Of course it is, until you can demonstrate why it is necessary to “fix” these people just because they differ from the majority in some harmless way. What do you care if someone says “I’m a woman” or whatever? Why did anyone of the last century care if someone favoured their left hand? It’s inflicting misery for no reason.
Good point. Dr. Paul McHugh compares transgender to anorexia.
Sure, there are a few bizarre cases of genetic mutation/abnormality, but those do not justify enabling a confused, inadequate-feeling teenager to decide to “change genders”.
Brainscans? OK, scan the brains of a thousand random people, and you can tell which ones are “transgendered”? Can you discern any observable “differences” from other mental conditions?
Homosexuality is a completely different thing. Gays are not a special class, and no different from straights. People are not / should not be defined by their sexual habits.
If we’re talking definitions, and using the chromosomes to define sex, then there isn’t a difference. But that’s not a very useful definition. As Bricker pointed out, androgen insensitivity can result in someone who by any reasonable measure other than XY or XX, is female; she has female genitalia, grows breasts, etc. When such a person finds out, what then? Should we genetically test babies and stamp their birth certificates accordingly? If so, how do we classify other cases like XXY? Or what if the baby has ambiguous genitalia? Do we test and then perform surgery accordingly?
No. You’re allowed to be attracted to or unattracted to whoever you are. It’s not racist if I’m not generally attracted to a particular race. Nor is it homophobic if I’m not attracted to other men. As a general rule, I’m not attracted to transwomen, but I’ve also seen some I didn’t even know were until I was told. Does that make me magically gay because she’s “really a man”?
Here’s the thing, gender is almost entirely a social construct. Consider, other than the fact that we’ve been conditioned to associate them with each other, there’s nothing inherently feminine about pink or dresses. And there is some biological basis for some things like men generally being more aggressive or having interests in trucks or soldiers or whatever, there’s plenty of men that go against these sorts of social norms. If a man identifies as such, has XY chromosomes, has a penis, is attracted to women but then happens to like the color pink or isn’t particularly aggressive, is he somehow less of a man?
For me, the ONLY time what’s in someone’s pants matters to me is if I have a intend to pursue a sexual relationship with that person. Yes, as a straight man, I tend to find certain traditionally female characteristics attractive, so that’s going to strongly affect who I have sexual desire toward. But at that point, what happens between me and that person is no one else’s business.
For anyone else, I couldn’t give two shits if you have a penis, a vagina, both, neither, or something else between your legs. I also couldn’t give two shits if you dress as a man, a woman, a clown, a pirate, or whatever. And that’s where the whole bathroom thing comes too, I’m not interested in seeing anyone else’s parts, certainly not without their consent, and no one has a right to see mine without my consent. So I don’t see why the whole bathroom thing is even an issue. If someone wants more privacy for whatever reason, they can use a stall, and anyone caught looking in, regardless of what their sexual identity is, should be prosecuted accordingly.
On the other hand, I also completely understand why people are confused. I’m straight, I don’t know what it’s like to be attracted to men personally, but I can relate it to my experience of being attracted to women. I think we’re pretty much past the point where most people see it as an illness. It’s a little harder for me to understand transgenderism because only because I’m not all that attached to my own gender, so to a certain extent, men who are defined by their maleness or women who are defined by their femininity are as baffling to me as transgenderism. But yet, no one seems surprised when men get testicular cancer and feel like less of a man as a result or women get mastectomies and feel like less of a woman and either gets cosmetic surgery to fix it. But if someone feels bereft of a vagina or penis or whatever, somehow it becomes weird, but probably because, for most of us, we’ve never desired to have anything different than what we do. Can you at least relate how you might feel in that context?
But even more, we don’t actually have to experience the same feeling to want to help people who are suffering. I’m not a psychologist, and I’ve only personally known a couple transgender people in my life but, really, why would someone subject themselves to years of struggling to pass as the opposite gender, hormone treatments, constant psychiatric evaluations, and painful and expensive surgeries, if there wasn’t something real underneath they were struggling with? All I can do is trust that they’ve surrounded by informed and compassionate people trying to help them make the best decisions for their life. Maybe someday we’ll have better treatments, and when those come, good. In the meantime, they’re still people.
