Seems theres this teacher in California who turned from a man into a female,surgically. Now some weird group wants her barred from teaching.Some students have gotten together and are protesting this,as he(she now) is a good teacher. They(I’m not sure who) say she’s a corrupting influence. Bah!I’ve had some teachers who would have been well replaced with a gorilla;a teacher is a teacher.
Nobody said things would be easy,and nobody was right-George Bush.
People are stupid. If (s)he can teach, let her. Lord knows, the profession is not exactly teeming with prospective applicants…
Yer pal,
Satan
Now, Satan, you know as well as I do that all transgendered people are raving homosexual pedophiles who are merely luring children into a world of depraved sexual experimentation and godlessness. It’s so obvious.
Dammit, Phil, it was my turn to do the sarcasm and your turn to do the soundly reasoned response. You always steal the fun part! 
I think a lot of people would have a problem with this teacher teachig their children.
Especially for primary grades.
kknick34:
That is a vague statement. Sure, come closed-minded jerks might feel this way. But most of us realize that the kids would probably not notice a difference (Modern trans-gender operations are MUCH BETTER at not making mutants these days).
Now, if this is how YOU feel, WHY?
Satan:
It is my belief that most people are closed minded jerks. Think about the issue…in my town every nutball right winger within the school district would be out there protesting.
I personally would not have a problem with it. I would rather my kid be taught a trans-gender teacher who was good than a bad straight teacher.
Um, kknick34? A great number of transgendered people are straight. Some M->F transsexuals have married men after their surgery. Many M->F TSs dated women exclusively before starting the pre-surgery hormone treatments. Gender identity and sex-partner preference are pretty separable.
Visit the Internet Stellar Database at www.stellar-database.com
Um, kknick34? A great number of transgendered people are straight. Some M->F transsexuals have married men after their surgery. Many M->F TSs dated women exclusively before starting the pre-surgery hormone treatments.
if M–>F married men after the surgery, who did they date before? men or women? If they dated men, they were not “straight” if they dated women , and were “women inside” doesn’t that classify as less than straight, maybe–lesbian?.
if M–>F dated women BEFORE the surgery and were truly “women” inside, does that classify them as straight? If the “M” truly believed that the “M” was a female inside with a man’s outside, yet still dated women, doesn’t that classify the “female person of M” as a lesbian?
Just one of those questions that makes you say HMMM! 
One must learn by doing things; for though you think you know it you have no certainty until you try.
–Sophacles
oops! new at this cut and paste jazz—
meant to quote but got kind of mixed up in my enthusiasm to have successfully ( or somewhat successfully) cut and pasted.
One must learn by doing things; for though you think you know it you have no certainty until you try.
–Sophacles
Sorting out the gay/straight values of transgendered individuals is one of those things that makes quantum mechanics look simple. However:
The individual is the same in terms of mental makeup before and after surgery. I.e., (s)he feels him/herself to be a man or a woman despite what his/her groinal plumbing may indicate. So:
A male-to-female transexual who is attracted to men is (a) a woman inside his/her head before the operation, (b) a woman both inside her head and to external appearances after, and (c) straight. (Before the operation he is not interested in being a man who has sexual relations with other men, as a gay would. He conceives himself as a woman interested in men, and by definition therefore straight.)
A female-to-male transexual who is attracted to women is (a) a man inside his/her head before the operation, (b) a man both internally and externally after, and (c) straight. (Same logic, reversed.)
I did read a report of a M-to-F person who was interested in women, and had a successful Lesbian relationship after surgery. This has a strong resemblance to the imaginary rest mass of a tachyon or the likelihood of an alien subscribing to David’s publications. 
I have a fairly high boggle quotient, but this is very close to the edge on comprehensibility.
For a really good look at what makes a transexual tick, there is reportedly an excellent movie based very closely on the true, and tragic, story of Brandon Teena. I have not yet seen it, but from all reports it is outstanding.
To return to the OP, what precisely would be the objection to a woman who had been born a man becoming a schoolteacher? What if he/she had been born a hermaphrodite and undergone “corrective” surgery?
While we’re on the subject, what would be the gay/straight status of a hermaphrodite? With whom could he/she have sex legitimately under gay-is-wrong moral codes?
:::rummaging around for Tylenol::::
I am going to the Tachyons thread - easier to understand and keep ‘straight’
With the way that schools are going today, I would think that they should beg any decent teacher to stick around, not try to kick ‘em out over something that stupid. Of course, that’s the other trend now; let’s get anal about the smallest frickin’ thing rather than addressing the real problems. Who knows, by the time I’m a teacher (5 or 6 years down the line), they may have a snit finding out that I’m a Rocky freak. Yeah, I’m a real bad influence, now.
Cessandra
My Homepage Updated 9/30/99!
The RHPS: Website For Virgins Updated 9/28/99!
