You don’t get out much do you? At least out in transgendered circles I imagine.
The answer is that of course you see plenty of MtF transsexuals who are sexually attracted to females, and plenty of FtM transsexuals who are sexually attracted to males. I don’t know if a majority of MtF transsexuals are attracted to women, but a very large percentage of them are, far more than the percentage of genetic women who are attracted to women.
Just head down to your local transsexual support group and do some investigating yourself if you don’t believe me.
The notion that transsexuals are really gay but can’t handle being gay and would rather be a “straight” woman doesn’t hold up.
We do. Frequently. MTF transexuals identify as lesbians at a rate higher than is seen in the female population as a whole. Hell, we’ve got at least three posters that I know of on this board alone who are MTF transexuals who identify as lesbians, and one FTM poster who identifies as gay.
Did you ever feel like you wanted to be a girl when you were a kid? Do you know anyone who ever felt, as a child, that they wanted to be the other gender? Because the only people I’ve ever met who felt that way are transgendered. Of course, just because I’ve never met someone who went through a “trans” phase doesn’t mean that such people don’t exist. I’m guessing that the psychologists who dedicate their careers studying this sort of thing have a better handle on how common that sort of thing is than you or I do, and at least one of them seems to be on board with this kid being transgendered.
How about you act “as if” you were smart and handsome? Then we’d treat you as if you were smart and handsome. It wouldn’t matter whether you were really smart or just acting as if you were smart, now would it?
Look, at some point I read an interview with a natal male who later decided to live as a female lesbian. (no, I don’t have a link handy).
Maybe some of these kids really are just going to be gay, but I can’t believe that every single one of them is ‘just going through a phase’. Read through the wikipedia entry in intersexuality some time, it’s linked up-thread. It’s a fantastic illustration of the ways human sexual organs can occansionally deviate from normal. Why should the mental equivalent simply not happen?
And therein lies the problem… the standard is not that I live my life as if I am a certain way, but that you live your life as if I am a certain way. Which is the same standard “transgendered” people insist on. I frankly don’t care how they want to live their life, if a man wants to live as if he’s a woman then hey… I wish him happiness and good fortune and a long life. But I am not going to live my life as if he’s a woman. I.e. I still think he’s a man. A man with a spotty hypothalamus perhaps, a man with a brain hard-wired differently than mine, a man who thinks he’s a woman, but I still think he’s a man.
Since religion has already been dragged into this, I think the same example can be made there. If you want to live your life as if God or the spaghetti monster or Allah actually runs things then hey… I wish you happiness and good fortune and a long life. But once you begin insisting that I live my life as if God or the spaghetti monster or Allah actually runs things then no, we have a disagreement.
In other words… you can think whatever you want about yourself, but please don’t insist that I think whatever you want about yourself.
As a child, I did not identify with a gender, particularly. I knew I was a girl because my mother kept telling me girls don’t do this and girls don’t do that–all the fun things, basically, girls don’t do. But when I was fairly young, I had the idea that if you were, say, three years old, then you were a girl, but when you grew up to be six you’d be a boy.
Needless to say I was very disappointed.
At any age I could think of, if I could have picked, I would have selected to be male. However, that isn’t an option. You can’t pick your sex like you can pick your hair color or whether you have straight teeth or big boobs. (Note that I am all for straight teeth. Big boobs, not so much.)
I cannot fathom how transgendered people think they are getting the same experience as people naturally born to the sex. They just aren’t. I know they say they want to experience life as that sex, and have people relate to them as that sex, and I just don’t get it. I remember that tennis player, Renee Richards, who was (or maybe was not) allowed to play pro tennis as a woman. She just could not understand what a HUGE advantage she had of having been a male athlete, never mind the residual testosterone. She thought she was just that good.
I do get that there are people who will fret over being the wrong sex to the point of severe mental duress, but encouraging a child who chooses to be transsexual seems kind of perverse. At the age of eight, I would suspect some other psychological problem. It’s very hard for me to believe anyone is born with the innate desire to wear dresses and high heels.
