There’s traditionally been an assumption in GD since the 1990’s that folks entering an established thread about a topic have some sort of onus to do at least a cursory legwork on the issue. Either you’ve decided not to do that, or else you are editorializing about how you think transgender persons are decepticons or something. Either way…shrug.
I don’t think that’s what I was saying, and I’ve been following this thread pretty much from the start. Sorry I lack your level of awareness on the subject, but a smug shrug does not help your cause much, assuming you’d like non-transgendered people to have a better understanding of what it’s all about. If I say I’m a woman, it does not make me a woman. If I believe I’m a woman, even though I’m 100% male as far as I can tell, then I am confused. TG from what I’ve learned simply state that their gender feeling does not match their birth gender and that’s all that’s required. But what if they’re lying? Many people lie, you know.
There really is a hell of a lot more to it than that, and you surely ought to know it. It involves doctor visits, specialist counseling, and, for kids in school, a LOT of bureaucratic checking. A kid can’t just say, “I’m a girl today, so I can use the girl’s restroom.” (That’s an ugly, nasty fantasy that the right wing has been promulgating on hate radio for a long time.)
Changing sex isn’t like getting a new hairstyle, or even a face-lift. It’s a major reassignment of some very basic human conditions.
(As an old-fashioned feminist, I’m sorry that the current debates centers so much around sex roles, as I believe that the way forward for equality is to minimize sex roles, not to engage with them.)
I agree; however, the new gender policy at the school board where I work is to allow the student to decide their preferred gender and respect that. That’s not the same as matching the set of genitals they were born with. All they have to do is decide, and there’s nothing to say a student can change their mind about which gender they identify with either. Sure, for real actual transgender people it’s a very serious process, but if a student wanted to test the policy, for a lark, they could, with impunity. Just saying.
Who cares if they are?
The idea that honesty or dishonesty is implicated at all in disclosing or not disclosing whether a person is cisgendered or not during or before an early encounter is framing the discussion in a way that is antagonistic and not apropos. Tell a stranger personal details of your life of their choosing or else you are being dishonest is not a fair way to evaluate a person’s character. People have lots of deal breakers in potential relationships and it’s not dishonest to not list them all out.
Maybe as people get to know each other they will feel more comfortable sharing more about their lives. There is no burden to shift, and no burden to carry on who should be more forthcoming. People choose the amount of information they are comfortable sharing and that choice is afforded to everyone. Prospective dating partners are not owed anything. If they are owed something, it’s civility and decency - and calling a person dishonest for not disclosing to a stranger personal details of their lives doesn’t meet that bar.
You don’t think dishonesty is a fairly serious problem? If you worked at a school where a boy decided to call himself transgender so he could sneak a peek in the girl’s washroom that it could pose something of a problem?
Has that happened at your school?
Not yet. But Indon’t see why it wouldn’t. On a dare perhaps.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Ok. When it does, come back and let us know.
I was a teenage boy once. And no teenage boy is going to dress as a girl and come to school where everyone can see them, JUST to go into the girls bathroom to try to sneak a peek at some girl peeing.
Who says you have to dress like a girl? With today’s policy all you have to do is DECIDE you want to be a particular gender and no one is allowed to harass you.
Have you seen this transgender social experiment with women’s washrooms?
No, they can’t. There are mandatory counseling sessions, requisite medical forms, legal declarations and averrals, and many other roadblocks.
The fantasy that the kid can just declare “for a lark” is a load of horse-hooey. It doesn’t work that way in California, and we’re far more trans-friendly than most of the other states.
Please research this and learn the truth; you’re repeating lies promulgated by the forces of phobia and hatred. (I am not accusing you of lying! I’m afraid you’re woefully ignorant, however, and need to do some basic research. It isn’t that hard!)
To be fair, Biffster’s claim is that the particular school at which he/she works allows students to claim to be transgendered, no hoops to jump through and no questions asked; and that a student could lie in order to take advantage of this. The scenario seems unlikely, but taking the claim at face value I suppose it’s possible.
Nope, you’re wrong. At the school where I work, a student can declare their gender at any time. No paperwork, no counselling. I am in Canada. The fact that more people have taken advantage of this rather obvious loophole is actually the surprising thing.
*have not
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Has the thought perhaps occurred to you that it is simply not a very desirable loophole to exploit? Any boy who did so would have to say he’s a girl, would be seen as a creep, and likely wouldn’t get very far with his peeping. He’d probably attract some unwelcome attention from family members of the impacted female students. All to be in the same room as some girls peeing. Sounds great, any young boy worth his salt would jump at the chance!
Well, okay, that makes a difference!
It’s a lie that right-wing hate radio has been spreading in the U.S.A.!
I would be curious to see a link to the student manual that says a student can declare and reverse gender multiple times at will. A person who declared a gender would generally be bound to that gender for the remainder of the school term, perhaps until graduation, preventing that person from participating in any gender specific activities in the “real” gender. (And that is without even considering the harassment such an activity would generate.)
Your scenario is a silly dystopian fantasy that has no chance of actually happening.
What I wonder is what the heck you guys think actually goes on in women’s restrooms?
Because I am a cis female, meaning I’ve been using women’s restrooms my entire life, and the amount of nudity I’ve seen in them total is miniscule. You do realize that women’s restrooms either have private stalls or are single occupancy, right? Pretty much all you’ll see in the ‘common’ areas are women washing their hands, brushing their hair, fixing their makeup and similar unbearably erotic activities.
I have seen bare genitalia in a rest room on maybe a dozen occasions. Always on babies having their diapers changed. Wooo!
I’ve often seen women bare a little extra thigh while tweaking their pantyhose. Shocking!
The only thing I’ve ever seen that even a teenaged boy might find exciting was that once a woman in a workplace restroom took off her top to wash out some coffee she’d slopped on herself, so, yeah, he’d have gotten a good look at her bra.
You really think we have to erect extra barriers embarrassing and harming transwomen to ward off such a minuscule chance of woman being spied on by a bathroom ‘infiltrator’, when there is virtually nothing to be seen anyway?
I think you missed the other part of what I said, which is that people weren’t very good at knowing what they will find attractive. I think that some men who say they are willing to date transwomen would, in practice, not find transwomen attractive, and some who are a little upset by the idea would actually find some transwomen attractive.
This. It’s a bathroom. You might get to hear women pee and fart. Woo hoo.
I was just half an hour ago in a restroom with a friend who is transitioning to male. (Or maybe just to non-binary, but taking testosterone and growing a beard.) They said, "I’m not sure which restroom to use. I replied, "I’m pretty sure no one [in this group we are in at this camp] cares.