Transsexual Question

[KellyM]

catsix, you still don’t get it. What’s this crap about gender stereotypes? I don’t meet too many of those myself. This sort of thing is far deeper in the mind than silly little things like that. It’s a deep-set thing that is totally unshakable and virtually impossible to deny. It has nothing to do with cultural stereotypes. It’s just that in your case it matches your body, and so you don’t realize that they can even be different.

I have a hard time accepting your claim that you will treat anyone with respect; your words have been stunningly lacking in respect even when people have tried to deal with you politely. If you want respect, you should do things to earn it.

[Una_Persson]

*Originally posted by Joe_Cool *
**It’s your shitty, ME-centric attitude, and your demand for everybody to swallow your claims, lock stock and barrel, with zero appreciation for the fact that probably about 90% of the population agrees with the alternate viewpoint, and yours is the “icky,” weird one. So get over it, huh?
Take note: You’re certainly not winning any converts with the prissy and condescending way you speak to people who disagree with you. In fact, your attitude makes me even less interested in understanding your story than I already was to begin with. **

OK, let me ask a straight question here. What viewpoint do you consider to be the “icky, weird one”? Are you talking about transexualism in general, or are you speaking in reference about the original issue of dating/relationships and gender status?

[Susanann]

Ok, heres another question.

Being a transexual, or a homosexual for that matter, is not a choice, you were born that way. No person who does not have these conditions is going to “choose” to have these conditions. Just too much work, pain, and complications.

So what did the people do before the 20th century? before we had the science to do sex-changes?

Is transexualism increasing? It seems like it.

I know we have had lots of homosexuals throughout history, our records show it, but I never saw very many records of transexuals before the 20th century. The only records I am familiar with, is with American Indians, who did have transexuals, and most tribes that I know of were very accepting, and let fellow indians live whatever way they wanted.

But I dont know of any cases in European history, where someone said they were “”“the wrong sex”"", or “” had the wrong body""". Yes I know of a few cases here and there where we had "a few " women pirates and soldiers living as men, and one governor who dressed as a woman but it seems like, except for the indians, to be very rare in European history, but commonplace now.

I do know of a few women in the American West in the 1800s who wore pants and lived as/like men, but I know of no cases where people born male lived as women on our frontier in the 1800’s. (Seems like there should have been many) .

Anyways, even in the cases of women who lived like men and wore pants in the 1800’s, I dont know of any case where they “claimed” to be men, they just wanted to live like men.

Whats wrong here? Is this a new Phenomena? Is it increasing? I guess it still could be biological AND increasing in frequency, but if so, then there must be something causing it - like floridated water, or something.

[Eve]

“So what did the people do before the 20th century? before we had the science to do sex-changes?”

–They killed themselves. A lot. Or they tried to live undercover, as the Chevalier d’Eon did, and Billy Tipton, and others. Or they lived lives of quiet desperation. Every day I thank my lucky stars I was born when and where I was, and I thank people like Magnus Hirschfeld, Harry Benjamin, Lili Elbe and Christine Jorgensen, who led the way.

[easy_e]

SusanannWell, some societies, including several Native American cultures, had the concept of a third gender, often called “Two- Spirit.” A man could be married to a Two-Spirit male, but it would not be considered a homosexual marriage, because the two were of different genders.

There was also the “manly hearted woman.” In this case, the woman could express masculine behavior or participate in male activities, but still live as a woman.

Also, there’s a lot more people alive now then there used to be. So even if the percentage hasn’t changed, the total numbers have.

I be a lot of transgenders in Western Europe up until recently were either persecuted as witches or possessed or mentally ill. Or maybe they took the “easy” way out and joined the clergy.

[Sterra]

*Originally posted by catsix *
** The only thing I’m going to ask of you is that you show the same level of respect for people like me, whose minds don’t fit the cultural stereotype of their physical gender, and who don’t think that means they’re not what their bodies indicate.
**

I think that the whole point of this thread is that we aren’t a gender because of a cultural stereotype. We are because of what we are mentally and if you don’t feel too strongly either way then you could probably be either way. Because you have a female body you are female. Am I understanding you correctly?