It’s already been explained to you that sexuality and gender identity are two different things. There are transmen who like men, and transwomen who like women. Do you recognize this?
Further, you continue to ignore the question of how society should treat people born with an intersex condition who are assigned a sec by doctors, but later find that their gender identity differs.
Not always, no. Intersex people exist, you know. Or maybe you don’t know. Traditionally, they were subjected to surgical modifications that made them male or female, generally based not on what chromosomes they had but on what looked easier to approximate with the tools available to the surgeon. More recently intersex people have demanded the right to choose for themselves, and some these days are choosing to retain the architecture they’ve got, which doesn’t really correspond to what we tend to think of as male or female.
If a person with XY chromosomes has androgen insensitivity syndrome and therefore has a vagina, not a scrotum with testicles in it, and a feminine-appearing face, and feminine body structure overall, do you conceptualize that person as a male or as a female? You going to insist on a definition that runs counter to how this person defines herself?
Then there are the trans people who obtain sex reassignment surgery. This is similar in some ways to the surgeries that intersex people are demanding the right to not have forced upon them, but of course in the case of transgender people it isn’t being forced upon them and they have to fight to obtain it. Based on your comments about Jenner, Manning and Bono, I gather that you do not recognize their authority to define their sex.
Gender and sex are not the same. Gender is a set of generalizations that were made about people based on sex, which is, itself, a generalization (see above discussion of intersex people). Like all generalizations, there are exceptions to the rule. I’m one of those exceptions. The generalizations that constitute gender consist of long detailed descriptions of what it means to be a girl and what it means to be a boy, generalizations about personality and behavior and ways of thinking and priorities and whatnot. You can ignore gender entirely, and say you only believe in sex (i.e., you reject every generalization except the ones about biological bodyparts, the plumbing as it were), but if you’re not going to do that, if you are going to give some countenance to the existence of gender, if you’re going to believe that masculine and feminine exist at all, then hello, I’ve always been one of the girls. Knew it by 3rd grade and was proud of it. I’m male. Gender and sex are not the same.
Particularly for me. I’m not transgender, I’m genderqueer. I don’t consider my maleness any more wrong than my girl-ness. I don’t need fixing physically or psychologically, this is me.
You believe that but you can’t wrap your head around how gender identity can be different for two different people of the same sex.
Keep listening. It may start making sense to you at some point.
Lots of transgender women are lesbians, to start with. They have (or wish to have) sex with other women, not with men. That’s certainly not true of all transgender women, but a decent-sized minority of them, yes.
It’d be a real nightmare if society expected you to act a certain way based on the fact that you were born with certain preferences, huh?
You’re in luck then, because this is never going to happen. I can’t honestly believe that you really legitimately fear this will happen. It sounds like paranoid lunacy to me.
You can date whoever you like. Society treating trans people like people isn’t going to require you to change who you date.
Your dating issues have zero to do with how society should treat trans people.
Who the fuck cares? I am so tired of us getting into everyone’s business. If it’s not hurting anyone else, then why are we making people suffer? I understand exactly what it’s like to be a woman and feel like a woman. I am grateful every day that my biology lines up with my chemistry and my mental state, etc.
Apparently there are people in the world for whom this does not occur. They are miserable every fucking day of their lives. Life is like a hell for them, no matter what they have to put on a costume.
So one day they stand up and demand, no, not demand, they have been begging, I want to take off this costume! I want to be who I really am!
What kind of a human being am I if I say, fuck you, no, you just keep right on sitting in that closet, miserable and depressed, your whole life essentially a lie. What skin is it off my back if I say, No, come out, be who you are. I don’t have to date them, no one is forcing me to do that. They aren’t asking for that. They are merely asking for the right to live! Just try and step into their shoes for a minute.