Dear Satan:
Somehow I think I would notice if I walked into class on Thursday and it was taught by a man when it had been taught by a woman on Wednesday. Or vice versa.
I don’t think the kids of today are that high or stupid.
TPC, I think you missed Satan’s point–the kids wouldn’t notice a difference in the teaching style. I’m sure they would notice the gender reassignment.
However, the situation as you describe it is absurd. Transsexuals who are candidates for sex reassignment surgery have to go three at least three years of “real-life” therapy, meaning they have to live as the gender to which they will belong after the surgery, while taking hormones and seeing their therapist. It would never be a one-day-then-the-next situation.
This person was probably a woman for the whole time her students knew her, but some group found out about her SRS (I’m sure the school board probably already knew), and wants her fired. I’m glad the students are sticking up for her.
OK, from a gay man: Transexuals are not GAY (necessarily). Whence going through the transexual surgery and psychotherapy they are told to detach themselves from any gay friends that they might have. They also have to live as the opposite gender for at least three years. If you think about this legally, a male to female transexual person is legally a female. If she violates some law and goes to prison, they put her in the female side not the male side. You can have transexuals that had a sex change that are gay. For example, a male to female sex person who only dates females. I have seen that but far less often. Of the transexuals I have known (8 people) and the people whom I have known who changed their minds about the operation (4 people) one (of the initial 8) changed to be lesbian rather than a straight man. The 4 who did not go through with it (after the psychotherapy) realized that they were actually gay not a woman trapped in a man’s body or a man trapped in a women’s body.
HUGS!
SC
PS. Male to female surgery results in better looking genitalia than female to male. This is because the male to female surgery is more practiced.
“People’s Poet don’t die, we’ll kill ourselves if you do, but first we’ll take off all our clothes.” The Young Ones
Several people have mentioned that one must live for three years as the opposite gender in order to be a candidate for the surgery. I, myself, knew a woman who had sex chage surgery and he also was required to live as a woman for three years prior to the operation. However, every news report I saw on this particular case said that when the children left school for Summer break, this teacher was a man, and that they would be returning to school to find he was now a woman. Does anyone have any information about this?
“I think it would be a great idea” Mohandas Ghandi’s answer when asked what he thought of Western civilization
In the National Post for saturday, Oct.2/99, David Frum writes:
" … Gender-identity disorder - gender dysphoria to give it its formal name - is a mental illness. People who suffer from this illness will often seek to mutilate themselves. These acts of mutilation are euphemistically called sex-change operations, but they are no such thing: Our sex is encoded into our genes and is unalterable. A “sex change” is, bluntly, a castration (of men) or a hysterectomy (of women) combined with plastic surgery.
"Gender dysphoria is hardly a unique illness. Extreme depressives, the autistic, schizophrenics, and other mentally ill people often express their distress by taking knives to their bodies. Where gender dysphoria IS unique is that it is the only mental illness whose victims have persuaded their government to pay for this self-mutilation: In the United States, “sex changes” can be subsidized by Medicaid; in Britain and canada they are paid for by the NationalHealth Service and Medicare.
"It is more than a little shocking to discover just how threadbare the psychiatric literature on gender dysphoria is. The theory that surgery is the right way to treat a man who wishes to be a woman is supported by the flimsiest and scandiest of research. So why do we do it? … "
Also in this article is a preceding bit on the teacher in Antelope, California, who may be the fellow who was at the start of this thread … it says here his performance reviews were satisfactory and by all accounts he was an able teacher -
"…over the past few years, however (his) behaviour has become increasingly bizarre. Last may … he announced in class that he believed himself to be a woman. He told his students that when class resumed in the fall he would be wearing woman’s clothing and makeup. He would change his name … He intended to use the female staff washroom. Within the year, he would undergo surgery to amputate his penis and implant artifical breasts.
“(The teacher) gave interviews to the local press about his intentions , provoking some alarm among students and parents. In August …the county school board voted to suspent (him) with full pay. (He) has since filed a legal challenge to the firing, catapulting him from local celebrity to national controversy.”
Now, I dunno the rights and wrongs, the ins and outs of this issue, but I am not 100% certain I would want this, at best, seriously disturbed man should be teaching my children.
Ok, interesting! Who is David Frum? What are his credentials? (Not arguing so much as looking for bona fides)
It sounds like we have a serious G.D. on our hands. Is “gender dysphoria” a mental illness? Are all transsexuals mentally ill, ipso facto? Given that this guy was exhibiting what most people would call bizarre behavior, would someone who handled the whole situation more tactfully and reservedly (say keeping everything under cover until near the operation, then notifying his/her superior of his/her intent to have the operation and return in the opposite role to his/her tenured position) be mentally ill? And would you want him/her teaching?
David Frum appears to ignore the fact that while our sex may be encoded into our genes, our gender, or more specifically our gender identification, appears to be a lot more fluid than that.