Speaking of course as Generation X’er (i.e., someone who grew up in the 1970’s and 80’s).
Here is what I remember:
-They were called ‘transexuals’. Transgender is probably more accurate. But transexual emphasized that it was purely biological. Their very sex needed to be changed. Get it?
-It was a perfectly acceptable medical condition. It was not the person’s fault. I am not denying that we say that now. But I think this was more so the case in the past. The psychological component was not emphasized, just the biological. I remember one doctor even saying that transexual people are even physically different (are they ?).
-And lastly, they were not lumped into the same category as everyone else. In other words, there was no such thing as LGBTQ in the past I CLEARLY remember (because I was there–so don’t try to dispute me ). And as I said in the past, I am not saying people shouldn’t do that. I just worry though. Putting them in the same raft. Because if the whole raft goes down, they all drown. Am I wrong?
My question is simply: Was it better, the way we treated it in the past. Because I know a lot has changed. But in this instance, I just wonder if it has changed for the better.
Also: unless you’ve come up with a specific metric you want to ask about, I’d suggest that maybe we wait for some trans folks give us their assessment of whether they’re treated “better” now than in the 70s, before anyone else chimes in.
Errr… what? No, it was usually regarded as delusional and a form of mental illness. Seriously, where did you get these ideas?
I was there, too. You are correct, there was no “LGBTQ” terminology. Such people were regarded as mentally ill, perverts, criminals, or some combination of the above.
No.
Yes, it has.
Which is not to say we’re finished - there are still a LOT of problems and bigotry against people who just want to live their lives without strangers condemning them.
In the 60s and 70s little kids played a game called “Smear the Queer” where one was handed a football then called out as queer and the other kids would chase him down and tackle him. Their attitudes for the most part didn’t change toward homosexuality over time.
Let’s start here. Way backwhen, being trans was indeed positioned as a medical rather than a political-social phenom — one was “born in the wrong body” e.g. was a woman or man “inside” but the body was of the wrong sex; and what one DID about it was transition, medically as well as socially. But that meant that people who couldn’t afford it financially or coudn’t risk it medically, and also people who looked at the questionable state of medical transition available and went “uh uh, I ain’t doing that”, were left feeling less valid in their stated identity than those who had transitioned.
SO, the trans activists changed their rhetoric. One was not “born in the wrong body”, one was wrongly “assigned at birth”. And a person’s gender identity is 100% valid regardless of whether they transition medically. And also, because people who can’t or don’t transition are more likely to be read by others as being of their birth SEX, they say that a person’s gender identity is also 100% valid regardless of whether they “pass”.
I think it’s undeniable that the trans rhetoric and the trans activists have been trying to make a wider range of people feel accepted and included.
All sounds groovy and very accepting, right? Well, they still ain’t there yet.
Because of this history, the unspoken assuption is that people who don’t transition and/or don’t pass wish that they did and that any reference to the physiology that undermines that is a frontal attack on their identity. So many of them are fond of saying that physical / morphological sex is a lie (they use the existence of intersex people to say that there is no physical-sex binary, hence it is all social). They tend to use “male” and “female” as interchangeable with “man” and “woman” / “masculine” and “feminine”. Only specifying “penis” versus “vagina” is generally acceptable for referencing physiology, and even then you’ll encounter an occasional person who does not wish to refer to what they’ve got in that fashion, or refers to their equipment AS a penis BECAUSE they identify as men so therefore by definition the physiological appurtenances they have MUST be a penis.
What many of today’s trans activists find liberating or identity-confirming is something that some of us other misfits tend to find negating and erasing. And vice versa. But they are very much used to being (and thinking of themselves as) a marginalized minority and that makes them blind to how loud a voice the transgender activist “line” is at the moment and how a genderqueer person who identifies as I do is often marginalized BY their party line.
I actually have an idea for why this perception might exist. In the past, if you learned about transgenderism, it might be in a context where everyone accepts it, while the rest of the population was basically silent about it.
But now that it’s become a mainstream topic, you’re more likely to hear about it both from the sympathetic side and the hatemongering side. There definitely are groups that have become much louder in proclaiming that accepting trangenderism somehow harms cisgender people, or some particular subset of cisgender people.
I could thus imagine someone like the OP whose personal experience was never hearing about trans people, stumbling upon their existence in some way, reading the right literature or talking to the right people who were accepting of it, and only later running into all the hateful attitudes once such became prevalent in more mainstream culture.
The only other thing I could believe is that Jim is talking about this board. I do think there was a more regressive thread recently. I do know that there were a lot of trans Dopers who said they left the board over it. And I was disappointed in seeing how much more common it was arguing that accepting trans women as women was somehow an affront to cis women.
(I had a more combative post here, but decided against it. As long as this thread doesn’t devolve like the other one, I’ll not try to rehash it.)
That’s interesting. From the outside looking in, it seems like the various genderqueer identities are becoming more and more accepted as the trans siblings they are. Sure, trans-binary hardliners still exist, but that there are fewer of them.
Heck, that other thread involved involved saying that this new acceptance of trans people who don’t want to transition was actually why accepting trans people had recently become harmful to cis women. They described it as “anyone who wants to can declare whatever gender they want” as opposed to those who actually experience dysphoria.
No, we absolutely didn’t treat transgenderism better in the past.
I first realized I was transgender 20 years ago, back when Gender Dysphoria used to be “Gender Identity Disorder” and it was treated more like a mental illness. The model of “transsexualism” at the time didn’t quite fit me, since there was the assumption that if you wanted to transition, you have to go all the way.
