Both true–and I don’t fault her outspokenness–I’m just saying that in this particular case it may have been one post too early. Something like Haj’s suggestion first and if rebuffed, then the double-barreled shotgun of post #7.
Considering her second post
[QUOTE=Eve]
You know . . . I try to be a good sport, I really do, and I do not want to become one of those angry, angry people.
But in the past two weeks, the NYT has used the word “tranny” twice (and have ignored my e-mails telling them that if they don’t use nigger, kike or faggot, they really should not be using “tranny”).
I happened across mean-spirited “sex change” jokes on Family Guy (no surprise, Seth McFarland is a world-class douche) and The Today Show (bit of a surprise, and the crew guffawed heartily at the joke).
And three threads here on the SDMB. To be fair, 95% of posters are coming to our defense and being regular bricks, but it’s the 5% of idiots who make me tired. “We’re where you were 100 years ago,” I recently told a black friend. Or where gays were 50 years ago. People know we exist, but just as human punchlines.
[/QUOTE]
I’m willing to overlook a little over-reaction. I think in the same circumstances, I’d have done the same thing.
I don’t reject the notion that it’s easier to instruct people when you try to come off as reasonable and nice.
I DO reject the notion that people are justified in ignoring complaints about offensive words if the complaint isn’t couched in the nicest terms. Basically, it’s the old argument that gee, black people would get so much more respect if they didn’t act all uppity.
Speaking softly and the metaphorical big stick are both necessary.
Also, Martin Hyde has made these statements before, and also claims that people with mental illnesses should be barred from voting. So, just recognize what a sinkhole y’all might be stepping into.
Not only that, but I strongly suspect the story was strategically modified to titillate some of the blogger’s own secret fixations. It just reads that way.
Me too. Who said that?
People who say things like this:
And this:
This is an incredibly common reaction, where someone gets called out (specifically or generally) and they act like it’s the tone of the calling out that’s the problem, that if the person had been nice about it, they’d go along, but not if they were more forceful.
You’re right, jsgoddess.
Agreed, and it’s totally unjustified.
It is, however, predictable. And I think about MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
It seems to me that the most effective approach to social change follows the model King outlines: you make sure there’s a problem, you negotiate peacefully with the folks responsible for the problem, you make sure you’ve got your head on straight for dealing with the problem, and at the end of the process you go for the gusto.
In this thread, there’s a good case that Eve skipped the “negotiation” stage. I rather suspect it’s because she’s engaged in that stage innumerable times and feels like she’s beyond it. She may not have acted as the best ambassador from the transgender community to the cisgender community in which the OP’s story is told.
On the other hand, the OP (and a lot of other folks) didn’t really act as the best ambassador from the cisgender community to the transgender community in which Eve and others live. For a good reason: we don’t live every day of our lives in the ambassador role; we don’t structure every post here around King’s 4-step nonviolent resistance model, even though that model’s really effective.
I mentioned that moment in the video before when Isis mentioned Howard Stern’s use of the word “tranny.” Janet (?) at that moment shivered in visceral disgust: she clearly loathes the word. And I’m sure Janet would have understood if Isis had ripped Stern a new asshole. But, because Janet was trying to effect change, she started with negotiation before moving into the ripping. And it worked.
Of course anyone who says, “Because you started with anger instead of making nicey-nicey, I can continue being unjust” is an asshole of the highest caliber. There’s no excuse for that. But if you want to change minds, I’m convinced that starting with the polite approach works best.
Great post LHoD. That is exactly what I have been trying to get across all day. For my troubles I was accused of all of my years of activism and charity was just to score message board points in the future should the need arise and that I am not entitled to an opinion on the best way to handle bigotry.
Martin Hyde would rather label trans gender people mentally ill, than recognize that there are people who know that they are in the wrong body, and will make the effort to work with what is available in order to correct the problem.
Convincing people that what they know to be true is wrong, that they would be better off changing to match what others expect of them or they will be labeled crazy? This is a great example of how trans gender people are oppressed and discriminated against in the world.
People like Martin Hyde may not realize it, but his attitude does more harm than good, because some of the young people hold onto hope for the change into a gender of which they know themselves to be.
They might instead believe the Martin Hydes of the world, and decide that they are very much without hope and mentally ill- for knowing what they know, and wanting what they want.
Frustration related to this type of issue IMO caused the suicide of someone my daughter knew years ago. He was about to enter a gender “re programming” through the family’s religion. No one in his family admitted that it was probably this intervention which caused the suicide, but rather they discussed how he was mentally ill to want to transition.
As for Martin Hyde’s claim, sure: if scientists can find a safe, effective, noninvasive means to help transgender people be comfortable in their body, and if transgender people find they prefer this means to surgery, by definition it’s a better treatment for gender dysphoria.
But when you’re researching any new treatment, the ethical way to do it is to compare it to the best available treatment. And currently, my understanding is that we have an excellent treatment for gender dysphoria, and it works: gender reassignment surgery. In order even to consider anything else, it must be better than the best available treatment. So far, every other treatment has failed miserably, and I question why he’s really so interested in finding an alternative: is it really about them, or is it about his own understanding of gender?
Part of what’s difficult about this issue for me is my own relationship to gender. Although I’m male, I don’t feel like it’s an especially important part of who I am. If I woke up tomorrow in a woman’s body, other than the social difficulties it’d entail, I don’t think it’d be too much of an adjustment for me. When people talk about what it means to be a “real man,” I scowl in frustration, because the idea is pretty nonsensical to me–and similarly, when someone says that so-and-so isn’t acting like a lady, I find the concept appallingly absurd. And similarly, when someone talks about feeling like a woman, I absolutely cannot conceive of what that’d feel like, any more than I can conceive of what it’d feel like to be a man.
