'luci Reports to Ms Persson's Office for Scolding and Correction

The BBQ Pit
181

Now, just an aside point…if I had a friend who described himself as transexual, and sincerely believed it, I would listen to my freind. I would believe my friend, in that my friends do not lie to me, as I do not lie to them. If my friend should ask my advice (admittedly unlikely, since I don’t have any “tranny” friends, so far as I know, nor would anyone expect me to have any expertise, but hypotheticly…)

I would tell that friend the truth, so far as my opinions. That’s what’s being asked, right? What do you think?

I don’t think its a very good idea. I think, in the long run, such surgery will be proven to be misguided. I would also point out what I also know, which is that for some people it seems to work. I would express my hope that some other way of living, some therapy, might make life worth living without carving up one’s own body.

I would remind my friend that, once upon a time, lobotomies were considered therapy. That once upon a time, recovered memories were regarded as truth. That medicine is science, and science changes. How long was Freudian analysis the gold standard? How about now?

It simply cannot be that holding such opinions makes one a homophobe, for the simple reason that I am not, and I do hold such opinions.

And my theoretical friend? If he decided to follow the advise of others, others he has good reason to believe have more sustantiated opinions…and that this thing is needful for his well-being, his ability to walk in the sunshine and smell the roses…then he would have the blessings of a friend and the prayers of an agnostic. For whatever good it may do him.

182

It’s really not that hard. Why do you think some people are attracted to their own gender? My guess is, because you know a lot of people who are attracted to their own gender, and you believe them when they say they are attracted to their own gender. That’s really all the “proof” there is for homosexuality. You can’t prove that it exists objectively. There is no “gay gene” that we can point to and say, “This makes men like cock, and women like pussy.” The existence of homosexuality is predicated entirely on taking the words of self-described homosexuals at their face value. Which, needless to say, is perfectly acceptable. You would need a pretty compelling reason to doubt someone when they report their own feelings about who they are and what they like.

However, when it comes to transexuals, suddenly this same standard is insufficient for you. You don’t trust these people when they report their own feelings about who they are and what they like. You say their condition does not exist, you say that they’re deluded, and you describe them as mutilated when they take steps to live their lives the way they want to live them. This strikes many of us as a bizarre and blatant double standard. You have exactly as much evidence for the existence of transexuals as you do for the existence of homosexuals. (More, actually, because there are some distinct differences in the brain structures of transexuals, as demonstrated by Fish’s link. Which, like all of the cites provided in this thread, you have refused to address in any way, shape, or form.) Yet you are willing to accept the existence of homosexuals at face value, while insisting that the existence of transexuality is debatable, or just an opinion. Why the double standard, elucidator? Why do transexuals have to jump through so many extra hoops to be granted the respect you give automatically to homosexuals? What evidence do you have that demonstrates that people really are gay, that would not apply equally to transexuals?

183

The question is, why should anyone listen to your opinion on the subject? You clearly know nothing about it. You just as clearly have no interest in learning anything about it. Your opinion on the subject is, at best, utterly worthless. Not because it differs with mine. Because it is based on not one single fact.

Well, one big difference here is that sexual reassignment has been demonstrated to actually work. I think it was LilyoftheValley who provided the cite for that one. A cite which, as is your custom in this thread, you have completely ignored. Overwhelmingly, people who have undergone sexual reassignment report that they are living happier, more fulfilling lives after their surgery. Shouldn’t that be the gold standard for deciding what is and what is not a valid medical procedure? What other standard do you think should be applied?

And, for the umpteenth time, nobody has said that you do, because homosexuality and transexuality are not the same thing.

184

No doubt is permissable? Your definition is the only acceptable definition? If I don’t buy your definition wholly, and without question, I am a vile, hate filled creature? No doubt, some people who disagree with you are such people, I know, I have seen it, it is so.

But the reverse is not by definition true, its one of the most basic rules of logic: if all Communists wear red ties, that cannot be taken as proof that someone who wears a red tie is a Communist.

Now, if you tell me someone is a woman trapped in a man’s body, I have my doubts. That puts too much warp in the whole mind/body thing. How does one have a being that is independent of a body? Is a female soul misapplied to a male body? By what mechanism? Magic?

But I have no problem at all that someone might believe that. Or that such a belief might lead to despair and misery.

But isn’t it equally possible that the belief itself is the problem? Not that I know, but how would you or I prove it, yea or nay?

