Yes, gender has fuzzy edges, but gender =/= sex. A man who likes wearing dresses is still a man. A woman who is attracted to other women is still a woman. A man who is obsessed with “proper” gender roles, to the point that they believe their gender trumps their sex is just a self-loathing version of the asshole who thinks you’re not a real man if you don’t like football.
What objective brain differences are there? Hormone levels? I think he was citing the chromosomes as being “objective” and “I feel like…” as subjective. The feeling might have objective roots but he (nor I) is aware of it.
I don’t think the post you’re quoting came from a place of active ignorance or hate.
I think what you’re saying amounts to hate speech.
If somebody tells you that they are a man, or a woman, it is not only unwarranted and implausible for you to contradict them, it is also outright offensive and hateful. To say that their disagreeing with you about whether they are a man or a woman makes them a version of an asshole is nothing but hateful.
To some extent the toilet taboo is a safety issue for women. Particularly at quiet times I (a female) would be uneasy at entering a place where I could be easily cornered and moreover where am going to partially undress. It is not a problem in private homes or small businesses but think of public toilets in town centres and public transit stations.
Do you really think that transgender people don’t know what kind of genitals they were born with? That when a male-bodied person says “I always felt that I was a woman” this is supposed to mean “I was born with a vulva, two X chromosomes, and no Y chromosomes”?* Because while I’m not transgender myself, it’s certainly my impression that trans folks are actually highly aware of the gap between their own thoughts and feelings and the physical reality of the bodies they were born with. That’s what being transgender means, that there’s a gap between the person’s gender identity and the body they were born with.
*This bit about the chromosomes may seem redundant, but it is possible for someone to have two or more Xs and also one or more Ys, such as XXY (see Wikipedia on Klinefelter syndrome). Transgender model Tula is XXXY.
If a person who is objectively a member of the race known as Caucasians tells me that he is actually an African American, is it hateful and offensive for me to contradict him? If a person who’s 6’8’’ tells me that he’s short, is it hateful or offensive to contradict him? If a person who has five fingers on each hand tells me that he has six fingers on each hand, is it hateful or offensive to contradict him?
If not, then why does gender get treated differently than other characteristics?
For better or worse, our society treats people differently depending on their gender. Pretty much every social interaction you have is influenced at least in small part by it. The way you speak, the clothes you wear, what constitutes modesty, what are “appropriate” interests, who you can spend time with without violating social norms, how you’re supposed to react to emotional events, and a bazillion other things. Which are determined by physiology and which are arbitrary societal norms? I have no frigging idea and disentangling them is a huge morass, each detail enough to build decades of research upon. Maybe it would be best if we could build a society where each individual can explore every aspect of their personality completely disconnected from any sort of preconceived expectation. I’m certainly not going to fight anyone advocating in that direction.
But you know what? We don’t live in that society. For better or worse, we live in one with a gender dichotomy. One that may tolerate a few atypical characteristics in an individual, but generally makes life much harder on a person who veers too far from the norm. Now, if an individual can live happily and follow the norms of one half of that dichotomy, why the hell shouldn’t we accommodate that just because it doesn’t happen to sync up with certain aspects of that individual’s physiology? It’s not a simple matter of “I don’t believe I have a penis/vagina despite that fact that my doctor tells me I do,” it’s a matter of having a psychological makeup that fits much better into a role other than the one you’ve been assigned and taking the steps necessary to assume that role.
The posters in this thread who can’t empathize with that and insist such individuals are simply wrong based on nothing more than common sense sadden me.
Actually, race is a pretty good analogy. There is nothing objective about race. Is this woman objectively Caucasian? (Well, of course you know she isn’t, or I wouldn’t have put her picture there.)
Gender isn’t a binary any more than race is. What’s in the genes doesn’t always match our expectations of what the body should look like, and we now know that while the correlation between having a Y chromosome and being male is a strong one, it’s not a 1:1 one.
Find me a 6’8" person who says he’s short and is so worried about being treated as tall when he knows he’s short that he suffers stress to the point of being suicidal over it and then we’ll talk. I certainly know men who are 6’ and feel too short. While they’re not killing themselves over it, we offer shoe lifts to ameliorate their distress. If he wants risky, painful, slow and expensive surgery to lengthen the long bones in his legs to increase his height, I don’t have a problem with that.
There are certainly people who feel a limb or finger that I can’t see…I’m one of them, actually. I have a “phantom toe” between two of my other toes on each foot. It’s a bitch when it itches, and there’s no toe there to scratch, lemmetellya. It does no good to insist that I have five toes. I know I have five toes, I’m not telling you I have six toes, I’m telling you that my body is telling me I should have six toes when I see only five. We don’t have a treatment for it - there’s no good way to surgically build a toe from nothing and no room on my foot to place it (and I wouldn’t want it if there were), and the risks of poking around in there to find the offending nerve to remove it aren’t worth the slim chance that we could successfully find it. But being a jerk isn’t called for - compassion is, and continuing research to find a way to treat it.
This summaries my position 100%.
