Simply this: the thread isn’t about ugliness or fatness, it’s about transsexuality. The death-by-a-thousand-questions approach, especially coupled with the bringing-in-a-bunch-of-tangents approach, aren’t great at getting to a clearer understanding of issues.
Maybe we should have rules about discrimination based on appearance; maybe not. But if you want to discuss those, another thread would be the best place to do so. Sandwich made a particular proposal, one that I think is wholly unworkable, and I’m asking a couple of questions to show where the proposal falls apart. If you want to defend her proposal, do so, but please don’t think you’re adding to the discussion by asking a bunch of tangential questions.
I apologize, I was honestly trying to give respect. I am ignorant of the terms and descriptors of the BDSM community, having never been in it despite having several friends who participate, and I was uncertain if “BDSM” was really the proper word (I’ve heard others used). Since you used it, I used it, but I didn’t want to unconsciously stumble onto a “transgender v. transsexual” lingo debate. No disrespect was intended.
Why are you baffled? Here are the scenarios at hand.
Guy goes to his doctor, is diagnosed, goes through the year of therapy/transition, then elects to have a doctor cut off his penis and create a vagina.
Let’s assume the same treatment options were open to BIID patients.
Guy goes to his doctor, is diagnoses with BIID, goes through a year of therapy/transition, then elects to have doctor amputate his leg/arm/etc.
What exactly is so different in the two scenarios that justifies the latter person not being given the same treatment options as people who think they were both the wrong gender?
It’s not that he has surgery. It’s that Clooney just always thought he should be Black. Is his sincere belief that he is Black despite his white skin enough to justify society treating him as a Black person? Why or why not?
First, it’s not cutting off a penis, it’s still an inflammatory way to describe it. Second, the person who loses the arm is completely mutilating themself for their psychological reasons. A person undergoing vaginoplasty is ending up with fully functional sexual organs that only a gynecologist can tell are not birth-origined. The transsexual transforms their primary sexual organs, at the end of it all they have not lost. They have gained correct sexual organs which work, barring surgical mishap. They end the process better off than when they started. I already presented numerous cites to that effect in the Comments thread. Whereas the person who cut pod their arm…has lost a fully functioning limb, and gained nothing.
If you still cannot see the enormous difference between gaining functioning , correct genitals, and losing an arm.., (shrug) then you really and truly do not understand.
Again, this a value judgement. One that I am not sure why you would feel comfortable holding given you sensitivity to people being marginalized for what they believe their bodies should look like.
This, again, is a meaningless distinction. Aside from the fact that trans folks have lots of other surgical interventions that just involve “losing things” (eg. mastectomies) that would make you petty distinction moot, there is the fact that you are assuming a person with BIID feels amputating something is a loss. The bottom line, as with trans folk who undergo SRS, is that they think they are righting a wrong. They think the arm, or whatever, should not be there in the first place. They think the correct state is attained via amputation. Why do you question the truthfulness or sincerity of that when you fully buy that someone can have the wrong genitalia? Seems like an odd distinction to make on the merits.
From your perspective. Which really should be irrelevant given your stance. If you are arguing that sex, gender, etc. are to be user-defined, irrespective of what society considers normal, then you can’t say a BIID person has lost or gained just because they amputate something. By that logic, a MTF trans person has lost the ability to use a urinal or produce sperm. Obviously, they see what they have gained from a mental and physical perspective to be worth what they lost. Why aren’t the same considerations and standards being applied to BIID patients? Why is one mutilation and the other is just surgery?
I understand that you wish to impose a obvious double standard for no reason beyond self-interest. Just like that poster who wanted to grouse about how demeaning it was to be confused with a mere transvestite. It’s one think to ague that such things should be normalized on the basis of compassion. It’s entirely another to base your arguments on the rectitude of the notion that people born the wrong gender. That’s a harder argument to make, and one that makes it harder to draw meaningful distinction between trans folks, BIID folks, and all sorts of other people who have sincere beliefs that the are or are not something they appear to be.
You’ve lost me. Your argument reads as “if you don’t like being offended then don’t be offended.” And no, saying SRS is the same as “chopping off your dick” is medically inaccurate. This is not open to debate, read technical papers on the procedure of SRS.
Disagree. The BIID person loses a perfectly good working limb and gains nothing. SRS is not the same. What I think the issue here is why you seem so insistent on lumping everything into this broad category of “cutting off stuff.” There’s almost a palpable fear at work behind the words.
And yes we do and are supposed to make value judgments! Trimming one’s fingernails or hair is removing a body part, but obviously is of no concern - thus a value judgment has been made. So is having a mole removed, and so is a face lift. Breast reduction surgery can be undertaken by women, or even pre-emptive mastectomies in the cases of women at extreme risk of breast cancer. What about hysterectomies for women as birth control? Is your argument that all those procedures aren’t self-mutilating in the same way you’re posting about SRS, even the cosmetic/vanity ones? Why not?
Value judgments are mandatory, because blind lumping of things into categories does a tremendous medical disservice.