185

If your classifications are in the form “x-people are people who do x”, then the existence of x-people is objectively provable, because one can observe that there are people who do x. Even if every living soul denies that they are an x-person, you can still say there are x-people if you observe people doing x. However, one could view this classfication style as overly restrictive, because if there are people who wants to do x but for some reason actually don’t do it (for example) then under this classification system there are no x-people but I think many would say that does not usefully classify the interesting feature of the people concerned.

If your classifications are in the form “z-people are people who self identify as being z-people”, then the existence of z-people is objectively provable because one can observe that there are people who say they are z-people. However, one could view this classfication style as overly unrestrictive, because it contains too much subjectivity ie anything that anyone self-identifies becomes a new class of people ie a person who self identifies as a tree is a tree person.

Does this provide a useful framework for discussion?

186

What is your doubt based on? What evidence do you have that you are right, and I am wrong? We’ve had plenty of cites demonstrating exactly what I’ve been saying in this thread. Your end of the argument is noticably light in that regard.

A penis is clearly intended for the penetration of a vagina. How can someone with a penis want to have sex with someone else with a penis? What mechanism leads to such desires? If you can’t specifically tell me why some men want to have sex with other men, then clearly, the entire concept of homosexuality is doubtful.

Similarly, a person might honestly believe that they’re homosexual, even though they aren’t really. And that belief might lead to despair and misery.

Isnt’ it equally possibly that the belief itself is the problem? Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to convince homosexuals that they aren’t really homosexual, instead of condoning their clearly unnatural lifestyle?

187

Well, I’m back. I thought, now that I’ve got the money and I’m blessed with gainful employment (read: rich, bitch!), I’ll sign up again. I also thougt the first post of my triumphant return would probably relate to some particularly juicy republican embarrassment, or maybe just some november-landslide gloating. I never would have expected it would be to throw my poor ole pappy a life-line with which to drag himself out of shit creek. But then, I’ve never seen him get so deep in it before.

Granted, I think a lot of this he brought upon himself by assuming his “equal rights for all” platform made his insignificent opinions in regard to sex and gender just that; insignificent opinions. However, I think the main problem I see is the need for a translator.

Him: Hey, just wanted to clarify that I got no problem with guys who think they’re ladies/feel they’re ladies/want to be ladies/want to dress like ladies. The insult was intended for Coulter, since she looks masculine, and I presume it is not her intention nor desire to look this way. However, on the broader scale, I think the rights for gays and lesbians is a battle much more easily won, since their plight is much more easily defined. So that’s where I focus my “equal rights”. Besides, I’m not even sure gender reassignment surgery is beneficial, mainly because I just can’t see how dicing up your genitals and turning them inside out can make you happy. So, anyway, no offense intended, especially not to Una.

SDMB: WTF? Transgendered people don’t exist? That sounds pretty bigoted.

Him: I am not a homophobe!

SDMB: WTF? Now you’re saying transgendered people shouldn’t have the rights of gay people? Where do you get off?

Him: A good friend of mine was gay, as are many other people, so of course they exist. Why should I prove gay people exist?

SDMB: Well, if you’re saying transgenders don’t exist, that’s just as bad as saying gay people don’t exist.

(At this point, the “conversation” devolves even further until it gets into some shit about “the reality and the meaning of existence” that I could not possibly smoke enough dope to translate. The best interpretation I can come up with is “The world is in your head but transgenders aren’t.” Nope, still not enough dope.)

Actually, now that I look at it, I don’t think a translator helped at all, cuz it still seems like you guys are having two different conversations.

What this all boils down to, though, is who the fuck cares? If we know he doesn’t think transgered people (or whatever he thinks they are) deserve any less than everybody else, and we know he doesn’t think they’re anything less than human, and what’s more he doesn’t even think they deserve any less politeness than others, what does it matter if the source of the transgendered-ness is physiological or psychological, if the end-result is the same?

Now I’ll try to stop here, since I know dad is loathe to be defended, especially by his own son. But I really do think this whole thing has gotten totally overblown.

Ah shit… okay, one more thing. I’ll share a little story with you guys. When I was a baby (or maybe a teeny toddler) my favorite toy/object of comfort was not a toy gun, or a blankee, but a little black baby-girl doll. My dad, bless his heart, was not entirely comfortable with that (mom just thought it was cute, of course). But, he reasoned, if that’s what I liked, that’s what I liked. And he certainly wasn’t gonna stop me from doing what made me happy just because it bothered him.

