ReinWeisserRitter said:
The point is that straight people just mind their own business and don't think it's a big deal, because it isn't.
I realize that much of the problem here is really bad phrasing, but seriously.. think that one through for a second.
I think you'll find that 'it' is a pretty big deal for many straight people, and they certainly don't all mind their own business about it. Just because they don't often talk about their heterosexuality unless it's under attack doesn't mean it's not extremely important and extremely prominent.
jesskit said:
Try to put ur self in the shoes of someone who 100% feels they are the opposite gender to their birth sex, then imagine how it would feel to look at your body and see that it does not match.
I find this very difficult to say, so if it comes off badly I'm really sorry. It's not an attack, if anything it's a criticism of this argument.
I don't understand how someone can 'feel' their gender. I realize that most "normal" heterosexuals would claim to feel inherently like a man or a woman, but I don't consider there to be any innate 'feeling' or awareness of who I am deep down. I can be aware of what I would like to look like, I can be aware that my body does not conform to my wishes, but I really can't take seriously the idea that people just are and that they know what they are without some kind of prompt.
Now, I understand dysmorphia as a mental condition. I understand that some people feel so unhappy with their bodies that they want to physically change them, whether surgically or through 'performance', I do that myself when I feel miserable or ugly. What I don't understand is the attachment to this fairly prescriptive constant, because it seems no better than any other prescriptive constant.
If I had a personal problem with my trans friends, and I don't because I recognize that I don't need to understand how they feel in order to accept their right to make decisions for themselves (neither does anyone for that matter) it's that I often find their image of what a 'man' is or what a 'woman' is to be borderline offensive in just how prescriptive it is, ignoring any of the potential or possibility inherent in these terms in favour of an extremely narrow brand of ultra-masculinity or ultra-femininity.
Of course, I've met many trans people who do have a less black and white view of sex and who simply want to exercise the right to choose how to represent themselves to the world. That seems really cool to me, it's something worth aspiring to for everyone, but when it just comes down to 'I'm actually a woman because women are X and men are not X' I start to feel a bit leery. I don't understand how you justify that.
As I said though, I don't claim that I need to understand, but it would be interesting to hear your opinion.
jackalblue3141 said:
I think that in any minority that's been discriminated against (and God knows, if anyone who wasn't heterosexual over the last 50 years hasn't been discriminated against it's not for lack of trying), there's a tendency to want to get into the mainstream and, God willing, do some discrimination of your own.
This is incredibly sad but true, at the moment. You see it a lot in the whole gay marriage debate.
It's not really malicious I suppose, but some people are so desperate to be accepted as "normal" that instead of challenging the right of the moral majority and the authorities which represent them to form stereotypes or make blanket allegations they just push them off onto someone else who is 'letting the side down' or failing to be respectable enough.