Frankly, this is not remotely consistent with the other things you’ve said in this thread.
Very nice post, matt_mcl.
There’s no point, Ensign. elucidator’s popular here, apparently. People will ignore what he says if it doesn’t match what they’d like him to be.
But yeah; this sudden about-face (particularly when he doesn’t even present it as such) is about as credible as Mark Foley’s apology for trying to screw teenage boys.
Thanks.
Was it the leeches? 
We are Devo!
(bolding mine)
As an aside, I think this is going to become the Godwinization of the 21st Century. 
Matt:
Rested, freckled, and ready!
To begin what I dare to hope is the last long march down this road…
Amongst other perfectly sensible criticisms…
Let me sketch out an example. Here in Baja Canada, we have the peculiar institution, the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. Minnesota history is formed by a large population influx of your hardy Nordic squarehead types, a racial and linguistic subgroup that has produced some of the most beautiful women and the most ghastly cuisine known to Person. These people brought a sincere work ethic and a hearty populist and progressive inclination. An inclination that, at the time, was somewhat radical, socialist. (You think Garrison Keillor is kidding about Lake Wobegon? He is, but not by much…)
Recognizing a common bond in resistance to the running dog jackals of the ruling class, they formed a party in unison with the Democrats, merging them into one political unit for the advantages gained in numbers. This is the most elementary fact of life in a republic: the bigger the party, the more interests represented, the more power accrues to serve those interests. Hence, the DFL, about as big a tent as possible. (Even included Communists, until a motor-mouthed hotshot lawyers from Mpls named Hubert Humphrey ran them off…)
Lets use this as a starting point. The DFL was an early champion of civil rights for colored folks early on, long before the notion was widely popular. Naturally, such people flocked to the DFL as representing their best interests. Not that they knew a nemotode from a toothbrush, but for reasons of political pragmatism, it made sense to align themselves with farmers, however divergent thier lives were.
Would it have made sense, then, for the DFL to become the Democratic Farmer Labor Negro party? Surely, it would lend much desired respectability and “face” to colored folks within the party, but at what cost? Given that the widest appeal brings the most power, and power furthers the movement toward freedom and justice? After all, the colored folks are already on board, no further outreach is required, they have the good sense to know who is most on their side. Not wholly committed, not waking up every morning wondering how to advance the cause of colored folks, but most. And, of course, if they had done, they would have run the risk of alienating some portion of the voters, diluting their power and weakening their capacity to help.
I’m sure you see what I’m getting at here. Most people by now know what gay, bisexual, and lesbian mean, and a large portion of them don’t like it. This is born of ignorance, to be sure, and we’re working on it. The heavy lifting is moving those people from “don’t like” to “uneasy, maybe, but what the hell, live and let live, right?” This is a major shift, Matt, major! Huge!
You don’t want to do anything to disrupt that change, and you can be damned sure your enemies will try to! So, to sum up…if the DFL had changed its name to the DFLN party, it would have been the triumph of ideological purity over pragmatism. Compromise is often pretty yucky, but you have to decide: fish or make sushi.
Now that the T has already been added, I don’t think it a good idea to remove it. But for heavens sake, don’t keep adding on groups and sub-groups, especially as such additions are likely to alienate the people you need without adding any more support than you already have! If you’re about to do something and you can hear your enemies chuckling and rubbing their hands in glee, think it over!
Yes, repeat, no. For me, the validity of the “trans experience” is that all have navels, they are people, hence, they are valid. Period. I am an ally of the immigrant community, but I only speak English. (Well, I can ask you where the library is at in Spanish and Russian, but if you answer, I won’t know what you’re saying…)
If you present the “trans experience” to me as it were originally: that is, a person of one gender in the body of another, I cannot grasp it, it makes no sense that a fully formed gender identity could be implanted in the body of the opposite gender, it borders on metaphysics. I would call that an “illusion” or even a “delusion”. It just ain’t so, it can’t be so!
To make an allusion, I have a similar delusion, common to people as they enter thier early maturity: that I am still “me”. I feel myself, experience myself, as though I had not changed since I was around 20. I gaze at myself in the mirror and wonder “Who dat? Not me.” And I know it isn’t so, I am not him, he wasn’t a father, hell, he hadn’t even had his heart broke! I know better, but the experience doesn’t change. It is a delusion! Happily, it is a relatively harmless delusion unless I decide that “I” can play rugby.