Or in other words how stereotypically masculine or feminine you are has nothing to do with your gender.

** Susanann **
A lack of records doesen’t mean that the people didn’t exist. I’d say its much more likely that people just didn’t think it was important enough to remember or that they wanted to forget it. Biology is harder to change than history.

[Priam]

*Originally posted by Eve *
**and I thank people like Magnus Hirschfeld **

Magnus Hirschfeld was transsexual? I know he did a lot of research on homosexuality, and probably transsexualism (I say probably, because it strikes me as a field that would’ve interested him, but it was never a focus of my own research), but never heard that he himself was one.

[Glory]

There are many examples of women living as men throughout history, in some cultures they were even revered. Some examples:

“The Indian Hijras, (intersexuals, transvestites, homosexuals and Western style transsexuals), and the Two-Spirit (problematically termed Berdache by Europeans) Native Americans, who have many different gender systems, are well known examples of what Westerners would call transgender. Other examples include the Mahu of Tahiti, where some men dress and live as women and the Pokot of Kenya, who have three sexes.”

Links:

http://www.queers4reconciliation.wild.net.au/berdache.htm
http://www.msu.edu/~lees/Kristina/Berdache.htm
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/gender/intersexuals/berdache_tradition.htm
http://www.makerere.ac.ug/womenstudies/full%20papers/surya.htm

[Susanann]

*Originally posted by catsix *
**

It’s entirely because of gender stereotypes that I have such a hard time with the notion that one’s ‘mind’, attitudes, actions, likes or dislikes are what makes one a man or a woman. It’s because I’ve spent my entire life being absolutely everything but what the entrenched cultural attitude of a woman is in my own personality, and I believe that my personality is without a gender at all that I don’t just enthusiastically accept the viewpoint that it’s a person’s mind that determines gender.

I’m a woman because of the body I am in, not because of the emotions I have, the hobbies I like, the fashion I like, the type of movies that’ll actually make me cry Telling me that gender is mind and not body is telling me to stop believing everything I’ve believed about who I am since I was a little kid, and I don’t think it’s bigoted at all for me to say that I don’t see things that way.

I don’t stand in the way of anyone else defining themselves as they see fit, but I’m asking other people to understand the same thing. If you define yourself as a man or a woman because of your mind, fine. I’ll refer to you the way you want, I’ll treat you with respect, and nowhere will you ever hear me even suggest that you should throw yourself in front of a train. The only thing I’m going to ask of you is that you show the same level of respect for people like me, whose minds don’t fit the cultural stereotype of their physical gender, and who don’t think that means they’re not what their bodies indicate.

**

Excuse me for butting in, but I think you are both right.

I also dont think you are bigoted.

I think you are absolutely right when you say that you “are a woman because of the body you are in”, not because of the emotions you have, the hobbies you like, the fashion you like, etc.

Women can be what some consider to be butch, they can be mannish, they can be feminine and still like what has “traditionally been considered” to be masculine hobbies, traits, fashion, etc.

I agree that you can be “all woman” and still be in direct contradiction to the old culteral stereotypes. I think so many of the stereotypes are cultural, and have nothing to do with your sex, which makes you right, and them right - you are both right.

Men can also be liberal wooses(sic?), or macho. Frankly, I would rather have an armed FTM with guts and bravery to protect me than some liberal woose who happened to be born in a male body.

On the other hand, a transexual woman, may be born in a male body(different than you), but still have your same “mindset”, and the same tastes in hobbies, fashion, etc. that you do.

You are right that you are not “the exact same” as a transexual woman, but that does not mean that a transexual woman is not a woman.

I guess I didnt make this any clearer as I hoped, but I think both you guys are right, just miscommunicating.