Here’s what I can’t get my mind around. You have a division between what your body is and what your mind thinks it is. Our current solution is to modify the body, and we can do that now (as opposed to a hundred and fifty years ago). Why don’t we work on the mind thing?
And you are demonstrably wrong. Brain chemistry matters. Why do you think you know better than these people and their doctors? That’s really all this argument boils down to: “Fuck your ‘feelings’, fuck your doctors’ ‘professional opinions’, I am the sole arbiter of what you are or are not!”
Are you talking about wanting to enjoy the freedoms that came with being male? Or are you talking about having your mental self-image include a penis? I that’s the crucial difference.
Well, I don’t remember having any sense of gender identity as a child, other than what was obvious. But I have clear memories of not fitting in, of not being comfortable or welcome in my social group, just for other reasons. If someone told me they had the same feelings because of gender identity, I’d be inclinded to take them at their word.
I haven’t met a single TG person who thinks that his or her experience is identical to that of a natal male or female. That’s not what’s important to them. What’s important to them is how they move through the future, not the past.
Plenty of women who are happy being women are born without such desires and never acquire them.
Seriously? Because as hard as we try, with the tools we have, it doesn’t work. Now, there’s good reason to think that some day, that could change. There’s new research in how the brain “maps” the physical body onto itself, and I’ll be interested to see how (and if) this relates to transgenderism. Until then, the most effective treatment that we have is hormones plus surgery.
No, what it boils down to is “I am the sole arbiter of what I am or am not! And you *must *believe me!”
I’m using the exact same argument as transgenered people. I’m just replacing “the other gender” with “smart, handsome, and witty”.
“I insist that you believe that I am <“the other gender” / “smart, handsome, and witty”>.”
I don’t believe they are “the other gender” much like I suspect that you do not believe I am “smart, handsome, and witty”. However, the standard is not demonstrable fact (e.g. a spotty hypothalamus) but rather personal opinion. If you want me to believe a man is a woman just because he says so then I want you to believe I’m smart, handsome, and witty just becase I say so.
Why would that be a preferable solution over changing the body? I’m always a little surprised at these debates when someone proposes that, as if that sort of alteration is somehow less profoundly disturbing than a physical surgery. I mean, you may be exceptional in this regard, but gender is a pretty major component of most people’s self identity. Casually saying, “Why don’t we figure out a way to change that?” is pretty chilling. If we could re-wire someone’s brain at that level, it opens the door to a whole host of thorny ethical questions.
So, you meet someone who introduces themselves as Susan, and clearly prefers that she be referred to with female pronouns. But she’s pretty clearly not a biological woman.
Hell, how do you handle the situation when she’s not pretty clearly transgender? Do you demand that everyone submit to a urological examination before you consent to call them by the name and pronoun they prefer?
It is any more chilling than anti-bipolar drugs? 'Cause I can easily see the parallel.
Smart and witty are red herrings - if a person behaves as such things, they are such things for quite literally all intents and purposes. Now, handsome on the other hand - when we meet some stumpy putz who clearly thinks he’s god’s gift to women, we don’t ‘respect his self image’. We label him as a stumpy putz and scorn him for his self-delsusion, at least in our own heads.
This is precisely right. What makes you think you know better what another person is? That person knows himself, knows his body and his limitations and his strengths. Who gave you veto power?
Nobody is saying you have to sleep with a transgendered MTF, or saying you have to hit on her in a bar, or slap her ass and say “nice tits, babe.” You don’t have to be attracted to that person, any more than you have to be attracted to anybody else in the world of either sex, any age, any appearance. You just have to use some common courtesy.
The kid in question is somebody you will never goddamn meet, ever. Why does it bend you out of shape to use “she” instead of “he?”
Do you personally verify the genitalia of everybody you ever mention in conversation? I doubt it.