It’s the same as gay marriage. It’s no skin off YOUR back. And it’s the same as
abortion. I don’t believe that clump of cells is a human being, so LAY OFF.
“Liberals”. You realize that you are arguing against kindness, against compassion, and against love, right? You realize that in this case the liberals have decided to go with the route of kindness, and the conservatives have decided to go with the route of cruelty? Maybe you should think about what hill you want to die on before you decide all liberals are evil.
Derek, have you considered that it might be possible that modern medicine is right, and transgender is a real thing? If there’s a chance that they’re right, then why would you want to risk being on the side of an issue that could greatly harm so many decent people, when being on the pro trans side harms no one at all?
Are you ever confused for a woman because your height is more characteristic of a woman? Does it bother you? Did you choose to have a woman’s height?
There are some people who have other physical similarities to the sex they don’t identify with. They are the people you are attacking as fake.
No. You can observe a person preferring to use their left hand over their right, just as you can observe a person’s preference to express a transgender, but you can’t observe the mechanism that made them left-handed anymore than you can observe their genes. You can also forcibly suppress both behaviors, too. And it’s absurd to do so with regard to handedness, just as it’s absurd to do that with gender.
It sounds like your real issue is your insecurities as a short dude who is afraid of whether he can get a date. I’m 6 feet tall, in great shape, have a hot wife who most people think is 10 years younger than she is, and I’m daddy to an adorable and precocious 3 year old son. And I’m completely fine with transgender men and women.
But you say you’re cool with gays. Shouldn’t you have the exact same concern that, someday, people will say you keep striking out with straight chicks; why don’t you try dating a gay dude? I mean, I don’t figure anyone is going to suggest that; but I don’t figure anyone is going to make the suggestion you mentioned, so why do you figure one is a big deal while the other doesn’t seem to be on your radar?
So your fear is that you’re possibly someday going to face some social pressure to date a trans woman, and that fear justifies pretending that they don’t exist and passing laws to stop them from using the correct bathroom? Do you serioulsy believe that conservative relatives are going to push you to date a trans woman, or that you are so weak that you’ll somehow find yourself unable to resist their suggestions?
Maybe you should stop being so bigoted towards a small minority and spending so much time and energy on other people’s genitals, and instead put that energy towards figuring out how to attract the sort of women you do like. I can’t see how hurting trans people is going to get you any closer to the girl of your dreams.
I knew after I posted that it would be problematic, but fortunately someone more coherent than me answered this already.
Apart from the obvious ability to claim whatever one wants, race as an entirely social construct is a far muddier set of categories than gender. Is there a way of “feeling Asian” in the same way that one has a sense of one’s own gender that doesn’t rely on external, society-defined norms?
That tells me as much as I need to know about your irrational fears of people who are non-gender-conforming.
Thank you; I hope you can find a good counsellor who can help you deal with your feelings of inadequacy and allow you to realize that you are not defined by your relationships (or relationship failures).
That’s enough, right there.
I know this can be a hot button issue, but I expect everyone participating in this thread to keep from getting personal.
Next personal snarkiness picks up a warning.
DerekMichaels00, You appear to be of the opinion that what you think matters.
Imagine a society akin to the ones we’ve seen in endless mediocre sci-fi films and Star Trek episodes where everyone wears some kind of uniform or unisex jumpsuit. I’ve longtime been mildly curious how transvestism would manifest in such a society, if at all. The clothing/hairstyle/cosmetics standards we apply to the genders are entirely arbitrary, after all.
That’s not what I asked about or what you wrote that I responded to. “You should lower your standards” isn’t about any change in opinions of “equality”, or are you imagining people weren’t saying just the same thing 40 - 50 years ago but then society decided fat girls shouldn’t be discriminated against?
My intent was to maybe get you to see that you’re conflating your emotional response with how things ought to be, but I see now that there’s little chance of getting through.