Nice. You know very well I meant ‘mind’ as in psyche, not actual brain. If I meant brain, I would have used ‘brain’.
No, it’s called ‘psychology’. You can believe in bipolar or not but that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s real. And tell me again what you’d say to a kid of six who wants to die because she’s not a boy? Not sure if she’s in this one but why not listen to the words of people dealing with this condition? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18250458/
So the physiological makeup of a person with mental illness’s mind is irrelevant to his/her condition?
Well I would hate to see my daughter in such a state. I imagine if it happened it would satisfy my philisophical curiousity, though I prefer this method.
And that particular opinion reflects an outdated social norm, as I said. (Although admittedly it’s only recently outdated.)
You are arguing that a community has the right to enforce sexual conformity by punishing unusual expressions of gender identity on the grounds that they’re “socially disruptive”.
That’s old-fashioned. The new social norm is that issues of individual sexual identity are not anybody else’s business unless they directly affect matters that are somebody else’s business.
According to the new norm, therefore, the community is not in fact “socially disrupted” by a transgendered person’s changed gender identity in the workplace, because that person’s choices about her gender identity in this instance are none of the community’s goddamned business.
Free will has nothing to do with this debate. Transexuality is not a choice, it’s a medical condition. There are distinct, physiological differences in the brain structures of men and women, and transexuals are born with the brain structures of the sex opposite to that of their bodies. This is not something that can be reversed by an exercise of will, no more than a diabetic can will himself to produce insulin. By all reports of those suffering from this condition, this dichotomy is extremely emotionally distressing, which tends to lead to an increase in suicidal ideation, substance abuse, and other destructive behaviors. Transexuality does not make people “spontaneously hang themselves.” Transexuality does not result in the loss of free will, but (like any sufficiently oppressive or painful condition) can one to make choices that they would not have made absent that condition. Thus, the minimally compassionate amongst us can recognize that one ought to offer sympathy to people suffering that condition, and do what is in our power to help that person relieve that condition.
This is an absurd and nonsensical statement. You are using the term “act of free will” as if it is, by definition, a good thing. Which, of course, entirely misses the point of free will. Yes, the people who fired Stanton are exercising their free will. And they chose, of their own free will, to act like a pack of gigantic cocks. And because it was an act of free will, it is therefore entirely appropriate to criticism them for that act. That’s the entire reason humans invented the concept of free will in the first place: to create a philosophical basis for holding people responsible for their actions.
Kimstu I disagree that it is a foregone conclusion considering the body modification potential of cybernetics, designer chemistry and genetic manipulation.
You are talking about cosmetically shifting gender and have them be accepted as their new gender. Stanton is not a woman…period. There are more things that make a woman a woman than a little bit of funky wiring in the cranium. He is welcome to make that choice, and if he can’t hack it in the world the way the cards are stacked, well some people draw a shitty hand. It’s not for other people to accept him, but for him to find the people who will accept him. His case has done much for his cause, but he has to learn what it’s like to be a martyr, that’s part of his story.
Besides, what will teach him how to catch up on the time he missed growing up not a woman, than discrimination in the workplace? A man wants to transmute himself he has a lot more to do than a little bit of creative amputation and implantation. People are forged by life or they are broken, that’s just the way it works.
You say that they are stuck in the past, but clearly they are living in the present, and still somehow do not agree with your expectations of progress. Yet, you give that no respect. They are just ignorant bigotted heathens who must be converted by your evangel of tolerance and submission to other people’s dramatic transmutations.
I’m gonna come over to your house for dinner and polymorph into a dragon, and see how polite you can manage to be.
I am really appalled that this thread has gone as far as it has with everyone referencing sexual reassignment surgery as though it were the only element of the transition, rather than nearly the last step in an ongoing process. It’s not like Ms. Stanton got up one morning and decided, “Hey, today I’ll get my dick cut off and become a woman.” Rather, she arrived at the decision to begin the transition process and informed her employers, the City Council of Largo, who decided to make a large hairy to-do about it and violate her plan to make public her transition gradually.
We have at least three M2F women on the Dope – three I know of, others who may or may not have made mention of their status.