If a person has a problem with transgenderism, then they should also have a problem with the way we conceptualize gender. I think transgenderism is really just a response to this. If we allowed for a third gender (as some traditional societies) do, then we’d no doubt see transgender play out in a totally different way.
How can you reconcile these two statements? You acknowledge that the results of reassignment surgery aren’t perfect in the second, while claiming the treatment doesn’t result in defects in the first.
Besides, the point is that there is not good evidence that reassignment surgery is more effective than less invasive and drastic options. For major, irreversible surgery, the evidence should be pretty damn strong that it is by far the best treatment option.
I don’t mean this in the argumentative sense, but rather the, “that isn’t what I’ve been taught and I’d like to learn more,” sense. That being said: Cite?
(For both claims, actually. That there is not good evidence that reassignment surgery is more effective than less invasive and drastic options AND that for major, irreversible surgery, the evidence should be pretty damn strong that it is by far the best treatment option.
My bolding.
As for the second part, I have no idea where I could even begin to find a cite. I figured it was general knowledge that medical treatments have to be shown to be effective and better than other options to be accepted.
No, it is neither general knowledge nor correct that the only acceptable medical treatments are those that have been proven to be better by far than other options. First, what treatment is “better” can vary a lot depending on the individual and their circumstances. Second, if the only acceptable treatment were the one better than all the other options then there would be only one currently acceptable treatment for any condition or disorder. This is obviously not the case.
Even for common and relatively straightforward problems like seasonal allergies or myopia there are different treatment options available: various over the counter and prescription drugs for the former, and glasses, contacts, or surgery for the latter. These are all considered acceptable treatments, and individuals are allowed to consult with their physicians and choose the treatment they’d like to go with. We’re not limited to just the one treatment deemed “best”, which is good because there usually isn’t any one treatment (for any condition) that’s truly the best in every way for every person.
Do we? I’ve been puzzled by this one for a while. If you ask me about my anatomy, I can tell you that I have a penis and testicles, and lack developed breasts. If you ask me about my sexual preferences, I can tell you that I’m attracted to women. If you ask me about my sartorial choices, I can tell you that I generally wear pants. If you ask me about my hobbies, I can list them. If you ask me about my hormones or chromosomes, well, I’ve never actually gone to a lab to test them, but I could. I at least understand the question.
But people tell me that none of these things is what they mean when they speak of “gender identity”. If you ask me what gender I really am, or what gender my mind is, or anything of that sort, all I can do is reiterate the answers to those other questions. If I were “really a woman”, or “really a man”, how would I know?
Well, it seems that those who feel they are in the wrong body do know.
The woman I referred to above is not a close friend or confidante, but has said that all of her life (including years in the military) she knew that she was emotionally and mentally female but her body was male. She had surgery and no longer has that problem.
Even if it’s a mental illness (and I don’t accept that to be true) if a “physical” treatment works, why is that wrong? There are lots of drug treatments that work to varying degrees on what are thought of as mental illness (depression, obsessive/compulsive disorder, schizophrenia) and certainly if there was a safe surgery that was effective to cure these conditions at least some of the time we would all be glad rather than disapproving.
Many surgeries are “mutilations” in the sense of removing or changing a person’s body, and I’m not referring only to cosmetic surgeries. Breast reduction, gastric bypass, correction of a discrepancy in leg length for examples. But if those surgeries will make the patient healthier and happier there’s surely no grounds for objecting to them.
Back to the OP. The problem is in the use of the term “mental illness” and not to do with “Gender Identity.” Gender identity is a set of beliefs and behaviours held by group “A”; another group of people, (Group “B”) make pronouncements about what is or is not a “mental illness”; society then makes value judgements based partially on what Group “B” says. Group “B” consists of a mixture of powerful people who may disagree with each other- priests, psychologists, psychiatrists, academics; they attempt to force human beliefs and behaviours into pigeon holes that will determine societal reaction to them.
All human behaviour is just behaviour and all human beliefs are just beliefs. Only when these are forced into a rigid taxonomy and given values do problems exist.
Here’s the problem: I’m not sure there’s an objective definition of the word, and if there is, it’s not as simple as you think. These are categories with physiological (including neurological) as well as cultural components. Physical sex is pretty binary, but humans have managed to wring a very complicated set of gender and sexual identities from those components. In its own way it’s a testimony to what our minds can do.
After reading – but hardly participating – in many a thread on this issue, I still don’t fully understand it it. And though I don’t agree with the OP’s conclusion as it is too far reaching (a hermaphrodite being a clear example), neither do I disagree.
Guess I have to keep reading and studying if I want to learn more – but the issue doesn’t interest me that much. Doesn’t affect me either way. So I’ll let science lead the way.
Alas, I’ll probably take a kind of reactionary approach; whichever side (once “sides” develop clearly) practices the most overt hatred…I’ll ally myself with the other side. If somebody starts fire-bombing clinics, that will crystallize my support for those clinics.
You do realize that trans people are subject to an incredible amount of hate and violence and most people (rightfully) fear for their life, don’t you? Or does that not count as overt hatred to beat people to death?