(Sorry again for butting in and for not making this as clear as I hoped)

[Susanann]

*Originally posted by Glory *
**There are many examples of women living as men throughout history, in some cultures they were even revered. Some examples:

“The Indian Hijras, (intersexuals, transvestites, homosexuals and Western style transsexuals), and the Two-Spirit (problematically termed Berdache by Europeans) Native Americans, who have many different gender systems, are well known examples of what Westerners would call transgender. Other examples include the Mahu of Tahiti, where some men dress and live as women and the Pokot of Kenya, who have three sexes.”

Links:

http://www.queers4reconciliation.wild.net.au/berdache.htm
http://www.msu.edu/~lees/Kristina/Berdache.htm
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/gender/intersexuals/berdache_tradition.htm
http://www.makerere.ac.ug/womenstudies/full%20papers/surya.htm **

Yeah, thanks, but with all due respect, you did not answer my question.

I dont want to know about Tahiti, Africa, or India, and I already know about American Indians.

I specifically asked about transexuals in “European history”, or “american history” in the 1800’s, who identified themselves as being the wrong sex. Not women who dressed like men(most of whom still considered themselves to be women). Where are all the men on the American Frontier who lived as women, who said they were women? Where are all the men in England, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, PRIOR to the 1900’s, who called themselves women, and women who called themselves men?

[Susanann]

*Originally posted by Sterra *
**I think that the whole point of this thread is that we aren’t a gender because of a cultural stereotype. We are because of what we are mentally and if you don’t feel too strongly either way then you could probably be either way. Because you have a female body you are female. Am I understanding you correctly?

Or in other words how stereotypically masculine or feminine you are has nothing to do with your gender.

**

Yeah that is what I wanted to say to Catsix. She is right, and you are right.

[j.c]

This is a bit of a hijack, because confusing terms cause problems.

catsix

[quote]
Telling me that gender is mind and not body is telling me to stop believing everything I’ve believed about who I am since I was a little kid,
[/quote ]

Sterra

Or in other words how stereotypically masculine or feminine you are has nothing to do with your gender.

male and female = sex
masculine and feminine = gender (along with neuter and several others which are considered normal)

I am trying to be patient. Telling you that gender is a social construct is simply a vocabulary lesson. As others have pointed out, gender notions vary with society. For instance, the ideals of femininity in the court of Louis XIV do not match the image of the ultimate woman in pre-Columbian Hopi society. In contemporary American society, the masculine image is homophobic. There have been many societies in which the manliest of men could have “extra” sex with men and boys without compromising their image.

If you go to a doctor, and he does a liver panel, knowing your biological sex is crucial to accurately assessing the test.

If you go to a dance or a watermelon spitting contest, well, you can chose your gender, and where in the spectrum of that gender role you will be. Just as, for instance, you may act one way in the company of friends on the weekend and another way at work. This is oversimplifying, but I hope you get the idea. Being feminine doesn’t mean dressing an acting like Brittany Spears 24-7. It just means that, on the whole, more of your behavior matches the feminine gender than any other.

People make many choices about their lives, some trivial, some profound. In modern American society, one of the social rules is that we are supposed to respect people’s choices.

[catsix]

Sterra said:
think that the whole point of this thread is that we aren’t a gender because of a cultural stereotype. We are because of what we are mentally and if you don’t feel too strongly either way then you could probably be either way. Because you have a female body you are female. Am I understanding you correctly?

Sort of. I tend to think that personalities don’t have genders, bodies do, and if I woke up tomorrow in a male body, I’d be a guy. It’s like the fact that I’ve got caucasian skin and I’m 5’9" tall. That’s just what the cards dealt me, the body I got, and it’s not a result of who I am or believe I am or what kind of person I feel like. I’m caucasian, I’m tall, I’m a woman as a matter of just how my body was made. I’m a geek, a hunter, an engineer, etc because that’s my personality, but none of that is dependent on or relating to what gender I am. Because I believe that and always have believed that, it’s totally contradictory to me that being born a boy or girl is much different than being born black or white.

