[QUOTE=Crazy Canuck]
You’re almost certainly right. However, as of right now there are 4,063 views of this thread, and I’m hoping that I just might convince some of them lurkers. If I was just trying to convince the people who respond, this entire message board would be a waste of time, as that almost never happens IME.
[/QUOTE]
Absolutely. I agree it’s important for people to see these arguments laid out. It’s just…
In the handful of years that I’ve known ZPG on this board, I’ve seen her claim that infanticide is a reasonable choice for overwhelmed mothers, defend a man’s right to shoot a pregnant woman if she was going to give birth without his consent, and decry adoptive parents as the most self-centered, sick people in existence.
It might be more instructive to respond to people prone to making less outrageous claims.
You are almost certainly right again. This is excellent advice that I am completely failing at taking.
Yeah, I was once actually in a serious relationship with a transman. If you can’t make your point with logic, just call them racist, amirite?
Now, I would fucking LOVE to live in a world where transgendered people could celebrate their transformations and that society would celebrate with them. You have no idea how much I would love to live in that world. ** The simple fucking fact is that I don’t, and neither do you.**
I have to admit, it took me by surprise that some people were sufficiently petty to consider this sort of thing a hobby. Out of curiosity, I checked the history of Carlos’ wiki page and as recently as March of this year, some clown had done a global search-replace, changing “her” to “his” (and incidentally changing words like “publisher”, “other” and “anywhere” to “publishis”, “othis” and “anywhise”), among other mean-spirited edits.
Some people are really hung up on this sort of thing.
If you want to live in that world, you might consider not treating transgendered surgery something to be kept in the dark and denied. I don’t know where you live in the world, but even in Red State America there are liberal communities or communities that accept that biological gender may not be the same as social gender. As I said before at the university I’m at, trans is the new cool. All the social science professors are scrambling for guest speakers and the periodic trans visitosr never has to pay for their own drinks.
If people were talking about a mutual acquaintance named Nancy, I wouldn’t say “Hey, did everyone here know that Nancy was raped last year?” It wouldn’t be because Nancy did anything wrong or that I’m prejudiced against rape victims. And it wouldn’t be because Nancy failed to change her name and move to another city to hide the fact she was the victim of a crime. It would be because I don’t want to be seen as an offensive idiot by everyone else in the room, which is what happen if I said something so offensive and idiotic.
There’s a slight hint in the second word in my username.
For the last time, IT’S NOT ABOUT KEEPING TRANS PEOPLE IN THE DARK OR NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THEIR EXISTENCE OR STRUGGLES. IT’S ABOUT LETTING THEM DECIDE WHAT THEY FEEL IS SAFE AND RESPECTING THAT. YOU DON’T GET TO MAKE THAT DECISION FOR THEM.
Apologies for raising my voice. In retrospect, I really should have taken Spice Weasel’s advice. Better late than never I guess.
As I mentioned above, I live in a world where a lot of my trans friends do, in fact, celebrate their gender confirmation surgeries. I think I mentioned the Facebook post showing off the “no more boobs” scars, and I’ve also have people say “I’m glad you noticed” when I commented on new facial hair on a person taking testosterone, or other details of new gender presentation.
And I have tons of gay friends, all of whom are out, as far as I know. But you know what, I didn’t know that about one of them. And when I found myself in an awkward situation where a conservative older woman said of a gay guy, “Poor Sam, he never found a wife, did he” I shut my mouth, until I had a chance to ask Sam if he was out, and if it was okay to say anything.
(Actually, my mouth probably gaped, because I was shocked that this person who had known Sam since he was 15 didn’t know he was gay. But I tried not to do that, because I didn’t think it was my place to out Sam. I knew that he had been closeted for many years for work reasons, and thought it possible he was still closeted in some circles.)
The OP specifically said this person does not talk about it. And everyone ought to know that it’s dangerous to be a transwoman in many places. Both of those ought to inform your behavior.
She absolutely doesn’t get it. She has no actual idea of how my people have to exist in the real world, and her tone has now become somewhat snidely mocking in this thread, which I think is revealing the true reason behind her heel-digging insistence that it’s OK to act like a total bitch to people like me by revealing all our personal data if we aren’t somehow in a witness-protection program level of stealth.
For all that she touts her immense knowledge on here about social justice issues, she shouldn’t speak about my people any more, because she is completely ignorant about us and our lives (and no, I don’t give a shit if she “knows” a transperson or two; that doesn’t mean anything).
In the real world I absolutely would not feel safe in her presence, because I would have no idea what she might decide to do.