This is a game in semantics. A transsexual is bettered in nearly every way by their process: physically, sexually, emotionally, socially, and legally (with SRS being a requirement for legal sex change in many areas). Probably lessened in terms of money and pain. This is again a fact which is indisputable. Your argument may as well be extended to the absurd “well, one thing a cancer survivor has lost is the ability to be killed by their cancer.”
No, it’s if you want to call everyone out for being intolerant and inflexible on their views on well-established biological facts, you should perhaps not engage in the same thing you accuse people of. You said:
That is clearly a negative value judgment you make against BIID folks that could, and is, just as easily applied to transgender people by a large portion of society. There is no reason why amputation is mutilation, and elective vaginoplasty is not. The fact that you can honestly say, a guy who amputates something to correct what they perceive as a mistake is crazy, whereas someone doing the same to their genitals is perfectly sane is very odd to me.
First, some procedures do involve the complete removal of the penis.
So first, what you said is inaccurate. Second, it’s besides the point. I wasn’t intending the shorthand I used to be offensive or strictly medically accurate in either case (and I think you know that).
In your opinion, they are losing a perfectly good limb. To them, they are correcting a mistake. Removing a cancer on their body. I don’t understand why you feel qualified and entitled to make a value judgment about someone like that when you would be deeply offended if anyone did the same about trans folks.
It has little to do with cutting anything off. It’s that you want to normalize a behavior that under most other circumstances would be considered troublesome, and that you want to do some in such a narrow way that it doesn’t include people suffering from analogous illnesses.
I never argued that any of those things up to and including SRS or voluntary amputation were mutilation. I honestly don’t really care what people do to their bodies in general, especially if it is deemed medically appropriate and is safe. My objection is to the insistence that our definitions of gender must be redefined because a small minority of people insist it doesn’t work for them. And that because it doesn’t work for them, they whole concept is invalid and that disagreeing means you are a bigot. Additionally, we should boycott private businesses who are already attempting to make reasonable accommodations.
Then why do you insist on getting all butt hurt when the value judgements others make wrt what is and isn’t mutilation puts SRS into the former category? Their value judgements marginalize people in the same ways yours do, yet you feel no compunction about voicing them.
What nonsense. People already argue voluntary amputation may be the bestoption for some BIID patients. Obviously, it would benefit BIID patients in the same ways SRS can benefit transgendered people. What is odd is that you fail to acknowledge that.
The person who amputates their arm does not correct a flaw. Having genitals which match your mental gender is a good thing. Losing an arm can hardly be argued as being a good thing, but I suppose someone, somewhere, can. Keep reaching for that rainbow.
I keep saying this in different ways and I don’t think there are any other ways to say it, so if you don’t agree I’m not going to convince you.
The exception is not the rule. In very few modern GRS surgeries does one merely “chop off the penis” which is the bombastic way you described it. And continued to describe it, even after objections were raised.
You’re correct, you do not understand.
Well, just me and pretty much the entire established medical community in Western civilization nowadays.
You need to argue with the people who urged a boycott; I didn’t.
When you resort to nonny terms like “butt hurt” I have great difficulty believing like I’m debating someone on the SDMB and not the peanut gallery off-board.
I do not concur.
~
The readers here can draw their own conclusions - either GRS is “chopping off your dick,” to very lightly paraphrase your original statement, which is no different than sticking your arm into a band saw - or else it’s a medical procedure recognized by major medical establishments around the planet and by tens of thousands of health practitioners in this specific field as being beneficial to transsexuals.
You made your points, thank you for your time and patience, but I am not getting anywhere here, and nor are you, so I’m not going to discuss this because I think both sides points just need to be out here for others to review.
Why do you assume one person’s desire to to “match” is less real than another person’s? It’s blatant hypocrisy, heightened by the unflattering terms you use for people with BIID, and the means they might use to make their body match the way they imagine themselves to be.
Actually, I have not continued. Regardless, you were factually wrong, and trying to confuse the issue.
Wrong. The medical community is advocating a treatment for an illness. I don’t think they are attempting to make any proclamations about how gender should be defined by law or how society should make accommodations for transgendered folks.
Boo hoo. You are acting butt hurt. More importantly, you are treating those who disagree with you with far less respect and consideration than most are treating you with. So if you want to take umbrage when you get called on it, so be it. If anyone is this thread came in saying transsexuals were crazies who want to mutilate themselves, you would be the first one to whine about how bigoted they were being. Yet, you have no problem using the same language to other people.
Without any snark or sarcasm, have an excellent day tomorrow, brickbacon, I’m too tired to debate any further. I’m simply too happy to be irritated about a difference of opinion; I wish you wouldn’t have insisted on directing the phrase “butt hurt” towards me, but I’m certainly not going to start a “knife fight” over it.
That whole post is such an straight* line that it almost begs for a segue. But I’m not going to touch it with an 8" pole**. As LHOD said, just here to learn/grasp your side of the story…though I fully admit I still don’t get it. Meaning that I keep thinking ‘mental illness’ more than anything else. But even if I am right – and yes, I understand that there are plenty of competing cites on the matter – I am all for tolerance. But I don’t/can’t get to the point where I think chopping off your dick or having one built is ‘normal.’ It just isn’t.