Now, if we simply alter the definition to say “tranny” to mean people who experience themselves as if they were of another gender…problem solved. Then the question becomes how to resolve such issues, how to bring a fair measure of contentment. As I’ve said, I have grave doubts about surgical alteration, which, if it fails, is a “mutilation” and could be so described even if it succeeds. The word alteration describes precisely the same procedure as mutilation. I choose the latter to describe my discomfort and skepticism about the procedure, not in order to denigrate the unfortunate souls who look to it for relief. I simply wouldn’t do such a thing, it is antithetical to my values.
You have offered evidence, valid evidence, that I may very well be wrong. Duly noted, I’ve been wrong before. In '68, when I thought I had made a mistake. But I’m not convinced, and I will not pretend to be convinced simply to be polite. I must trust you to accept my candor as respect. I expect the benefit of the doubt as I offer it, that I can be skeptical about something like this without being accused of bias and bigotry. It ain’t so, it just ain’t so. Period. Full stop.
But this has no bearing whatever on my concern for the rights and validity of such people. None whatsoever. I certainly wouldn’t make such procedures illegal, but I would press for research into alternatives into less drastic amelioration.
I have undoubtedly given more thought to “tranny” issues today and yesterday than ever before, or again. Its not part of my life. Neither is the Hindu community, but my support for their rights is not in jeapordy as a consequence.
It is an absurdity to delineate and enumerate every group and sub-group whose rights I support. Human rights is the legitimate cause, you got a navel, you’re in. (You do, right?) I support you as you support me and we go forward together. I don’t see any other way, our enemies are legion, and they are powerful! Together, we have a chance, otherwise, we are toast. Their toast.
I hope this answers, but I stand ready if you need more. Kinda hope not, truth be told, because I am really worn out on this subject. But if stern duty demands, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, whacka do, whacka do.
Yours in Revolution,
e.
And .22 Calibre? Have I invited you to bite me yet? Sorry for the oversight!
Bite me.
Most, if not all. That’s why they are transsexuals. Of the transsexuals I know who I’ve met in person and are very sane and focused, almost all of the ones who had money to do the genetic testing were found to be intersexed (chromosomally ambiguous is intersexed). There are forms of intersexed that we do not have the current technology to fully detect so it is not inconceivable that the others are intersexed as well. Your proclamation that X and Y are the end-all is just laughable, especially compared to what I’ve already explained in this thread. My XX friends with penes wishes that were the case. Unfortunately, it is not and one of them is getting SRS next month.
elucidator and Dio, I don’t care if you hate trannies and think they are disgusting foul creatures. What I do care about is if you spout bad science. You can say that the science is inconclusive and therefore you don’t believe it, but don’t keep throwing out these stupid statements we’ve already refuted. Chromosomes are not the deciding factors for sex.
Elucidator, some trans people have improperly been considered to be eunuchs, but if you examine the situation in more detail, you will find that is not the case. First of all, eunuchs were male identified men who had their testicles (usually it was just the testicles) removed for various reasons. Sometimes they were prisoners, young boys who the church wanted for falsetto singing, servants who the royalty thought would be safer, harem guards. These people normally had castration forced upon them, although some chose it due to the high social status it sometimes entailed.
On the other hand, you constantly come across reports as people who become castrated and then live as females or a third gender. These are usually different societies then ones in which castration was practiced although interestingly, sometimes it was done in the same society and each group had a different role. In societies where they are considered females, they are fully accepted as a female and allowed to do female work, wear female clothing, marry men, etc (some societies allow individuals to do this without castration). In some societies, they are regarded as a third gender and often attributed with special powers. They normally either dress in female clothing or a mixture of male and female clothing. Often they are shamans or hold other highly regarded positions of power. You can come across a lot of details on these people if you read gay history books because these people were considered gay by many histories, even though some of these individuals married women after transitioning. It’s only recently that people have been aware that homosexuality is not connected to transsexuality. Not everyone is aware of this though and gay men are forced to transition in Iran where homosexuality is punishable by death but transsexuality is considered OK by the Koran.
And I haven’t even begun to discuss transsexual animals….
Actually, clinging to an irrational belief in the face of strong contrary evidence is pretty much the definition of a bad bias.
Also, people who declare how they’re proudly going to be rude are funny when they’re simultaneously bitching about people being sarcastic at them.