One of them, regretfully inactive, went through the full transition long before becoming a Doper, and no one would have known had she not decided to go public with her story – which she may now be regretting. There was a time when Dopers could grasp the subtleties of a concept like gender dysphoria. We seem to have lost that ability to think rationally about issues in favor of taking sides in absurd arguments.
A second has been in the psychological evaluation and hormonal therapy stage during her Doper period. She has not yet had surgery, and in fact was able to beget a baby for the couple with whom she lives, something unexpected due to the hormonal treatments but something all three rejoice in. But she “presents” as a woman, she lives as a woman, and the fact that she still has a penis and testes would have been nobody’s business except for the fact that they remained functional long enough for her to father a child.
A third joined the board as a practicing male, for lack of a better way to put it, and began transition while a Doper. I don’t know the details, but I presume this has gone no further than “presenting” as a woman and undergoing psychological evaluation before beginning the hormonal phase of treatment.
By the standards that seem to be assumed in this thread, only the first of these would be deemed “woman” – what they feel like as a person, what they present as, what their bodies are expressing due to estrogen treatment, means nothing next to the possession of the almighty penis. (I happen to enjoy being male and like my penis just fine; I do not think that possessing one makes me anything special in this world.)
(Please note that I have carefully not named names above – many of us know which three people I mean, and I’m sure if they want to identify with their stories as recounted by me, and/or correct any errors of fact or perception I have made, they will in fact do so, and it’s purely their business IMO whether they do.)
“Well on our way” is not the same thing as “almost there.” But we are on a path that will lead, inexorably, to social acceptance of transexuals and other sexual minorities. All the necessary parts have already been accepted by the public conscience: sexual equality, personal privacy, the rights of the individual. Most people just haven’t fit them all together into a way that says, “Transexuals are okay.” But they will, sooner or later.
Sez you. My point is that according to the emerging social norm on sexual identity issues, it’s not up to you or anybody else to make that call. If Stanton says she’s a woman, identifies as a woman, lives as a woman, goes through major medical and surgical treatment to help her present as a woman, then etiquette requires others to accept her as a woman, at least as far as public and professional interactions are concerned.
Who says they don’t agree with my expectations of progress? Sure they do. I don’t expect progress to occur all at once or at the same rate everywhere. There are always going to be people who take longer than others to catch up to new social norms.
As much respect as I give people who still believe that blacks shouldn’t be allowed to sit in the front of the bus or that women shouldn’t be allowed to be doctors or lawyers. Sure, I respect their right to hold whatever personal opinions they want, but I consider myself entitled to regard their old-fashioned prejudices as bigoted, reactionary and obsolete.
Um, sure, feel free to do that. Are you seriously presenting this as a valid argument in support of your position?
Why not? What, specifically, makes a man a man and a woman a woman?
Being transexual is not a choice. Being treated for being transexual is a choice. Discriminating against someone because they chose to have a difficult medical condition treated is profoundly immoral. Defending that discrimination is completely unethical.
This is simply sickening. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as completely devoid of compassion as you have presented yourself in this paragraph.
I’m honestly confused: are you arguing that these people are not bigots, or are you arguing that it’s wrong to criticize people for bigotry? Is there any particular reason I should have more respect for these people than I do for the KKK? Or should I also respect the KKK?
If you came over to my house, you wouldn’t have to polymorph to witness a lapse of manners.
Polycarp So you are arguing that these transgendered members of the board can’t handle having their pearls paraded out by swine like everyone else here does on a regular basis as various and sundry subjects come up in threads here.
It is unfortunate for Stanton that this sort of thing went the way it did. That does not explain to me why people who are disturbed by that sort of identity confusion have a greater responsibility to be able to deal with a paradigmatic shift, just because he chose to take an irrevocable step through a door that puts him on some sort of path to his own personal Nirvana.
No one is showing any empathy for the people around him that have to make a dramatic shift that is not a trivial one. Gender identity is a very major part of our social makeup and it has radically shifted over the past number of years.
I personally believe that our current system is collapsing around our ears, I have made many posts about such things in more political threads. We are becoming incredibly atomized and moving to a system where we don’t interact with people simply because of geographical proximity. The whole world has become suddenly cosmopolitan and a lot of people can’t deal with that.
Not everyone is a saint Polycarp with the ability to be that open-minded. If my co-worker were to do so, I wouldn’t want them fired. That does not mean I do not have empathy for the people who do not wish it to be that way.
