I agree with all this. Your basic premise is incorrect, so everything you built upon it makes little sense.
Similar to gay marriage or abortion, how is this your business?
Unless you are transgender, how does it harm you to continue what has been the case up till now? There are trans people. They pass among you. Sometimes you unknowingly share a bathroom with them and are none the wiser. Explain how this impacts you in anyway?
As a woman, I’d much rather share bathroom space with a man passing for a woman, than a woman, with a beard and manly appearance. Even if they are, in fact, packing a vagina.
And lastly, please, please, please explain how your scheme is gonna work. Should your 12 yr old daughter be cool with what appears to be a beared man in the bathroom? You gonna be okay watching him go in behind her?
Currently bathroom pervs cannot just slip unnoticed into the ladies room. If you have your way they’ll have free access and no one will think anything beyond, ‘Oh they must really have woman parts, I guess!’ And if it’s a guy pretending, how will your daughter or anyone else know? Are you going to monitor bathrooms? Should your daughter just take his word? Ask for proof?
How is it not self evident both how unworkable and unnecessary the whole scheme is? Or that it will clearly endanger women in bathrooms!
As others have said, this is your problem right here. That statement is simply wrong. Or, you can try and prove that to us with some credible scientific cites. Starthere:
Of course you aren’t.
So the whole “personal autonomy”, “respect individual rights”, and “live and let live” thing isn’t conservative anymore? Liberals are the ones who want to let people live freely according to their own beliefs, attitudes, and ideology, provided that they aren’t harming others, and that appalls conservatives? Just making sure I got that right…
The thing is Derek at some level I feel like you do. No matter how many times its been explained to me I never really get at a fundamental level what it is about gender identity that makes is people have radical surgery or commit suicide over it. It may be that my gender identity is not as strong as some, but I feel that if I my mind was born in a female body I would probably be fine living my life as a lesbian tomboy. But the thing is that I don’t have to fully understand why it is so important to them, all I have to do understand that it very clearly is that important to them, so much so that it is a matter of life and death. They are the ones who are feeling this way and who am I to tell them that they aren’t
Aside:
Just so that I understand the terminology. When a transgendered man (i.e. born physically male but identifying as female) is said to cross-dress would that be wearing men’s clothing or women’s clothing?
That would be a transgender woman (I know, it’s a bitch to learn the terminology), and which is considered to be cross-dressing would depend on their general presentation at the time.
If Buck Angel wore a tux age 15 (when he was still called Susan), she would have been cross dressing. If he wore a dress now, he’d be cross dressing. Yes, the pronouns are also a bitch.
Keep in mind that what constitutes cross-dressing varies with time and location. I’ve seen gents in Scotland who proudly wore clothing fitting the description of several girls’ uniforms popular in Spanish schools (one of them was accurate from socks to knit sweater). I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt that’s supposed to be a man’s size (not my fault it’s not available in “ladies”, and anyway I’m not a lady).
If we temporarily lay aside the rhetoric and look at the facts only, from an objective standpoint, why shouldn’t it be the chromosomes that define gender?
Let’s look at it this way: If a man had artificial “dog fur” surgically attached to his outer skin, and attached “dog ears” to his head, and attached a “tail” to his body, that wouldn’t make him a German Shepherd, even though on the outside he may *resemble *one.
So doesn’t a so-called “sex change operation” really simply just make a man *resemble *a woman, but he’s still a man underneath?
Because chromosomes do not completely define sexual characteristics, despite both being a biological thing,
AND
gender is completely a social construct, which doesn’t necessarily have any relationship with biology.
The sex reassignment process is a medical process and it it called sex reassignment because it affects sexual characteristics; it doesn’t affect gender. What affects gender is a social process, generally but not necessarily held in parallel with the medical one.
There are many cultures where this concept of “gender” isn’t used or is used only by some people who insist the other millions of people in the same culture all talk wrong.
You haven’t explained why it should be chromosomes only that defines gender.
Sexual reassignment surgery does not touch the brain. Gender is a personal mental image while sex is biological.
Consider it as Olde Tyme body/soul concept. We are finding that sometimes a female soul is born in a male body, and vice versa.
If a white person gets tanned, surgically modified eyes and face, can they claim to be Asian?
All humans are right-handed. Any human who show tendencies of being left-handed is either mentally ill, a willful troublemaker, or possessed by the Devil. They must be corrected by punishment if necessary. PERIOD.
- the equivalent of the OP’s position, 100 years ago.
Nava, leftie forced righty.
I would have to ask them why they are doing that.
As far ad I am concerned a person can claim to be whatever they wish, unless they are trying to commit fraud.
Yikes. Where were you raised, if you don’t mind me asking?
Bryan Ekers - 47, lefty who was left(y) alone, though I had a great-uncle who was “made right”, circa 1920-1930.
Trans people are what they consider themselves as. No, they don’t need surgery, they don’t need anything that others force upon them to look more like their outward gender.
But the most important thing is that sexuality is not some rapidly shifting thing that you can feel one day and revert the next. What trans opponents will never understand is that sexuality is ingrained into you, whatever you are, and does not simply change except possibly through great personal conflict and struggle. These choices are not made lightly or carelessly, and never just because one feels they want to go to the wrong bathroom for the hell of it
We could do that, but then “gender” would be a less useful concept for determining stuff like social interactions. Look again at the case of XY humans who don’t react to androgens. They tend to grow up as very feminine women, with women parts and woman skin and generally, feminine interests.
This stuff is messy, and not everyone fits neatly into a box.
This is not a comparable situation.
you can observe righthanded vs lefthandedness. You can’t observe “I’m really a woman inside despite my Y-chromosome a penis.”
What do you think I meant when I said: “I accept that gay men are biologically wired differently than straight men. This is obvious to me because a straight man’s penis gets hard to female facilitated stimuli, therefore it follows that gay means a gay man’s penis gets stimulated by male stimuli. I heard gay men’s brains are wired differently, and given how we could actually witness a manifestation of that, I believe it.”
Well said!
These days, if you’re a guy who struggles with women, friend/family and society tend to say and imply “why don’t you lower your standards,” which is often supplemented with “just go out with a heavier girl.” Or guys do that in desperation without being told. In the future, is it gonna be “just go out with a trans girl?” That must never EVER happen.
Of course, I don’t liken the two in actuality. I’ve gone out with girls who aren’t thin, but I was lucky to even get them to go out. I’m 5’1 and a male (as in a real born male). But they’re actual girls with REAL vaginas, real smooth girl skin, real breasts. I will never stand for being expect to lower my standards to a biological male, ever. Nor should any straight guy.