It’s not like I go around looking under people’s clothes to tell what parts they’ve got, either, so I don’t particularly like being told that I’d want transsexual people to dive under trains or anything of the sort. I’ll treat someone how they introduce themselves to me, and always have. The only exception to that is my love life/sex life, in which I’m only attracted to male bodies, so if someone wants to have sex with me and don’t have a penis, I hope they’re not offended if I don’t get turned on.

I can accept that someone else feels like they’re a man or a woman because their mind says they are, I’m not telling anyone I disagree with their right to do that. I may never grok that because it’s so completely different than how I feel about it, I’m only asking that they accept that for some people like myself, my gender is nothing more than the set of organs that were factory installed.

[even_sven]

*Originally posted by Susanann *
**I specifically asked about transexuals in “European history”, or “american history” in the 1800’s, who identified themselves as being the wrong sex. **

Well, there is Charlie Packhurst for one. He was one of the greatest stagecoach drivers in the West. He lived his entire adult life as a man, and only a few people ever thought differently until his death.

[catsix]

Telling you that gender is a social construct is simply a vocabulary lesson.

It doesn’t come across that way.

It comes across feeling like because I’ve always been what ‘society’ would call more masculine than feminine that I’m wrong in the way I view myself.

You don’t seem to understand that asking me to agree with someone else’s definition of gender removes my gender identity because it’s different from what they believe.

I’m not asking anyone else to agree with what I believe. I’ll accept that other people feel differently, and ask that they accept that I believe what I do because of my identity, and I don’t like having people chip away at that by being told that my belief from which my own identity of who I am derives is wrong.

The way it’s always phrased as a lesson, as if I need to learn that all my beliefs about gender (and consequently then my own gender) are wrong, that’s what bothers me.

[even_sven]

But nobody is trying to say you arn’t a woman. You are obviously a woman. You wouldn’t defend your feminity, and feel so strongly about being seen as a woman, if you wern’t a woman. It’s kind of funny in a way…the strength of your feeling about this ought to give you some sort of clue to the fact that a sense of gender is a very strong and very fundamental part of who you are. Transgendered people feel pretty much the exact same thing!

You seem to think that your gender comes from experiences stemming from anatomy (I think…). I can’t understand why you are so adament in a belief that isn’t supported by science. Science supports that gender identity is formed in the brain, and that while generally psysical/hormonal/chromosonal as well as phychological gender expressions match up, sometimes they don’t and in those situations it is the phsychological gender that takes precidence. Science does not support your hunches. If you want to say “screw science” that is your perogotive, but know that that is putting yourself in the same catagory as people that “know” that we can’t possibly be decended from apes.

You seem like a nice person, catsix, so I hope you can understand that I’m not trying to attack you. This is very important to me because so many people live in agony because of societies views on gender, and it doesn’t have to be that way. This really is a case where fighting ignorance can save lives.

[Lamia]

*Originally posted by catsix *
**It doesn’t come across that way.

It comes across feeling like because I’ve always been what ‘society’ would call more masculine than feminine that I’m wrong in the way I view myself.

You don’t seem to understand that asking me to agree with someone else’s definition of gender removes my gender identity because it’s different from what they believe.
**

I don’t think the transsexuals of the world care about your gender identity one way or the other. I’m sure they don’t want to erase it. They’re the people least likely to tell you that you’re wrong about your own gender identity – they know better than that. I think your real problem is that you feel insecure about your own gender identity because you do not fit into a traditional feminine stereotype, and you’re afraid that if you admit that there might be something more to being a woman than having a vulva you’ll come up lacking.