For most people we are living in an era where technology is indistinguishable from Magic, even though we all can repeat certain Maxims about science. The lines of what ‘reality’ means are blurring. This summer I was at a festival and I saw a guy riding a mechanized spider. I talk to people who I have never seen on a daily basis in my scrying glass. It’s a lot of shifts to take all at once my friend.
I am curious as to what people think about dating issues. Does the Transgendered person have the responsibility to tell the person on the first date that they are transgendered? To what degree should the social will bend to accomodate gender dysphoria?
I hope you’re right, though I’m not nearly as certain that any of the three things you mention are as accepted as you imply, at least on a nationwide level. (Especially if you mean ‘sexual equality’ to mean ‘interchangeability of gender roles’, which all those anti-gay-marriage amendments would not seem to support.) I mean, as far as progress goes, I think we’re still at around 5% acceptance out of 100, and that’s only if things are a lot more progressive elsewhere than they are here. I definitely wouldn’t call general acceptance of transsexuals a “social norm”, not yet.
Though hopefully that’s just my ‘stuck in the middle of a backwards religious red state’ environment talking.
Reproductive apparatus, bone structure, muscle tone, sweat glands, trivial things like ‘their body’.
No one is saying they shouldn’t get treatment.
but…if you want to talk about ethics.
Not exploring empathy for both sides of the issue and just blindly accepting something based on an ideological, ignoring the human consequences of social engineering.
This is simply sickening. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as completely devoid of compassion as you have presented yourself in this paragraph.
I see, so my compassion for the bigots who are being discriminated against doesn’t count? Because I am not showing compassion for the ‘correct’ side in this debate?
You should write ‘the ethics of philosophizing on the internet.’ I am sure it will be a big seller.
No, what I am asking is why the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, so that I can see what arguments you present. So far I get a lot of votes for ‘you’re evil’ couched in some form or another.
Why? I can be very polite in person if I want to. 
This is a bit of a digression from the topic, but I would say that transgendered persons have the responsibility to be honest with a dating/romantic/sexual partner about their status whenever the partner asks them about it. Or if they think it’s too personal to discuss with that person at that time, they should at least politely decline to talk about it, and the partner can make his/her own decision about whether to pursue the relationship.
I don’t think transgendered are obligated to go on dates wearing a button saying “TRANNY”, though, or to announce the fact at the earliest opportunity. For all they know, their date may not give a hoot what their biological sex at birth used to be.
If (generic) you are uncomfortable with the idea of dating a transgendered person and think that a potential partner might be transgendered, it’s your responsibility to make that clear, IMHO. If this is something you feel you need to know, then it’s up to you to ask about it. And if they decline to discuss it, then it’s up to you to decide whether you want to take the risk of getting involved with them anyway.
I can just imagine asking girls if they were ever a man. I bet that’ll do wonders for her self-esteem in the relationship you are forming.
I guess I am glad I have trannydar.
How about: sometimes the harm done by accomodating the one is less than the harm done by accomodating the many? I mean, if the choice was “fire Stanton” or “fire everyone else”, then fine, they win. But the choice seems to be “fire Stanton” or “make everyone deal with Stanton’s presence”, in which case favoring the individual seems to do less harm.
(And holy criminy, Kimstu thinks I should ask my date if they used to be a man. I can’t think of a better way to kill a date in a hurry, possibly with violence. Things must be frikking different in The Biggest Little, that’s all I can say.)
Is that from a particular study or professional medical journal? If so, I’d be interested to read about it. I keep hearing that it’s not a choice, that those around the transgendered are obligated to accept them as the opposite sex, but it’s always struck me as a sort of semi-socially-acceptable delusion. I mean, I see it as closely related to (though not a perfect parallel with) a hypothetical situation in which a relative of mine might walk up and declare that while I and my family all call him “Bob,” he is, in fact Napoleon Bonaparte and I should address him as such. This thread seems to have been started with the question, “Are we obligated to call Bob “Napoleon” and act as if he is the Emperor of France?”
If there is no physiological difference in transgendered people, then I say “no, we’re not obligated to accept it.” In fact, I think friends and family members are morally obligated to find psychological help for the person to accept themselves and their bodies as a given. Anything else would, in my mind, encourage a large-scale, self-destructive, delusional act. Especially in the case of male-to-female surgery, where, from what I’ve heard, the body seems to act as if the new vagina were a permanently opened wound.
