I’m a good liberal (I think), and I have no problem supporting “gay issues” (also known as civil rights), in general. And I think I support “trans issues” too, whatever they may be. But the problem is that I don’t really understand what trans issues are… can anyone give me a basic rundown/primer of “trans issues”? How are they different than what are typically thought of as gay issues, or other civil rights issues? What should a modern person who doesn’t know much or understand much about transsexuals and transsexuality, but wants to, know?
Well…people can point to links here and there but a real understanding of the issue requires reading, such as True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism–For Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals by M. Brown, or Transgender Explained For Those Who Are Not by Joanne Herman.
A good, approachable biography of a transwoman which is relatively recent is Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There.
Or shoot, to get started, the Wiki page isn’t so bad. It’s updated by a group of transpeople who are militant about keeping the vandalism away. Transsexual - Wikipedia
Trans issues are distinctly different from LGB issues, and there is from time to time a struggle between the LGB and T groups. A small minority in the LGB world view the Ts as an embarrassing necessity to include, and a small minority in the T world view the LGB groups as being made up of people with lifestyle choices, as opposed to serious medical conditions. There was some very minor rancor after Macy v. Holder last year, where transgender persons were given protections under Title VII by the EEOC, while LGB folks were left out in the cold.
Transgender persons, especially transsexuals, have a serious handicap compared to LGB persons. Example: if everyone accepts a lesbian as lesbian, then that’s cool and she will feel good. But even if everyone accepts a transgender person, the transgender person typically has not and will never accept themselves until major medical treatment of some sort.
Transgender persons are much more typically the butt of jokes and discrimination than LGB persons. Transgender people, socially, are about where LGB persons were in the 1970’s. And it’s much, much harder to be “stealth” as trans than as LGB.
I mean…goodness, this is a subject a mile wide and quite deep. Perhaps you can narrow down what your question is?
At work:
Which bathroom do they get to use?
What’s the dress code?
Are reassignment surgery, hormone treatments & such covered by insurance?
Jail/Prison:
If they happen to get arrested, which lockup do they go into? Do they continue to receive hormone treatments while incarcerated? Are such treatments (up to full physical reassignment surgery) covered under the prison-system-provided healthcare?
I’m not expert of the subject but my understanding is that transsexuality is more all-encompassing than homosexuality. A gay man or woman is essentially looking for the right to form a relationship (of whatever type) with another person of the same gender. But outside of relationships, gay people are essentially living the same as straight people of the same gender. A lesbian, for example, doesn’t have issues involving things like where they shop for clothes.
With a transsexual, the issue if they want to live their life as the gender they feel they belong in rather than their gender of birth. Because so much of our social identity is tied in with gender, this means transsexuals face a lot more confrontation with society than gays do. When you go shopping for groceries, for example, your identity as gay or straight isn’t an issue. But all public appearances are an issue for a transsexual.
In New York, a determination is made during their initial orientation period. It’s based on interviews with psychologists and examinations by physicians.
My understanding is that prisoners who are already involved in hormone therapy will continue to receive hormones as essentially “maintenance” of their current status. But their gender reassignment will not move forward and surgery is not included.
That’s part of my problem… I’m not even sure what questions to ask beyond “transsexuals… huh?”. But your answer is a good start, and I’ll check out some of the sources you mention.
Forgive me for once again answering through my own lens, but lack of trained healthcare practitioners is a big issue, too. Hormone and surgical treatments have risks, benefits and side effects that many nurses and doctors don’t know about to adequately educate their patients.
Presenting as one gender but still having some of the organs associated with the other can sometimes mean important things aren’t screened for or educated about. A transman who still has his ovaries continues to be at risk for ovarian cancer, for example.
Many trans__ people self medicate, with hormones or herbs bought off the internet, because there’s just no physician in their home town trained to or willing to prescribe the right stuff. Needless to say, this is incredibly dangerous.
Many hospitalists don’t know the risks of discontinuing hormone therapy abruptly when the patient is hospitalized.
Emergency room personnel have been known to cut the binders that many transmen wear to bind their breasts flat because they don’t know how to get them off. This causes expense, body image disturbance and even the threat of violence when the man leaves the ER with visible breasts under his clothes.
RNs and CNAs have been known to unwittingly and/or callously cause a scene when bringing the wrong kind of urinal to a patient’s room or when performing patient care and finding unexpected genitals.
For that matter, if you have semi-private rooms, what gender roommate do you put the patient with if they’re not fully transitioned?
Well, you’re also talking to one right now (I am a transsexual woman with an intersex genetic condition, who is 100% out and an activist and mentor in my trans community), so feel free to ask me questions.