But the only “something more to being a woman” that anyone here wants you to admit to is that part of being a woman is thinking of yourself as a woman. Perhaps you could learn a lesson from transsexuals: if you sincerely think of yourself as a woman then that is your gender identity, no matter what anyone else says. You don’t have to back it up with a genetic test. No one can take your gender identity away from you. They can ignore or disbelieve it, but they can’t change it. It’s called gender identity because it is the way you identify yourself to yourself. That is something that takes place inside your mind and no one knows more about that than you.

[Joe_Cool]

*Originally posted by Anthracite *
**OK, let me ask a straight question here. What viewpoint do you consider to be the “icky, weird one”? Are you talking about transexualism in general, or are you speaking in reference about the original issue of dating/relationships and gender status? **

Ok, here’s my straight answer: The whole transsexuality/transgender thing is the “icky weird one”. BUT, the qualifier is that I agree that your body is yours to do with as you please. Cher (supposedly) once said, “If I want to have tits put on my back, it’s my own business,” and she’s right. If you want to make yourself look like a man, woman, buffalo, or alien, that’s totally your prerogative, and I won’t stand in your way. However, it’s equally my prerogative to think it’s ridiculous.

BUT, here’s where it stops being a private matter and other people begin to be affected (aside from your family and friends, who are affected from day 1), and likewise where my serious problem begins: No matter what surgery can do to your body, you still are what you are. If I undergo surgery to make me look EXACTLY like an orangutan, even if it’s so convincing that only a zoologist would be able to tell the difference and even if I really, truly believe that I AM AN ORANGUTAN, that doesn’t change the fact that I am a human. No amount of surgery, no amount of wishing will make me into an orangutan. Having some bits cut off and other bits fashioned out of the skin – that look so real that nothing short of a gynecological exam will tell whether it’s live or Memorex – is brilliant, as far as surgical skill is concerned, but it doesn’t make you a “real woman” or a “real man”, and you have the obligation to make aware the people you intend to involve yourself with romantically.

This is a much bigger deal than just hair color, ancestry, etc. [list=A][li]A large portion of the population consider the sex of the person you are involved with to be a moral issue, and could be traumatized by unwittingly taking part in acts that they never would knowingly participate in with a member of the same sex (or opposite, if the person in question is gay).[]For a large portion of the population sex, unlike hair color is a major – no, THE PRIMARY – qualifier for a romantic partner, and many, if not most, would not even CONSIDER a relationship with somebody who is biologically a different sex from what they portray.[]And last, just plain honesty. If I buy a box labeled Jello, then I damned well expect there to be Jello in the box. If there’s not, the onus of disclosure lies on the person who did the packaging, not the consumer. And the sex of somebody you’re dating is a damn sight more serious than the particular brand of gelatin dessert in the box.[/list=a][/li]
I’d even venture a wild guess that the majority of people who perpetrate violence against transsexuals do it out of anger at being deceived in a romantic or sexual situation, rather than just rage at the trans’s existence.

[kimera]

*Originally posted by Susanann *
**I specifically asked about transexuals in “European history”, or “american history” in the 1800’s, who identified themselves as being the wrong sex. Not women who dressed like men(most of whom still considered themselves to be women). Where are all the men on the American Frontier who lived as women, who said they were women? Where are all the men in England, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, PRIOR to the 1900’s, who called themselves women, and women who called themselves men? **

Because most of these people were/are just considered gay. If you read any great compliation on sexuality, most transgendered people are grouped in with the “gay” catagory. There are many examples of men and women who lived as the opposite sex throughout european history, but these people are often labled “homosexual.” I have read many books on homosexuality and often come across obviously transgendered people labeled as gay.

People such as Chevalier d’Eon (1728-1810) who was Louis XV’s secret envoy to Russia and England. d’Eon lived as a woman and her gender was debated most of her life. After her death she was found to be a fully functional male.

[Dr.Lao]

So, what do you want, Joe_Cool? Transsexuals to where a sign which says, “Although I may appear to be female, I was born with a penis. Be forewarned, lest you concievably find me attractive and become traumatized when you learn the truth!”