Having a fear of major surgery, and not having much of an issue with my penis, I didn’t think it was necessary. And that restrictive nature dissuaded me from transitioning, because I didn’t view myself like that. Not to mention the transphobia at the time, which was much more widespread, even though we were just considered a freakshow by many (daytime TV certainly didn’t help with that…)
Since then I have successfully transitioned over the past couple years since I have far less fear of doing so and I feel the medical and psychiatric communities have broadened their understanding of transgenderism to fit as many of us as possible. You can be trans, non-binary, genderqueer, whatever you want yourself to be, and that is a wonderful thing.
I didn’t feel safe to transition 20 years ago when I wanted to, but things have changed for the better recently, and so have I. Now I am a woman, and I am far happier.
They didn’t quite chase me off quite yet, but I see some of the culprits of that in this thread, so hopefully this won’t turn out the same.
Incorrect, it was wrongly considered psychological back then, and the biological causes behind it weren’t really studied until later.
Since it was considered psychological, and specifically categorized as a “disorder”, many people thought that it could be “cured” through therapy. We have realized that it can’t, because gender identity is more innate than that. But some people still think that way and that’s why conversion therapy is still around.
And yes, there have been studies showing that the brains of transgender people tend to be wired more like their true gender vs. the one they were assigned.
LGBT has been used since the 80’s, so it is not a new phrase. And transgender people have ALWAYS been a part of the wider queer community. It was two trans women (Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera) who kicked off the Stonewall Riots and essentially the LGBT rights movement itself. It’s true that the other letters of the acronym were added later to be more inclusive.
Currently we have some queer people who have an issue with us being a part of the movement, thinking that we are making it more difficult for everybody else and that our issues aren’t theirs. But we have always been there, and it just shows that transphobia isn’t limited to straight people.
I think transgender people are treated much better now. But the ‘paradigm’ in the past was both easier for other people to understand - ‘born in the wrong body’ vs gender fluid, non-binary and all the other variations - and demanded fewer changes of society. People transitioned from one sex to the other and generally tried to fit in with existing gender roles, and the assumption was that physical transition would be as full as possible. And there was no push to change the way the majority thought and spoke about themselves. This meant both that acceptance was easier, and trans people were less visible, which might be why you feel it was treated better back then.
As a member of the cis majority I still don’t feel a “push” to change the way I think and speak about myself. How does allowing someone to transition or express whatever variant of gender fluid/genderqueer/other variation in any way affect me?
It reminds me of how people used to argue (and sometimes still do) that allow same-sex marriage was a threat to all marriage. WTF? How does allowing Bill and Steve to get married affect my marriage at all? If you don’t like same-sex marriage don’t get married to someone of the same sex, otherwise, none of your business.
I was referring to the movement to use language like ‘people with a cervix’, ‘menstruators’, ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ (note this sort of language is almost never used for men’s bodies); complaints that wearing pussy hats on marches or making vulva cupcakes is transphobic because it’s ‘centering feminism on biology’, and trying to completely divorce the concepts of male and female from biology.
Right, because men are sometimes referred to as “people with a penis”, which language is almost never used for women’s bodies. Or “sperm donor”, which is seldom a compliment.
I’ll also point out that although I am a cis woman I am (no longer) a “menstruator”, and while it’s conceivable I might be an adoptive parent I am not going to be a birthing parent because you don’t need to give birth to be a mother, nor be a “sperm donor” to be a father.
Some of this involves parenting, which can be separate from sexual orientation or gender. In which case it may or may not be liberating or inclusive or exclusive of cis gender heterosexuals who don’t happen to be in a 1950’s-style nuclear family, as well as trans gender people, and those all along the hetero-to-homosexual spectrum, with a few pan and asexuals thrown into the mix.
I think some people confuse recognizing differences in others with their fear of being asked to change. Acknowledging that other people are different from me in no way compels me to be other than I am, indeed, the whole point of recognizing LGBT+ rights is to allow people to be who they are, and that would include those of us of more traditional description.
A generation ago, you only came out as transgender if your gender identity crisis was so profound, the only alternative was suicide. And even then, many chose suicide. If you could muddle along, feeling afraid and and miserable and freakish your whole life, you generally did. Because transitioning usually meant losing your family, your job, your faith community, your old friends. Horrible daytime TV wasalways from the PoV of the person finding out that a loved one was transgendered, not the PoV of a transgendered person, because no one wanted to identify with the latter. The idea was unthinkable.
I don’t think this thread is really the place to get into pros and cons, but this language is becoming increasingly common in the press, in what used to be called women’s health campaigns, and around menstrual products. There’s been no equivalent change for men. And there is great social pressure to accept and use the new language.
Changing the definition of gender to an internal state means that anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable with or fit all the stereotypes associated with their sex has their identity put in question. That’s why I said it is trying to change the way the majority think and speak about ourselves.
Well, I was wondering about your thoughts now that your false recollection has been thoroughly shot down.
That was necessary because it’s actively dangerous to carry around the notion that the LBGT community had it better in the old days before their activism forced a change in society’s thinking. That discredits the entire movement and makes it easier for haters to call for its end. If their “raft” goes down it’s because of thinking like this, not anything they’ve been doing.
Has your mind been changed? Will you be doing some reading and research about real history? Will you listen and take to heart what people are saying here/
That’s true if you increasingly common means “one is greater than zero.” Individuals with a cervix showed up in an American Cancer Society (ACS) document. CNN covered it. Some news outlets covered that some people were mocking CNN for using the term, even though they were just quoting the ACS.
The usage by the ACS was accurate as they were using it in a medical advice context. CNN quoting them was accurate because it is what the ACS said. This hardly is “increasingly common” or any great social pressure to use the new language.
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