But one of the big lessons of being an adult is that you don’t have to get things viscerally in order to respect them. Some folks–not me, some folks–do feel like a man. And that’s important to their identity, just as it’s important to my identity to be a teacher, or to be a parent, or to be a creator. I want other folks to respect my identity markers, not because they viscerally “get” them, but because they’re thereby respecting my humanity and autonomy. So I try to respect someone’s desire to be a man, or to be a woman, the same way.
Very good post.
Maybe someday, we’ll be able to have brain transplants, and trans individuals can, I don’t know, swap bodies with each other? Would that make sense?
It’s. Been. Done.
Let me ask you this – what would YOUR response be if, tomorrow, you woke up in the body of a woman? Would you rather just have therapy to accept that you’re actually a woman?
I really don’t know how to respond to this tonight. I’m tired. Just…tired. 
I’ll try, although I may not be qualified.
Imagine a guy who comes into the office. “Look,” he says. “I know I’m living in the 21st century. I know I command no great armies. I know I haven’t grown up French. But I really, really feel like Napoleon. And if I can change my name to Napoleon and wear a Napoleon hat, that’ll eliminate this deep, profound discomfort from my life.” From dealing with other folks who’ve undergone a similar experience, you know it’ll work. You know that trying to convince him that he’s not in some deep, perhaps metaphysical sense Napoleon will be really traumatic for him and will be highly unlikely to do any good whatsoever.
Wouldn’t you give the dude a hat and let him change his name?
Someone else comes in. “Look,” they say. “I know Jesus isn’t going to appear in front of you and tell you he’s in the room. I know that when a priest says a blessing over the wine, you couldn’t put it in an IV and save the life of an accident victim. But I really, really believe in Catholicism. And if I can just say my prayers and be left alone to experience communion, that’ll eliminate this deep, profound discomfort from my life.” From dealing with other folks who’ve undergone a similar experience, you know it’ll work. You know that trying to convince him that Catholicism is false will be really traumatic for him and will be unlikely to do any good whatsoever.
Wouldn’t you leave the dude alone and let him take communion?
Someone else comes in. “Look,” they say. “I know my body is physiologically masculine. I know that folks who look at me see a man at first glance. I know that my genetic code probably contains a Y chromosome. But I really, really feel like a woman. And if I can be treated as a woman and undergo gender reassignment surgery, that’ll eliminate this deep, profound discomfort from my life.” From dealing with other folks who’ve undergone a similar experience, you know it’ll work. You know that trying to convince this person that they’re not really a woman will be really traumatic and will be unlikely to do any good whatsoever.
Why on earth would you treat this person any different from the first two?
Indeed, if there’s any difference to be found, it’s this: we don’t have a track record of people who, despite being able to discuss the material evidence at hand, profess a deep identity with Napoleon. And we don’t have a history of Catholics entering a deep, often suicidal depression when their religion is suppressed. The case for respecting the transgendereds’ decision, regardless of whether it makes sense to you, is much stronger than the case for respecting Catholics’ decisions.
Eve is on vacation this week, and probably away from the internet. I don’t know if she’ll return to this thread. Threads where people debate whether I’m a woman or not, or what level of slur they feel justified in directing against us, are really painful for me to read. Eve feels the same, and she has been confronting such ignorance and prejudice for many more years than I have, and if I’m beyond fed up with people spreading ignorance and bigotry about us—ignorance and bigotry that have direct and catastrophic impacts on the health and well-being of trans people in many ways—imagine how much more exasperating it is for her.
They’ve been researching cures for HIV/AIDs, ALS, even diabetes and such for decades. Just because they’ve already done that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. I don’t remember saying we should abandon all current treatment methods, either. There is no dichotomy here.
Your sex can be determined easily by any biologist. Most likely I can infer you were born a man, which means you will always be a man. I don’t think you deserve any persecution, I don’t think people should call you “tranny” if that is a word that offends you. But I also can’t agree that it’s “ignorant” to follow the science here, and the science doesn’t define sex by what someone identifies their “gender” as. Gender is a mostly ephemeral social construct and we should be fine with people behaving however they wish as long as they aren’t a danger to themselves or others. But to act as though someone is being offensive or ignorant by simply recognizing that sex isn’t based on how you feel, but is an immutable biological characteristic doesn’t fly either.
No. “Sex” is just a word, and biologists tend to use it to refer to a collection of traits.
I suspect Johanna would not disagree with any of the following biological statements:
-She has a Y chromosome.
-Her body was physiologically masculine at birth (if there’s a better way to phrase this one, please let me know, Johanna).
-Folks who saw her as a young child saw her as male–especially if they saw her naked.
-If there’s a predominantly-male-striking hereditary disease such as hemophilia that runs in her family, she’s at significantly greater risk of it than other women in her family
-And so on.
If Johanna denied some of these statements, then your silliness about Napoleon might pertain. But on these boards I’ve never seen a transgender person deny the empirical evidence.
But what sex a person is isn’t empirical, in the same way that the statements above are empirical. It’s a definitional thing. You believe that possessing a Y chromosome and/or being born with a penis is sufficient for being considered immutably male. Others disagree with that.
You obviously don’t believe this in the slightest with your talk of mutilation and Napoleon complexes. I know I said I was going to drop this and it’s true that I have no interest in debating you but I’m finding it impossible to sit back and say nothing while you openly insult and deliberately offend people whose posts on this message board are frankly a lot more worthwhile and interesting than yours are. And no, just saying “Science!” every few words or so does not make your position any less wrong or offensive.