No, it’s not true that she was a boy. She was female, and to say otherwise - to say that you know better than her what her gender was - is absurd.
Suppose you are a medical examiner and the body of an unfortunate young person in a similar situation to this one winds up a John Doe on your slab. How would you go about identifying them as female?
In this case, “Sting” is a professional name, and I don’t fault the media for referring to him by it. But unless he changed his name when I wasn’t paying attention (and doing that is much easier in the UK from what I’ve heard), he is and remains Gordon Sumner. If he ever ends up in a courtroom, or a jail cell, or a hospital bed, or somewhere worse, that’s the name that’s going to be on his documentation, not “Sting”.
You’re moving the goal posts. We’re talking about what name to use in a newspaper article, not in court. You defined what truth is. I’ve shown a clear cut example of past precedent if using someone’s chosen, not given, name in a newspaper article appropriately. Your thesis that it’s not truthful to do what CNN did has been disproven.
I said it wasn’t truthful to refer to him as female. It’s not respectful to refer to him by his alias against his family’s wishes.
Smapti, if you think that gender is based solely on one’s genitalia, and if you think that magically we become our genders and preferences at age 18 (and we have no right to do so before then if our parents don’t like it), you are a very sheltered person. And since it’s not the Pit, that’s about all I can say on the subject.
When balancing the desires of the newly deceased and her family’s wishes, I think the deceased’s wishes trumps the parents. The article was about her and her life.
You know there is a genetic syndrome in which people are XXY (male) but have androgen insensitivity so look nominally, but not completely, female (no external male sex characteristics, but not all the female characteristics either and doesn’t go through puberty). What is truth in this case?
Can you not understand that gender dysphasia is a real phenomenon and has lead the misery of many children. Identity is the union of our external bodies and our internal hormones composition. It sometimes doesn’t match. These children are tormented by what they feel and then doubly tormented by mistreatment by society.
It is the smallest act of respect possible to acknowledge the truth of this child’s reality that internally she felt and knew she was female. The parents don’t get a say as to how she was hard-wired internally.
If someone’s parents didn’t believe in being gay and refused to acknowledge their child’s homosexuality, would it be untruthful for CNN to report a person was gay?
I acknowledge that sometimes one’s sense of self doesn’t line up with what they physically are. There are people who are biologically male that would prefer to be female, and vice versa. And I believe that those people deserve to be able to live their lives in the way they choose, and there should be resources to help people struggling with that condition.
What I object to is the idea that such a person is female or that transitioning to living as a woman makes them female. If you are born with one X chromosome and one Y chromosome, you are male. A male may take on a female name, dress as a woman, behave as a woman, present themselves as a woman, take hormones or other drugs or undergo surgery to make their body resemble what they feel like on the inside, but this does not mean they are now a woman - it means they are now a man living as a woman. This is an immutable fact of nature and no amount of wishing it away can change it, and we do a disservice to those with gender dysphoria by telling them they can become their preferred gender rather than telling them it’s possible to cope with the difference between what they are and what they wish to be.
“My roof, my rules.” That’s the way it works, and sometimes it isn’t always for the best (which leads to inherent problems with the nuclear family as a unit of society that I don’t want to get into here), but that’s the world we have to deal with. It’s a shame that this young man either didn’t know that there were resources out there for people like him, or didn’t think they could help him, and especially so since he was only a few months away from being able to make those decisions for himself. I feel for him, I really do, because I know that when you’re a teenager it’s easy to feel powerless and outcast and like things will never get better and nobody’s ever had to go through the things you’ve had to.
Unfortunately, we don’t know if the youth was hard-wired genetically, biochemically, etc. or was the unfortunate victim of emotional confusion and mental illness. We do know that neither emotionally distraught teens nor their correspondingly distraught parents are the best arbiters of reality, and it’s unfortunate that the media & the zeitgeist are leaping to canonize the young person & vilifying the parents.
If the deceased were an adult, I would not object to them using his preferred name. He wasn’t, and more over, he’s not around to read the article and be emotionally affected by it anymore; his parents, who now have to deal with being demonized by people who only know one side of the story, are.
That’s an extremely rare scenario that’s not relevant to the overwhelming majority of transgender people, and in any event I understand it’s usually handled on a case-by-case basis.
Homosexuality isn’t a matter of biology, so no, it would not be untruthful for CNN to report as such.
To clarify, XXY, with androgen insensitivity is not transgender. It’s a case where external genitalia, genetic gender and internal identity do not allign. What is truth there? The birth certificates generally say “female”, but a DNA test would say male.
Why do you think transgender issues aren’t biology? Most transgender kids know from an extremely young age that inside their mind doesn’t match their plumbing. Just like lots of gay kids know from a young age where their attraction lies. Are you of the bizarre misconception that transgender kids are making this up?
No, I’m of the understanding that gender dysphoria is a legitimate mental state of being and that the people living with it deserve to be able to live their life the way they want to, just like gays and lesbians do. Much as with the origins of homosexual identification, we don’t know enough about how the brain works yet to say what causes one to wind up that way.
What I’m saying is that one’s gender is a matter of pure biology regardless and independent of whatever they might mentally identify as.
Gender may be “pure biology” but NOT pure anatomy. That’s what things like intersex (ambiguous genitalia) and XXY androgen insensitivity syndrome illustrate. There’s more to it than how your pipes are formed. Just because a doc takes a minute peak at birth and assigns a gender doesn’t mean the deal is done. When someone spends their life trying to get people to hear who they are it’s simple respect and honest to actually listen.
And those are situations that have to be examined on a case-by-case basis in light of the patient’s physical and mental state, which is not the situation under consideration with a person who has one X chromosome, one Y chromosome, a fully functioning set of male organs, and says he’s female. That person is factually not female no matter what he says or may believe on the matter. He deserves the right to become as feminine as his wallet and medical science allow, but he will always be a male living as a female.
I don’t know under what basis you discount the mental component to identity. There is as much reason to believe the mental component to gender identity as there is for sexual orientation. To say there is one and only one “factual basis” for gender is woefully misguided.
Bottom line is that it’s also irrelevant for what CNN is reporting. They are nether court nor hospital.
Can we either start or stop trying to explain this? If we’re dead-set on explaining this, then let’s provide some actual scientific articles explaining how gender dysphoria works and where the science stands. If we’re not that interested in it, then let’s not bother. I personally don’t think this is the time or the place; IMHO if Smapti wants to know about GD, he can do some research or start a thread in GQ about it. This is a thread about a girl who killed herself largely in part because *her *parents would not support her. It’s more than a little bit disrespectful to throw up questions like that here.
Lots and lots of this…
I don’t “discount the mental component to identity”. I discount that gender identity has any bearing on gender.
That is an argument that is so removed from the issue at hand that it’s utterly meaningless.
Perhaps this will help:
Gender:
2a : sex <the feminine gender>
b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
The 2a definition in IvoryTowerDenizen’s post was a link to the definition of the word “sex”, to wit:
Just to be clear.