I can't say I'm ever particularly aware of my gender when I'm dreaming
I've never been aware of my gender while dreaming unless it wasn't a PG dream
Same. My body just exists in the dream. Well. A blob sometimes? It's just there to make sure I can cook all these eggs for my goblin friends and the cat. Or some other insane task my brain dreamed up.
Transman here. I dream as a man even when dreaming of my childhood.
Wholesome af.
As a cis man, I'm confused. I mean I just dream about my self, do people sometimes not? Like I at most have altered memories in dreams, but it's still fundamentally me.
Right, and everything is my point of view. , so what I’m experiencing, more than on me personally
Boringly straight man here: I usually dream as myself, but occasionally I'm dreaming that I'm someone else. Could be either a man or a woman. Sometimes I have no body at all.
So I know nothing about how common my style of dreams are, but I don't see any reason why trans people would have to dream a single persona all the time.
Same
as a trans man i think my dreams have weirder things to unpack than my POV character's gender, but overall it varies, 96% of the time i'm just me, those 4% of dreams i remember that i was someone else have a pretty 50/50 gender split
and per the me part: i'm a man but gender never really comes up so i'd be more inclined to say i'm just me
probably most often one dreams as the gender they are but i often dream i can fly and breathe underwater all the time so i wouldn’t say it’s a red flag or invalidating if you happen to dream as a gender you aren’t. :)
I wish I could breathe underwater in my dreams.
skill issue
I think asking for trans people is wrong because they genuinely are (in a sense of their core identity and perception of themselves) the gender they transitioned too.
But a different question would be for example, for someone who got disbled later in life, are you disabled in your dreams?
The answer (atleast for me) in that case, is mostly I am, but not always, and sometimes less severely so than in real life.
Thank you for sharing your perspective on this.
I can only give an answer from someone who was always disabled "I am disabled in my dreams, but at the level I was in my 20s (so capable of walking unaided and stuff) despite steadily becoming worse"
I often am even more disabled in my dreams than I am in real life, as my dreams play to my fears of being entirely unable to walk (I have muscle weakness and fatigue, but I can still walk almost all of the time) or to wake up (also have narcolepsy and sometimes can't wake up).
What objective evidence do you have of your premise that men dream as a male character and women dream as a female character?
You dream of yourself being an NPC?
I dream of selling overpriced potions to the adventurer who comes by my village. When he buys nothing I get frustrated i yell "come back when you've got some coin"
Not trans, but I’d imagine it’d be same if I were: I typically dream as myself. Y’all be dreaming as other people? That’s kinda cool.
i dream of myself as the disaster of gender that i am
if im having a rough day with dysphoria irl then the dream world will typically reflect that
the trans aspect, like with most things, can be taken out of the equation. trans women being women, trans men being men, will dream being themselves most often regardless of gender
I mostly dream of drowning myself
Trans women are women and trans men are men.
As somebody who is nonbinary, I dream as some version of myself.
Also, please use “trans women” and “trans men”. Removing the space is a TERF red flag.
I'm transfemme and I've dreamed of myself as a woman for as long as I can remember.
Also what's this "trans woman" vs "transwoman?" I've for real not heard that's a problem. It's like saying "can not" or "cannot."
When you say "trans woman" you affirm that they are women, and trans is just an adjective. When you say "transwoman" it can imply that they are something different altogether, and TERFs have certainly used it as such. Like, I dunno, a carpark isn't a park? That's the first example that came to mind, anyway.
My head hurts and I have no idea what any of this means. Also what's a TERF?
Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist. The main example is J.K. Rowling, who thinks shitting on trans women is in service to feminism, instead of harming some women in order to pretend to protect others.
Basically feminist but only for cis women.
*exclusionary. Exclusive sounds like they are only feminists for trans women.
Guess that's fair. I'm a bit on the older side so all the terms seem to change so fast I can't keep up. I like transfemme but I do like your explanation on the space. Think I'll write it as trans femme from now on. Cheers.
A carpark is a park, in the dictionary, one of its meanings is an area devoted to a specific use, I.e. industrial park, carpark
I transitioned nearly 20 years ago and have been involved in online trans communities since then. This is the first time I've heard that removing the space between transmen and transwomen is a TERF thing.
It’s their way of saying that trans women aren’t women and trans men aren’t men. It’s less of a technicality thing and more of a “I’m going to be skeptical about this person’s intentions until I see more”
That doesn't make any sense. How does a space change the meaning? Especially after the words have been widely used in the trans community for decades?
it changed its meaning because bad actors decided to use that term specificlly, to imply that "trans[gender]" is a third sort of option (that is not part of the "normal" or "real" genders) and also the biggest enemy of "real [gender]" and especially "real women". The same way "transsexual" became a slur, the same way "retarded" or "special needs" became slurs/insults. If you say someone's name with enough hatred in your voice enough times it'll become an insult as well.
it's stupid i know, and we should reclaim it at one point, but for now it's a dogwhistle for transphobes, at least in online spaces
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'm a transman and will continue to call myself such.
alright, i'm not judging you? I'm just making you aware of the current connotations of using that term
do you have a citation for your final sentence? i had never encountered this, ever, and could find nothing in a fairly deep search.
I guarantee it's just something the Tumblr kids came up with. Don't give it any stock.
as someone who knows a lot about TERF discourse second hand (not a fan of personally engaging with them) - TERFs are more likely to say "transwoman" than "trans woman". I don't have a proper citation but I'll try to walk you through the logic of it
what "transwoman" implies is that it's not a "real woman" (never realwoman, of course). It subtly excludes trans women from the title of "women" by making the word itself seem like it's some sort of third option, not a real woman, not a man, a "transwoman".
trans inclusive communities nearly always have the space, that's because trans women are simply a sub-category of women, and not something different altogether.
though nowadays you're also likely to see more outspoken TERFs say "TIM" which stands for "trans identified male" (they mean trans women)
bottom line is, in online spheres trans friendly people and sources will almost always have the space, and trans exclusive people and sources tend to write that as one word
it's the same sort of linguistic shift that prompted the trans community to stop using "transsexual" move to "trans[gender]" and now "trans [gender]". Even though in essence they all mean the same, some of them have been used by groups that hate us much more than others. (For a similar example see "stupid" > "retarded" > "special needs" > "special" > "intellectually disabled". All the words before "intellectually disabled" are medical terms turned insults, and honestly i'm not even sure if "intellectually disabled" isn't halfway there already)
mkay thanks for the input. not sure if my understanding is swayed because it’s obvious OP was not using it as a pejorative. id much rather call out actually well-documented examples of transphobic language personally.
oh yeah absolutely, OP was just curious about something and used an ever so slightly outdated term by accident. I didn't make the first comment but I assume the comment-op wanted to simply give them a heads up on the current lingo so to say
Cis male but if the topic is dreams and identity I once had a kick ass lucid dream where I transformed into a Killik and got to experience being a humanoid insect with 4 arms and 2 legs.
I've had a few dreams as a cis male where I was a woman, so basically I reject your premise. However in most dreams I'm not even a character, I'm just the perspective from which the story is experienced.
You dream as a "character" like in a video game?
Not all dreams are projections of your own aspirations or true self image.
They're random scenarios put together by your brain during sleep for purposes we don't entirely understand yet, though they may be related to digesting the information you've gathered over the previous day to turn it into lessons and connections you can call on later from your unconscious memory.
You make a body and gender for yourself in dreams?
To what end?
Yes, we usually dream as ourselves.
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.