First, it started with people saying cis women getting breast implants was gender-affirming surgery and at least that kinda made sense on the very surface level. Now people are claiming all plastic surgeries are gender-affirming which made me check whether this was some orchestrated trolling effort. Doesn't seem like it.
Here's the tweet .
why are you booing her, she's right. it's maybe a little silly to be specifically highlighting his hair, but gender affirming care is absolutely and unquestionably available to cis people in a way that it is not for trans people. all these fucking billionaires and grifters are injecting themselves with fucking testosterone all the time, that they already produce, because they want more of it so bad that they're willing to cause the cessation of their own natural hormone production. that is gender affirming. getting his hair filled in is the same fucking thing, not because it is inherently but because he did it to affirm his own social role! billionaires shouldn't look like balding dweebs in elon's opinion, so he got medical care that physically reaffirms to him his understanding of his place in a social hierarchy. ok. not the same as all plastic surgeries being gender affirming, which is not what the tweet claims anyway.
I didn't mean the specific post. There are people in the replies saying exactly that and people in this thread saying that any plastic surgery that makes you more of an attractive member of your gender is gender-affirming.
i mean...they're certainly right about that as well. i'd consider it more broadly socially affirming than strictly gender affirming, but it's still more care than trans people often have access to. and that's the point no? there's all sorts of supposedly "medically unnecessary" procedures that exist solely to attempt to help a person feel affirmed in their social identity that are widely accessible, and are used by the rich and famous without broad social reckoning.
One point, I would argue against this, is that no they are not widely available, they are available to the rich & famous such that they might reinforce their own social position by better embodying traits which are understood to be desirable.
You cannot as a random cis-prole-asshole wander into the doctors office & ask for the Insta-Fit Model Special, and expect to fuckin get it. You can barely expect to be allowed enough time to yourself to groom yourself, or to be able to follow a coherent exercise regimen; and even then that's entirely dependent on whether or not you can still maintain economic productivity while doing that.
Yeah, that's certainly true, but we're talking about Elon specifically and the hypocrisy of our societal acceptance of his self-affirming actions relative to trans people being demonized for wanting to do so in the first place. I would also argue that these things are widely accessible at least in the sense of "probably won't get responded to with hate crimes," even if practically capitalism is the fuck that it always is.
Well I'm not arguing against the notion trans people are prevented from pursuing their gender identity; or that there aren't reasons beyond "just" economic disenfranchisement for that, as it were.
Edit: fuck I think I miswrote that before hand.
I guess my point here is that I think that even cis-people are more fucked up & insecure about their own bodies (at least I know I am) now that body-modification & "physique enhancement" among the wealthy has basically completely lost any taboos & as labor continues to get more squeezed for economic value.
oh yeah, I mean of course that's true, it's just not what I thought we were here to talk about I guess. that said, I qualified my original comment for a reason.
I'm not saying that it is genuinely freely available to cis people, or even that cis people don't have issues relating to gender, of course they do. I'm neurodivergent and one of the phrases that I've resented my entire life has been "act like a man." I don't fit the western standards of masculinity in many ways, it's just not something that I struggle with or has caused me harm in many ways, so I don't really talk about it, I just try to be an enthusiastic advocate for the marginalized. anyway, my point was rather that cis people are encouraged in many ways to affirm their gender in society, and there is much more acceptance of that affirmation taking the form of cosmetic and/or surgical intervention of some kind. fuck, most men I know are circumcised, a genital mutilation that is generally accepted as a normal gender affirmation to be applied to male newborns. that's way more drastic than what people are saying is "grooming" the kids as trans or however reactionaries put it.
Enbies can get cosmetic surgery to increase how attractive they are too, including traits that are considered universally attractive among all genders (teeth whitening, correcting a cleft palate, nose job for a crooked nose, etc).
So are non-binaries affirming a gender if they get these surgeries to be more attractive? Which gender? This entire thing falls apart really quickly when you think about it.
Fitting into the social role of billionaire is not “gender affirming”
Not really what I'm saying. Billionaires have the opportunity to get themselves medical intervention that affirms their social identity to themselves with little fanfare. Trans people do not generally have that.
How does that relate to gender, which is the topic of the OP. If you want to change the subject and talk about social role affirmations, sure but that’s not the discussion at hand
the fuck do you think a gender is?
Do you think literally all social roles are gender or gender related?
Gender is a subset of the larger category of social roles and expectations. You are equivocating gender and all social roles
If what you were saying was right, non-binaries like me wouldn’t have any social roles at all? Do I just sit alone in a cave? Or do I have expectations and responsibilities still not tied to my gender identity such as parent, sibling, lover, Patriot, janitor, etc?
what in the world? let me break this down simply.
Premise 1: It is ok to change yourself to affirm your social role. Premise 2: Gender roles are a subset of all social roles. Conclusion: It is ok to change yourself to affirm your gender role, whatever that might be.
Non-binary people living in a western society are still by and large expected to visibly conform to a gender role in public or potentially be ostracized, unfortunately. i think it's absurd to read my defense of trans personhood as an attack on nonbinary people... the only point i've been making is that society at large generally accepts the category of changing yourself to affirm yourself, in many instances it is lauded, except for trans people. that is all. i mean the things i say and no more.
You're doing God's Work with these longtexts
I agree with both your premises, but I don’t agree with the conclusion that all cosmetic surgeries are gender affirming, which is the disputed conclusion the tweet makes. Your premises don’t lead to this conclusion
Are all cosmetic surgeries socially affirming? Yes.
Are all cosmetic surgeries gender affirming? Dubious.
i mean, i said in my first post that I think the hair treatment being considered "gender affirming care" specifically is a bit silly, but then, I don't really expect random fucking internet influencers to thread the academic needle between specifically gender affirming care and more broadly socially affirming care. (care being employed pretty fucking dubiously when being applied to rich assholes getting plastic surgery for funsies.) I think a more charitable interpretation is to simply understand the point to be about socially affirming care more broadly, and that it doesn't matter because she could just as easily picked Elon taking literal hormone replacement therapy along with his hyper macho best bro Joe. There's just not a good visual way to show that the richest guy on the planet no longer thinks his balls are making him masculine enough or whatever.