I Don't Get and Am Sick of Trans-Stuff

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m putting this in the pit because I expect to get slagged for saying this.

I don’t understand transsexualism. I can’t. My entire - gender-related -frame of reference is based on being born the gender that I am. I don’t get transsexualism. To me, that’s fine. There are many things I don’t get but accept. This is one.

I have exactly nothing against trans people with two exceptions; 1)if you were an asshole in one gender you’re still an asshole in the other 2) if you refer to me as cis-gendered I’ll put you in the first category. I hate that fucking term.

The media has latched onto trans as the latest cause celebre and they are falling all over themselves in order to give exposure to trans-people and trans issues. And I am sick of it. Sick to the teeth. Sick to fucking death of it.

Trans-people were born with a brain and a body that don’t match. Fine. Cool, do what you need to do to be happy. But leave me the fuck out of it.

I don’t care!

I don’t wave my genitalia or sexuality around like a flag. I don’t expect the world to give a shit about my particular challenges - challenges which have made me permanently miserable and wishing to be dead - and if others like me were to start waving a flag I’d not march under it. Because it is my shit.

And yes I have been persecuted - though obviously not killed - and beaten for it. I’ve suffered the societal consequences for it.

If you are trans, sucks to be you and I truly hope you can get it adjusted but leave me the fuck out of it.

And bear in mind that what gains have been made for trans people have been made on the backs - primarily - of blacks and gays. The progress that trans-people have made in the last five years is entirely due to the work of the LGBQ community and trans-people have made more progress in those five years than the LGBQ did in the 40 years previous.

For fuck’s sake you’ve won. You’ve got federal legislative support, recognition and protection - at least in North America. You’ve got a pretty good segment of society behind you. What more do you want?

I will always be behind trans-peoples’ right to use the bathroom of their choice. I will always be behind trans-people being treated under law the same as anyone else. I support trans-rights and I will vote for those that favour them and against those who don’t.

But I’m absolutely fucking tired of hearing about it.

To be absolutely clear: I have no problem at all with transsexuals as people. I support transsexual rights. I abhor any form of bigotry against transsexuals.

Let the flaming begin.

Zeke

2

So you’re totally on board with their fighting for their rights but you want them to do it in such a way that you don’t have to hear about it. Is that about it?

And fuck them for winning rights on the backs of blacks and gays. Doesn’t count if someone else flight for their rights too. Or something.

3

You know, there’s been years that apparently all anyone has heard about are the Kardashians. On the covers of magazines, on the bleeps during the news, multiple shows over however many channels and any other number of incidences where they pop up (the Grammys, Sports Illustrated, Paris fashion week, whatever). Amazingly, I didn’t have to hear any of it if I didn’t want to.

Similarly, but on a much larger scale than that, has been this bizarre ass election. When I’m doing my job in various clients’ homes, it’s on Fox or CNN. it’s every other thread here. It is all over Facebook, on the backs of bumpers and on signs in people’s yards, and most conversations seem to turn to it at some point or other. Yet, I’m still blissfully keeping from having anything to do with it.

How?

Because if I’m not interested in something, I find a way to keep that lack of interest between me and it. Not very difficult at all.

And to think, neither of those issues (at least not yet) could result in anyone’s death. Just saying.

4

You know, I’m sick and fucking tired of whiny assed bitches like you that have to cry about how you don’t want to hear something. Most of the rest of us don’t want to hear your whining. Shut The Fuck Up. You’re a bigot. Thanks for outing yourself (as if we didn’t know). Now shut the fuck up, because we don’t want to have to hear your whiny bitch ass.

I don’t read anything involving the Kardassians or Jenners. Yeah, I see the headlines on pages when I’d rather not. I never read the articles. But my not wanting to hear about them means exactly fuck-all nothing in the cosmic or even societal scheme of things and it would be spectacularly silly of me to rage on and on about how I don’t care what you think of me, I don’t want to hear about the Kardassians.

Now suck it up, you little delicate flower, you, and deal with the fact that no one gives a fart during their morning dump about what you think about Trans people.

5

You know what? I don’t “get” transgenderism either. It doesn’t make sense to me on a fundamental level.

But here’s the thing. I don’t have to “get it”. These people, regardless of what is going on with their bodies and minds, are going to exist whether I understand their existence or not. They’re not going to go away. And that means that we, as a society, have a few options in how to deal with their existence;

  1. Ignore the problem and pretend it doesn’t exist
  2. Actively persecute transgender people and discourage them from being public about their existence
  3. Do the best we can to accommodate their existence and let them live in a way that makes them feel comfortable

#3 seems like the only one that’s tenable to me.

