed that he would have developed dysphoria if he had lived his entire life in isolation from other people and never became aware of the existence of females, and he justified his yes with a bunch of pseudointellectual nonsense. I looked at his profile and he was just another in denial AGP lunatic putting on a facade of rationality. That said: I did experience dysphoria in pretty early childhood, but I would have been aware at that point have been aware of sexual dimorphism from having bathed with female relatives and being in the women's changing room at the pool with my mom or whatever, etc, etc. I do think my baby brain just developed an extremely phobia of maleness very early on and latched onto this desire to escape from it when I was too young to understand it.