Oh, so this is all about the acronym? This is what your whole argument was about? Funny, then, that you said this: “I remember having these discussions and a gay man of my collective refusing to accept that hetero TV’s had any standing in his ‘movement’, and I thought he had a very good point. Still do. After all, a TV can just change clothes, and my buddy couldn’t.”
So, no. You actually said that transsexual people can just change their clothes and act normal, and thus don’t need any equal rights movement on their behalf.
Spin, spin, spin, elucidator. I’d be offended that you expect me to believe this absolute bullshit, except that most likely, a lot of people will. That’s the sad part. You’re trying to claim you didn’t say things that you did. Jesus. I can’t believe you can even bring yourself to spew this kind of bullshit.
You know, insightful and indeed funny things can be said about the crazy heterogeneity of the queer movement. But it seems less effective coming from someone who said that transsexual people should just “change their clothes.”
Oh my God. More utter bullshit. More attempts to spin away what you said, so you can dissociate yourself from what you actually said, and maintain that you were saying something else all along.
That’s so fucking pathetic, elucidator. What a pathetic load of bullshit. You’re trying to claim some invisible distinction; this makes Bill Clinton’s argument over the definition of “is” look like Biblical exegesis.
Is this why you write this way? If you fill your writing with incomprehensible cutesy bullshit, you’ll have an out if people attempt to make you account for what you’ve said? Or did you just do way too many drugs back in the day?
You’re not convinced, and that’s probably because you haven’t honestly examined the evidence. I know you haven’t, because you didn’t respond to dozens of good arguments and pieces of evidence - in fact, you didn’t even bother looking at the evidence Lilairen posted, as indicated by the fact that you thought it was knew when matt_mcl posted it.
You know, it might be possible to honestly evaluate the evidence and come to a different conclusion. I really don’t see how your conclusion could differ if you really examined the evidence - but I will certainly acknowledge that other people can look at the same evidence and come to totally different conclusions, and it’s possible that I’ve missed some completely reasonable, valid interpretation of the data. However, you have refused to consider the evidence at all; you’ve spent this whole thread skipping over arguments and refusing to look at the evidence people have sent your way. What is that other than bigotry? Refusing to even examine real evidence because it doesn’t fit in with your preconceived notions - what can that possibly be other than bigotry?
Except, per what you said before, for groups who can get along with the normal people just by changing their clothes. You don’t support their rights - you explicitly said so!
But, of course, you’re not going to respond to this. Because if someone posts without kissing your ass sufficiently, you feel entitled to ignore what they said. So you’re going to continue to pretend that what you said in this thread is actually harmonious with your claims to support every person’s rights. And, most likely, a lot of people will believe you, because frankly, most people really are that dumb.
Is that what you believe, that the name of the LGBT rights movement is equivalent to that of a political party? That this is a matter of branding? “LGBT” is not a brand! It’s a list, a partial list, of people in the community. And we don’t put together our community and include and exclude people from it on the basis of marketing.
Do you believe the backlash that we’ve recently experiencing is due, or even partially due, to the fact that some of us now include the word “transgender” in the name of the movement that we’re part of? If so, please disabuse yourself. I have never heard of such a thing. “Well, as long as it was just attacking the institution of marriage and infiltrating our schools and the military, I was okay with that. But then those other people wanted sex change operations, and I drew the line!”
And even if it were to somehow be made more difficult because of trans-inclusiveness, it would still be a good idea. Remember: this is in large part a fight for awareness, and we can’t raise awareness of trans issues if we don’t admit that trans people exist and are a part of our community.
But it does, Blanche, it does. So much of this – and you really must trust me on this, for all the LGBT demystification education I’ve done – is based, as I said, on awareness and acceptance of people’s own account of themselves. That’s exactly what the trans community is fighting for: to have their own account of themselves accepted.
I accept that you’re trying, in good faith, to be an ally for trans rights and the LGBT community. But you cannot simply *declare *yourself trans people’s ally. You cannot say 1) I am in solidarity with the struggle of trans people and 2) I do not accept trans people’s account of themselves; as a non-trans person, I deny how trans people describe themselves and I think the treatment many of them are fighting for is foolhardy.
It’s not a matter of ideology: it’s a matter that the very oppression that these people face centres around a denial on the part of the greater society that they are who and what they say they are. The trans rights movement centres around being able to define your own gender and not have that second-guessed. If you are second-guessing the gender of others, that is inimical to the trans rights movement.