6

My son (daughter) is transgendered. I think you need to step back and think that this is a real issue that affects real families. This isn’t a grasp for popularity, rather it’s the opposite.

Kids, people, have been transgendered forever and haven’t been able to communicate that. Our kid’s doctor says suicide rates were previously at 50% for these kids.

Is that what you want? Teenagers killing themselves over something they were born with and can’t help, and are now brave enough to tell others.

I think you can understand it, if you take the time to understand it. My son telling us what he was going through was the most painful thing he (she) ever did. Fortunately she had parents intelligent and loving enough to accept it and move forward.

I have trouble with pronouns because she’s now, just in the last few months, beginning hormone therapy. In Ontario both top and bottom surgery are covered by our provincial insurance plan.

Again, you need to step back and rethink this. Real, normal, everyday kids and adults are affected by gender dysphoria.

Rethink your position please.

7

The only part of the transgender movement I don’t get are children. Specifically people who say their six year old kid is transgendered (or whatever young age). I’m not sure if a six year old can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Supposedly many children who identify as the other sex in childhood stop doing this as adults… and grow up to be gay adults instead. So I seriously wonder if letting six-year-old Bob wear a dress and call himself Charlene might be a form of child abuse, especially if they haven’t been looked at by a specialist doctor.

Now if sixteen year old “Bob” says that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body and wants to be called Charlene and wear women’s clothing, I would have no problem with that at all. She’s practically an adult, she can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, she can in many states give consent to have sex, she can get her driver’s license, she can see a doctor by herself, etc.

I like to play StarCraft II. I get annoyed at all the ranting about Trump (and probably ranting against Trump) that I see on the chat. While I can’t help but see it, I don’t actively read it, so the annoyance level is low. Fortunately I don’t play the game to chat.

8

You speak from complete ignorance. So stop it. Stop it right now.

You don’t think trained doctors in various disciplines evaluate these kids?

9

That seems to me to be too close to what the OP is saying: “I don’t want to hear it, so stop talking.”

10

I understand that it’s an issue for some people. I don’t understand all the hype. Yes, it affects people, but for the most part, not that many. I will add that whenever people say, IRL or online, that they’ve never known a transgendered person, I reply, “That you know of.”

One of my HS classmates was featured in a Discovery Channel program called “Changing Sexes” that aired many times, in the f-to-m program. When he held up his graduation picture, I nearly :eek: fell off the couch; I had ABSOLUTELY.NO.IDEA that this cute girl who always had perfect hair, makeup, and clothing was fighting such a serious secret battle.

ETA: Leaffan, I wish you the best with your child.

I know a woman who’s a local HS teacher, and she said there’s a TG child at her school. This student is allowed to change for gym in the nurse’s office, and use the bathroom there too.

11

I’d add it to the list of things you do not understand, but the list is maxed out at the current 1,048,576 rows that Excel can handle.

Big deal. The reason you hate the term is probably among the things that we cannot fit on the list of things you can’t understand.
It’s just a prefix. It is not an insult. You are willing to use trans as a prefix, so your objection to cis will not make any sense, anyway.

The media “latched onto it” when a small number of local communities tried to deal with the issue, quietly, only to have the Far Right and their media (Faux News) play it up as a big deal. You can’t even get who to hate right.

Has anyone asked you to take hormone therapy or surgery? I thought not. You can easily be left alone by not posting spittle strewn hate threads on the internet.

Sucks to be you. Do you want a hug?

And your point?

I would guess the repeal of laws such as the nonsense passed in North Carolina and that idiots like Indiana’s Pence would stop loudly proclaiming slander against them. You have a problem with that?

So, don’t listen when it comes up. No need to whine about it, here.

12

You’re right about one thing. You’re an asshole no matter what gender you are.

13

What harm is done by those wishing to mitigate stigma, marginalization, and abuse of those apparently born with something that is harmless?

14

Um, I think you should focus more on this and put your trans-phobia on the back buner for now.

15

If you support the idea that trans people are entitled to equal rights then you have to acknowledge that public awareness is what leads to those equal rights. The same thing was true with black people and women and gay people - they had to make themselves loud and in people’s faces in order for their problems to get heard.

16

None. I think it’s great that awareness is being increased. I do not, however, think it’s great to make it sound like something nobody’s life is complete without.

17

Huh. The OP is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be from the title. So, um, bravo?

And, yeah, I only hear about trans activism stuff because of the webcomics I read. So, I guess, don’t do that.

Glad I could be of help.

18

OK, so this being the case - imagine that for your entire life, society has been telling you you’re the *opposite *gender. That’s what it means to be trans.

