If for some reason you did think of me as a man then I would still expect you to respect the fact that I identify as a woman and behave accordingly. Your personal views on who is and isn’t “really” a woman would not be any of my business unless you chose to make them my business.
I think one problem with this line of thinking though is that, what if you are at one point in position of power over something that a trans person might need. Say, going to a gym/locker room/using a bathroom at work.
Would your views and attitudes then clashes with the trans person’s interests? Would you prevent a trans person to use the facilities/activities according to their new legal sex?
Because, yeah, what one random person is thinking of me in his head, I just don’t care.
If you were a friend, I might distance myself if I knew about your views. Or convince a non-trans friend to say they’re trans to you just to see if you’re going to do the “oooh I just could tell! because you act like/look like/said this or that” dance. 
Stop thinking to much about other people’s genitals or chromosomes. Unless you are in an intimate relationship it is none of your goddamned business whether either or both match how that person considers him-or-herself.
Don’t get me wrong, life would be a lot easier if everyone were fully accepting, especially at this stage when I do–to put it bluntly–look like a man with make-up and fake tits.
But in the real world, there are a lot of people out there who are never going to see me as a “real” woman. It’s just an inconvenient fact. And as I’ve said before, all I can ask is that they address me in my chosen manner and let me live my life. And all I can do is talk to them, and maybe they’ll change their mind once they can associate a human being with the subject.
I’m much more concerned about people who are going to discriminate against me, give me verbal abuse, or get violent.
This, a thousand times. (I’ve just mentioned it in the other thread, actually.) People are obsessed with our genitals. Please stop it.
NM
Your second sentence contradicts your first. Because you are quite correct that someone’s personal views on what constitutes a woman are nobody else’s business. Unless they come to me and insist that I play along with their personal views instead of my own.
If it’s none of my business what you think is a woman, then it is none of your business what I think is a woman. Play whatever games you want - I’m not going to beat you up or kill you or anything like that. But I’m not going to play along.
Regards,
Shodan
I wonder if you’d opinion might change when in a situation where you actually knew someone personally who transitioned. I admit I’d not thought about it a whole lot until my first boyfriend contacted me via Facebook and told me he was transitioning into a woman. 5 years later I honestly keep forgetting she was ever a boy - the new person with a full range of hopes, frustrations and attitudes ‘fills out’ the shell of the sex change-only that you might be thinking about - my friend is completely a woman and it goes more than skin deep.
What you call “playing along,” others might call “not being a dick”.
By addressing a trans person in the way they want to be addressed, you’re showing a modicum of respect for them, at no cost to yourself. It makes no difference to you whatsoever – it takes just as much effort to say “she” as it does “he”. But to the other person, it makes the difference between feeling like a respected human being and feeling like a piece of shit.
Believe what you like, but don’t let it get in the way of good manners.
Don’t call other members names in this forum, use the Pit.
Well, everyone has their own standard as to what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t. Personally, “I know better than you what gender you should be presenting as,” strikes me as a tad arrogant at best.
So, you wouldn’t mind if you happen to fit the category of what I think is a woman and I addressed you as such? Or would you find it just a tad annoying that I refused to address you as you self acknowledge ?
How about showing me a modicum of respect by not asking me to play along with something that I don’t think is real in the same sense as you do?
I would think good manners would include not calling people names if they don’t care to participate in what we agree ought to be up to the individual, and not anyone else’s business.
Regards,
Shodan
Knock yourself out. Keep in mind that you are going to look a lot sillier calling a guy in a moustache “she” than I do referring as “she” to a guy in a dress.
Regards,
Shodan
Perhaps your problem is with the transformation, not the end result. The two examples I know came out of the procedure looking like women, and I didn’t know them as men, but I’d guess they were always women at heart. At work one person came out as a man (not come out in the closet sense, came out of the procedure sense) and as a woman he was kind of mannish. I figure we are just setting nature right, as we do so often nowadays.
I have to agree with this. Knowing several people through transition, I find it’s much easier in practice than as an intellectual exercise.
If I met someone as Paul and later Paul became Pauline, for a short period of time (a couple weeks, max) I find myself correcting my pronouns and apologizing a lot. But then even in my own head, memories about Paul get he’s and *his *and Paul, and memories of Pauline get she’s and *hers *and Pauline, and while I certainly don’t forget that Pauline and Paul are the same person, my brain has no problem keeping it straight. What I have trouble with is telling a Paul-era story and using the name Pauline.
Running with hippies as I do, it’s the same for names. My friend Ladybug now works at my company. Professionally, she’s always used her given name, Tammy. At work, I refer to her and think of her as Tammy. Socially, she’s still Ladybug. It was a little confusing the first week or so, and I caught myself asking my boss, “Is Ladybu-I-mean-Tammy working tomorrow?” but I got over it pretty quick.
I think most bigotry, including benign bigotry, is greatly diminished when you actually get to know the people that intimidate you.
Clearly you’ve never met my great aunt Gertrude.
So wait a minute–
Here’s the scenario: You go to work for a new company. You sometimes deal with Jane in accounting. By the by, somebody mentions that up until a few years ago, Jane used to be John. Do you start sending emails to Jane that say “Hi John?”
Exactly. I’m not the thought police, so if for some reason another person didn’t believe that I was “really” a woman (or not “really” anything else that’s a part of my personal identity) then I would neither know nor care…unless that person chose to let me know about it through their words or actions. And by that point we’re no longer in the realm of personal beliefs. Other people’s personal beliefs are not my business, but the way they treat me is.
That’s the point I’ve been trying to make to the OP. Other people aren’t going to care much about what you think, they are going to care about what you say and do.
Mr. Kobayashi, I don’t think you’re an asshole, or even much of a bigot (a bit around the edges, maybe, but hey, we’re all bigoted against someone). I think it’s great you’re willing to challenge your own views, and I’d like to throw you some food for thought:
Biological gender isn’t as binary as most people think. There are people with intersex conditions of varying degrees, some so severely that when they are born, and the doctor who caught the baby is asked if the baby is a boy or a girl, the only possible answer is “I don’t know”.
These days, these children are left surgically untouched as much as possible, until they are old enough to help determine what gender they are. In the past, the doctor would randomly assign them a gender, and they would be surgically altered to be one or the other.
Sometimes the doctor was wrong. These people were now stuck in the wrong bodies, not because they were born the “wrong” sex, but because someone did that to them.
If such a person wished to return socially to their true gender, what would you view them as? The gender they feel like, or the gender the doctor assigned them, and surgically altered them to?
On the other hand, there are other intersex conditions where the sex of the child isn’t ambiguous at all. They are born, and look like little girls or little boys, with standard factory issue parts and they see themselves as the gender they look like. But years later, it is discovered that the little girl, a woman now, who feels and looks 100% female, has XY chromosomes. What is this person? The gender she looks like, feels like, has been raised as and treated as her whole life? Or what the chromosomes say?
What if there could be intersex conditions of the brain? Where the body is one sex but the brain is another? What is the person then?