Part of being part of a progressive movement fighting for the rights of a disempowered group, as a member of the empowered group, is be guided by what the disempowered group is fighting for, not what you think they ought to. (And I acknowledge here that I am a non-trans person, but I am a genderqueer member of the LGBT community and I have undergone and provided extensive demystification and ally-building training on trans issues, so I hope I can be forgiven for addressing trans issues in this way.)
Do you think that someone could truly be an ally for LGB civil rights if they denied that we were truly attracted to members of our own sex, we just thought we were, and that maybe some better way to express our desire besides through sex and relationships with members of our own sex? It’s not enough to say “I believe that everyone should have equal rights,” and think you won’t have to deal with the nature of the people you’re asking for equal rights for. There are specifics involved: the specific identity and account of that community, and the specifics of what they need to be able to put them on an equal footing.
So. Please, if this is important to you, as I believe it is, open up. Come back on your statements that you don’t need to learn anything about trans people. Hear from them. Hear their individual stories, when they choose to share them. Practise being supportive, the simple mercy of listening to someone and accepting what they say about who they are. It can be bewildering at first, but as they say, a mind, once stretched, never returns to its original dimensions.
Yeah, that’s pretty much par for the course, isn’t it? People make reasonable arguments, you decide those arguments are “neutron star dense” or you just tell them to bite you.
Man, you are one pathetic old man, aren’t you? Not only can’t you reconsider the views you decided on thirty years ago, but the only thing you have to say to anyone who disagrees with you is insults.
elucidator, I hate the phrases “man trapped in a woman’s body”, “male body with a woman’s soul”, etc. I am a biological anthropologist heavily on the biological side and I don’t believe in souls. If that is how it was explained to you then I can see why you would reject it. I would’ve rejected it if it was presented to me like that. I’ll be sure to work within the trans community to get people away from using those phrases. The hard part would be coming up with a better short explanation for what it actually is. Do you think you would be more inclined to believe it if you were only presented with scientific explanations and evidence?
Oh, Lord love a duck! Are you paying any attention to what I’ve actually said? I give up, pal. Think what you want, doesn’t mean shit to a tree.
This, on the other hand, is damned interesting! Can you cite?
Aw, heck, kimera, I wish I’d seen this first! Yes, that’s it in a nutshell.
(I’m getting a deja voodoo here. Have we had this discussion before?..)
I really don’t see how our views are in conflict. Have I missed something?
And, as well, I am still very interested in your comment about the Koran. Please do follow up on that, I love being interested!
Get off my lawn!
elucidator, I’m not saying that is what you do think, I am saying that I don’t care if you do think that.
I think I understand where you are coming from now. We’ve been introduced to transsexuality two different ways. I was introduced to transsexuality through the pages of my cultural anthropology book where they were classified as types of homosexuals. I always thought that was incorrect and surmised that there must be a biological cause for both transsexuality and homosexuality due to the fact that I kept coming across it in different cultures in different times all over the world. I was raised in a conservative environment and had been told that homosexuality was a modern invention so it was quite a shock to see what a long, cultural history it had. I remember when I was reading the first text required for my Cultural Anthropology 101 class and came across homosexuality. I nearly fell out of my chair, especially at how casually it was mentioned. At that, I read my college’s entire human sexuality section. I studied transsexuals from a scientific perspective before I ever met one. You have not had the benefit of a scientific analysis and therefore you understandably disbelieve.
Here is an article about sex changes in Iran. Also, from here
The other problem is that most people do believe in souls, so that actually helps them understand. Perhaps when we better understand the developmental processes that lead to a “female brain” and a “male brain”, we can present this in better scientific terms. But even then, we fall into the trap of insisting that things be put in one box or another. Is it a boy or a girl? Well, the problem is that there are more than two boxes (or, more likely, a continuum). In fact, almost nothing in biology is a simply dichotomy. It really should be no surprise that these human-coneived models that we impose on the biological world break down on closer examination.
Go check out the “what is a fish” thread in GQ right now. We need to look at the biological world as it is, not as it appears thru our preconceived ideas.
Well, paint my butt blue and call me Shirley! The Ayatollah Khomeini? No shit! Never would have believed it in a million years.
Glad to have arrived at an amicable meeting of minds. More tea?
I’ll have some pear white, but only if you would address my post, please.
I found this video about transsexuality in Iran. It contains interviews with transsexuals currently living in Iran.
That’s a very good point John Mace, I didn’t think about that.