What I’m getting at is this: Isn’t that the cornerstone of tolerence? To say, “it doesn’t matter if your lifestyle bothers me, it’s your lifestyle”? And, conversely, to be able to say, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it, it’s none of your business”?

188

Funny – I had that same problem in the Foley threads. :smiley:

189

Welcome back, Word Wise Weirdly!

You’re right; there are two different conversations going on. But one of those is exclusively in your poor pa’s head* and the other one’s being conducted by more than a dozen others. If translation is needed, maybe it’s because 'luci hasn’t actually tried ‘splainin’ himself in a shared language.

I mean, he got real close with post #181, and I speak enough elucideutsch (elucidatian? elucidatish?) to grok that post… but I already grokked that about 'luce before this anyway. That post would have been a much better OP, I think. Too bad. Ship has sailed.

I’ve been invisible to your dad in this thread, so I’ve no reason to believe he’ll even consider the second line of inquiry I asked of him in post #23, or Princhester’s ‘x and z people’ construction in post #185, but they go right to the heart of the disagreement, I think. Maybe he should just heed Little Nemo’s post #163 instead.

Good to see you anyway, WWW.
*[sub]Well, not exclusively now that you’ve joined him. Smokey in there?[/sub]

190

:smack:

191

Oh, lord.

Can I help to clear something up? luci, when you characterize SRS as mutilation practiced by the medical community upon people presenting with transsexual feelings, the course of events is almost exactly backwards. In general it is trans people themselves who must seek SRS with great vigour in order to get anywhere. The medical community, in essence, partly agrees with you when they say that SRS is a last resort, in a way.

There are a great many people - no, not as many as there are LGB people, but possibly as many as 1 in 600 - who identify in a persistent and absolute way as a member of the gender opposite the one they were believed to be at birth on the basis of their genitals, who seek to transition from presenting the gender of rearing to the gender of identification, and who find it essential to pursue endocrine and surgical reassignment of sex.

Of these people, most will not be able to function long-term without undergoing SRS; purely psychological therapy will be ineffective, especially therapy that is directed at attempting to “overcome” their anomalous gender identification and seeking a gender identity that concords with that assigned at birth. Transsexual people who require but do not receive SRS are at a high risk for suicide and mental illness; those who require SRS and do receive SRS have far more positive outcomes.

If you would like to do your own sampling of the scholarly studies available of transsexualism, you might want to start with this seminal study by Kuiper & Cohen-Kettenis.

You asked about people whose gender presentation (such as mannerisms, interests, etc.) is atypical for their assigned gender (the example was Jack from Will and Grace). This is different from transsexualism. Jack is not a transsexual because he identifies as a man. This is distinct from his femme gender presentation. (It’s my situation too; although I identify as femme, and regard my gender identity as non-typical for a male-bodied person, I identify as a man, as I was assigned, and therefore as non-trans.)

In fact, many transsexual women (i.e. male-to-female transsexuals) are butch, and even more transsexual men are femme; their transsexualism does not have to do with their gender presentation, but with their gender identity. Just as a non-trans man can be femme without identifying as a woman, so can a trans man.

You also asked about transvestites. However, the term is difficult to discuss because it incorporates several distinct gender states:

[ul]
[li]transvestic fetishists (those for whom wearing the clothing of the opposite gender is a matter of sexual interest); [/li][li]drag performers (those who wear the clothing of the opposite gender for the purposes of performance); [/li][li]cross-dressers (those who feel more comfortable wearing clothing atypical for their gender, but identify with their gender of rearing); [/li][li]non-operative trans people (those who identify with a gender other than their gender of rearing, but who do not seek SRS). [/li][/ul]

Typically transvestic fetishists do not see themselves as part of the LGBT community or human rights movement for that reason, and most drag performers are already part of the community, as drag is part of LGBT culture. I don’t know much about cross-dressers as defined above. Non-operative trans people definitely see themselves as trans and part of whom the community is meant to include.

As for the movement, in my opinion trans people and non-trans queer people definitely have a common cause; homophobia is at its root a form of gender role prejudice, as it is based on what men and women should not do (specifically, fall in love with other men/other women) in the gender roles of their culture. Unfortunately, a large (but shrinking) number of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people do not see the relevance of trans people’s struggle and may well be actively transphobic.