If, on the other hand, there is physiological/structural reason for people to think/feel/act transgendered, I would be more inclined towards flexibility, but I’m still not convinced. In the case of my hypothetical relative, Bob, if his Napoleonification were linked to an inoperable brain lesion, would that mean I should support his decision to have his shins shortened and his penis surgically reduced to Bonaparte’s infamously tiny size?
Am I way off here?
Oh, and if it is a medical condition, are surgeons obligated to do brain scans proving the abnormality before surgery?
The other side is bigoted, and simply doesn’t deserve “empathy”, any more than racists or sexists. If having a black woman as a boss disturbs a misogynist Klansman, too damned bad.
No, it doesn’t count.
Because it’s the needs of the one against the prejudice of the many, not the needs of the one against the needs of the many. They don’t need a transgender-free workplace; by all accounts Stanton did a perfectly good job there for years.
Not unless it’s really important to you. Similarly, if it’s really important to you never to date a Catholic woman, or a Jewish one, or one who doesn’t want children, then you should ask about those things up front, too.
On the other hand, if you consider all or any of these issues to be comparatively minor compatibility questions that can be addressed later when you know each other better, then by all means don’t bother to ask.
Well, I hope they are. Personally, I wouldn’t be offended if a date asked me if I was now or had ever been bio-male (I have small hands and no Adam’s apple, but broad shoulders and a deep voice, so it wouldn’t surprise me that somebody might wonder if I might possibly be a very feminine post-op). It’s never happened, though.
I don’t consider it automatically insulting to be told that one has a few opposite-sex traits in one’s physical appearance (and in fact, I’ve cross-dressed now and then in amateur opera roles, so the concept of trying to present as male isn’t totally foreign to me).
What would probably turn me off, to be honest, is the thought that a guy would be so tranny-phobic that he would need to establish right away that he couldn’t deal with any kind of dating situation with somebody who might even possibly have been bio-male at some point. But hey, if that’s how he really felt about it, I would respect him for being straightforward and courageous enough to ask about it honestly.
Do you have access to a reasonably good science library? I can search for the articles though my university but you need an account for access to a lot of the library materials. Here are some citations for you:
A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality by Zhau et al. (Nature. 1995 Nov 2;378(6552):68-70) To quote from the abstract, “Our study is the first to show a female brain structure in genetically male transsexuals and supports the hypothesis that gender identity develops as a result of an interaction between the developing brain and sex hormones.”
Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus by Kruijver et al. (J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2000 May;85(5):2034-41) Quote from the abstract, “The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobiological basis of gender identity disorder.”
I found both of these with a simple PubMed search. Enjoy
Yeah, see, you wouldn’t be offended. However, most people in these here parts would not react to being asked their religion in quite the same way as asking them if they were once the opposite gender. Around here accusing a woman of being that thoroughly unfeminine is pretty much universally an insult, and accusing a man of being that womanly is most likely a short road to an ass-kicking. (I’ll know gender equality has taken hold when the woman kicks my ass for it too.)
It’s becoming more and more clear that your position is based on a world entirely foreign to my own. Which is fine for you, but has no relation whatsoever to my position on the matter.
The fact is that around here the default assumption is that the person has one of the two standard sets of piping, and has had it since birth. That’s the way things are, and you don’t have to ask. If this is not the case, you probably had better wear a tranny badge, 'cause otherwise when people finally find out they will probably think that you were deliberately hiding your to-many-of-them-disturbing-and-possibly-disgusting secret out of some deliberate attempt to trick them or something. Which could, one supposes, lead to firings, if the people involved had a little bit of religious bigotry backing up thier feelings of betrayal, which is not exactly uncommon in these parts.
The fact is that (around here) the social norm is that nobody’s gay, and nobody’s transsexual. Based on the fact that gay marriage was pretty much roundly banned in america an election or two ago, I tend to think that most of the USA has the same social norms as here, give or take the odd city here and there. The more I think about it the more these arguments based on the “changing social norm” seem to be based on what people wish the way things were, not the way things actually are. Especially when people try to apply these rose-colored arguments to the infamous bigots of Tampa Bay.