I would guess “not being attacked and killed for being trans” would be pretty high on the list.

19

You know what I’m tired of hearing about? Police shootings of unarmed black people and the retaliatory murders of police officers. It makes me sick to my stomach to hear about it, because there are no winners here.

Unfortunately, reality isn’t a fairy tale where everything always works out in the end. The news is a reflection, sometimes an inaccurate one, of mostly bad news happening in our society.

When there are mass shootings, or police executions, or executions of police officers, or there’s a serial killer, or serial rapist, or reports of rapes, or reports of assaults based on color, or nationality, gender, sexuality, whatever the case may be, it is in the national interest to hear about them, because they are the consequences of an imperfect society.

Life didn’t start out perfect and it won’t end up that way. However, if we wish to form a more perfect union, and make a better society, we need to be informed when bad things happen to people. It can be disasters, tragedies, or simple injustices.

What transgender people face are situations where they are being told to occupy the wrong bathroom, where they are vastly more likely (almost 100 percent of the time) to be victims of rape, assault, or intimidation, and are then humiliated by those around them for being in “the wrong bathroom” because they do not present as male yet they’re in the male bathroom, or they do not present as female, yet they’re in the female bathroom.

That is most of their issue. It’s not all of it, because sometimes a person of authority, such as a police officer, court clerk, government official of any kind, TSA screener, or person doing credit reports, anyone with any kind of power over your life, gets ahold of the information that you were not assigned at birth the gender that you are, and then uses it to make your life a living hell. And there’s little outrage, even in the media that otherwise reports on issues like this- you weren’t assaulted, raped, or murdered, so it’s not particularly compelling click-bait. Legal counsel is expensive and if you’re trans, you likely face a lot of discrimination by employers if they find out.

The idea is that a person should be able to live, go to work, go to the bathroom, and get home without having their personal space or human dignity violated.

And the only way that changes is if enough voters empathize with them, because they’re a minority and will never win a vote outright. Our system is not designed to protect these people yet.

The only way enough voters empathize with them is by hearing about what they go through.

You get to turn off the news when it bothers you. They don’t get to turn off their problems. Sadly, what they go through makes plenty of them choose a similar option, because systemic harassment, abuse, and hatred makes people depressed and suicidal. And you don’t have to be transgender to have experienced such things.

I know hearing about other people’s hardships is bankrupting your empathy. You only have so much energy to care about other people. If I heard about child starvation or mortality rates in developing countries every single day, I’d begin to despise the people bringing me that message.

The messenger isn’t always welcome, even when the point of the message is taken.

People only have so much empathy, they want to just get back to a life where they can enjoy themselves and be less concerned about others.

Best way to make that happen? Make sure transgendered persons gain the protections they need. Like gay marriage or gay employment, you’ll stop hearing about it once it’s done.

This isn’t like a charity where they will beg you in perpetuity and guilt-trip you forever.

Once society makes the change, it’s done.

You’ll never have to hear about it again.

And you’re already making that concession- you want it to simply be over.

For that much, you and I are in complete agreement, and you’re not the enemy of the movement. And your frustration is valid, even if you’re expressing it in a way that is causing backlash.

But the bottom line is we can’t wish it away and it would be bad if it did go away. Until the problem is fixed, until we care enough to make those changes, we deserve to be annoyed every single day.

Annoyance is a minor burden to bear in the scheme of things.

20

You probably could, or at least grasp the concept if you took a college biology course that detailed basic genetics, fertilization and gestation. The biochemical processes that determine what we call “sex” and “gender” are fascinatingly complex. A fetus with XY chromosomes starts out indistinct from a XX one until the start of a lengthy series of minor transformations, any of which could be interrupted or altered. Further, if you look at diagrams of male and female reproductive organs, the correspondences are obvious - testes to ovaries, for example - and the word “glans” can refer to the tips of either penis or clitoris because these structures are near-identical but for size.

The overall gestation process is so complex, in fact, that it works at all is remarkable, and indeed it will spontaneously fail in humans about 20% of the time. Is it genuinely baffling that in a lengthy series of complicated developments, mismatches can occur where the physical genitalia doesn’t quite line up with the neurological circuitry supposed to operate those genitalia?

Basically, even if you put aside all arguments involving human rights and social norms or whatever, fetal development is 2000-piece symphony of complexity, while a binary view of “male” vs “female” is comparable to a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star tapped out on the side of a tin garbage can. Regardless of morality or ethics, and I gather you were expecting sermons along those lines, your stance betrays a profound scientific stupidity. Go read a textbook.