On a personal level, luci, you described the reason that you believe LGB people’s accounts of themselves and not trans people’s: because of personally knowing LGB people. hearing about their lives, and becoming convinced of their sincerity. This is part of how I came to partially understand trans people’s accounts of themselves as well: knowing trans and gender-variant people, hearing them describe themselves and tell their own stories. My own gender variance helped to some extent, but actually it was mainly the reverse (familiarity with the trans and gender-variant community helped me to accept myself as a non-trans genderqueer man). I think it’s unfortunate that you haven’t had the experience of knowing trans people and hearing about their lives and stories. I hope what I’ve had to say helps in some way, however.

192

Here’s the thing, the only topic I’ve seen elucidator and the rest talk about in tandem is whether or not being transgendered is physiological or psychological or both. Now, on it’s own, this would be a pretty boring argument. But it seems like a lot of people are getting their heckles raised because it looks like his POV would work as rationalizing some kind of stance against transgendered people, but he isn’t trying to rationalize any such thing (so far as I know, this last day is probably the most thought he’s ever given to the inner workings of the transgendered person’s mind) so why is everyone so heated?

193

Oh, and if it wasn’t clear, that last was intended in response to xenophon.

194

Because of:

We kind of figured since he put the argument in his OP he wanted to make the argument. So various people tried to educate him on the fundamental difference between “TV” and “TS” or “TG”. That distinction seems to have taken, but he seems to see it as a distinction without a difference.

Look, the whole point of including “T” in GLBT is because those groups all face the same sort of ignorance and discrimination, not because the sizes of the groups are the same or because the labels used are all definite and understood.

That’s the thing that’s getting people so heated.

195

Not so. In my hypothetical conversation with a friend, above, I say…

“…I would also point out what I also know, which is that for some people it seems to work…”

Did you read it?

196

Because it’s like someone arguing for a flat earth. There’s an overwheming amount of evidence that he’s wrong, which he’s so far failed to even comment on. He has also failed to present any evidence of his own, and demonstrated extremely unclear thinking. This isn’t so much about the position he’s taking, but the fact that it’s based on nothing but bluster. Few things will get people more riled up than someone who is plainly wrong insisting loudly and incoherently how right he is. Any idiot can be wrong, but it takes a special kind to dismiss mountains of obvious evidence in favor of his own beloved opinion.

On another note, I don’t know why everybody’s shocked. This guy has seemed like an obvious jackass to me for a while, and I should know, I see one in the mirror every day.

cheap shot–>I stay out of political threads, though, so I wasn’t blinded by any partisan considerations. <—cheap shot

197

That was a noble effort, Weirdy (and welcome back) but I fear it’s all for naught. The PC Gestappo isn’t satisified with mere tolerance and political alliance. They’ll settle for nothing less than absolute adherence to the hive mind. It’s not enough to agree with them, you must agree with them for exactly the same reasons, be offended by exactly the same things, and perceive things subjectively exactly the same way. You are never permitted to have any unauthorized philosophical doubts or private squicks. It’s not enough to say that somthing should be allowable or legal, you have to like it as well or you’re a “bigot.”

They will continue to tell your dad that he is “in a hole” which he must “dig his way out of,” and they will continue to offer the same condescending, sanctimonious advice on how to do it. He must admit that his subjective opinion is wrong and apologize for having it or they will never let him go. The best thing he could do would be to let them know he’s comfortable in his hole, he feels no inclination to climb out of it and that they can choose to accept that or not. One thing they’re never going to do is tell him that it’s ok for him to feel squeamish about guys getting their junk chopped off (which is really what this whole thread boils don to), and God forbid he use the word “mutilation,” He must subjectively love and embrace that kind of “correction” (not just support legal rights but subjectively adore the procedure) as though it were a life-saving heart transplant or else he’s Fred Phelps.

Man, when elucidator is no longer liberal enough for this board, that’s saying something.

I’ve also got some news for some of the people her. Some of the things that Lucy was reckless enough to say out loud are things that a lot of people who support GLBT causes secretly think. Getting men to overcome the limbic aversion to having their weenies cut off (or even thinking about it being done to other guys) is not an easy emotional sale. As long as the guy is on your side legally and politically, what difference does it make? Has the world run out of real homopho…excuse me…transphobes?

198

Dio, you should be shot in the knees. Not fatally, just so it’s really painful. Christ on a crutch, you’re a human boil.

199

I rest my case.

200

What? Are you serious? Your point is proved by the fact that I’m a jackass? You can’t be serious. You must have something better than that. Any comment on the cites in this thread, for example? I mean, I know you’re another member of the Inside My Head the Light of Truth is Blinding club, but you can usually fake it better than this.