It’s a problem, but it’s getting better rapidly, IMO, especially in cities which are getting reputations for being “Meccas” for transpeople.
Sigh. Yes, sadly, a very large number of self-diagnosed transwomen take outrageous amounts of things such as black cohosh, clover, soy, ginseng…shoot, I can’t even remember all the herbs and etc. Or they’re buying black-market birth control pills. Spending 10x more than they would on estradiol and spironolactone. I do my best to educate, but they just don’t want to listen. This region is one of the “Meccas” I mentioned, and there is a good team of therapists, physicians, and support groups working exclusively with transsexuals.
While intending no disrespect to the trans community, there’s just something inherently comic about the phrase “unexpected genitals”.
BTW, Una, if you have any plans to fly over the UK to kick the living shit out of Richard Littlejohn we’ve got a spare bedroom you can stay in.
Hmm…I’ll take a full English breakfast, Ty-Phoo with soy, and the FT in the morning, please… 
Apologies if I bugger up the terminology here.
I know a woman who was male at birth and has since had the surgery and hormones etc. Nice person but does tend to cop a fair bit of flak from some people.
She is quite open about who she is and that seems to rub some people the wrong way like she shouldn’t talk about it. Some of the vitriol she has copped on some bulletin boards has been downright nasty.
In a different case, a number of years ago a bloke named Michael (who I didn’t know) who worked on the same floor as me in an office building went off on leave for an extended period and was to return to work as “Michelle”.
There were some preparatory meetings between groups of staff and management , basically around education so as to attempt to minimise issues. What i found quite surprising was the number of women whop had real issues with “Michelle” using the female toilets.
Hmm…sounds familiar.
The funny thing is, for all of the fuss people make about transgendered individuals (is that the right term?) using the “wrong” bathrooms, I’m guessing they’ve shared bathrooms with them all the time without even knowing it!
What would those herbs do? I mean, do they have some kind of hormone-type effect, or is it one of those “all-natural hippy health woo”, like raw foodism and stuff.
I’m hoping nothing, since I use some of them in cooking, and am pretty attached to my current gender. :eek:
They’re all plants that have phytoestrogen, which which are chemicals in plants that are pretty similar to estrogen (with the exception of black cohosh, which doesn’t, but people think it does, because it’s a folk remedy for PMS). There’s not really much evidence that phytoestrogen does much. Megadoses have caused suppression of testosterone in rats, but, frankly, you’d need to eat nothing but soy to get the same effect.
Basically, it’s a scam.
In the Michael/Michelle case, no. From those women’'s viewpoint, a guy in drag suddenly wants to visit the womens bathroom.
Complicating the picture is that , AFAIK, sexual orientation rarely changes with the switch to the preferred gender. So the “guy in drag”, if he had been heterosexual before, would still be attracted to women.
So while I think that the women in the Michael/Michelle case should get over themselves and stop making life more difficult for Michael/Michelle then it already is, they do have a (theoretical) point.
Interesting. I never thougth about it, but it is true that the T in LGBT does require political and societal clarity onm many small issues, and a general loosening up on cultural norms of what is appropriate gender behavior.
The taboo on even the smallest perceived sexual transgression is likely to complicate matters, like in the Michael/Michelle case where the women sharing the bathroom could think of themselves as victims that the straigth guy in drag would prey upon. :rolleyes:
This will vary by location, insurance provider, etc. I expect that having the whole package covered will be most likely in rich countries with UHC, but that’s just a WAG.
There are certainly right and wrong ways to transition at work. It’s one of the primary things I counsel on, since my work transition was to be blunt, flawless.
Rarely is not correct; that’s actually kind of a “party line” some activists grabbed onto in the 1990’s which I wish they hadn’t done. I would say it’s “sometimes.” A considerable number become bi.
As I said, there are right and wrong ways to transition.
The wrong way is typified by a woman I personally know, who went home on Friday in a suit and tie, and showed up at work on Monday in high heels, a pink twinset and pearls. They had not practiced walking in heels and they wobbled and looked awkward. They had not practiced “work makeup” and were made up like they were going to a nightclub. Not only did they not tell anyone at all, dumping in on them like a surprise, but they gave off 101 signals which screamed “guy in a dress.” It also didn’t help that they were about 6’2" (about 6’6" in their heels) and about 250 pounds. Add to this, she was known as an “asshole manager” who had pissed off at one time every single person they worked with.
She lasted about 4 months, and was terminated for “poor performance.”
Not all “guys in drag” are transexuals in transition. Should both groups be allowed to use the women’s restroom?