Para199x said:
Da_Vane said:
Kendarik said:
I don't think I could ever look at them and REALLY see any post op as "their new gender". They will always be victims of a mental illness and medical misconduct to me. As such I will treat them with respect and I will be the first to support them in obtaining equal rights and good treatment, but they will never really be their new gender in my mind.
So you don't support them then? This is the very first decision everybody really needs to make when dealing with another human being - the moment you decide they will NEVER be their new gender in your mind, you have undermined their rights. That's like saying you have decided that they will NEVER be a human being in your mind. You don't have to be dating someone to make this decision - it is common courtesy.
You won't know if someone is pre-op or post-op until they tell you or you are close enough to get intimate with them, but you will be able to determine what gender they are and how they should be treated long before that. If your sense of what gender a person is is based on the status of their genitalia, then you are sadly mistaken, because unless you make the habit of wandering naked, this isn't something people normally see.
There are other gender cues, and these gender cues reinforce gender identity. If in doubt, go for the gender cues in the way people are dressed, and other conscious, deliberate choices they are making to reinforce those gender cues. These are simple things that, while they often come across as stereotypical, and trying too hard, are usually done for a reason - just like any other identity cue.
If ANYBODY feels they have the right to decide that someone else will NEVER be something, then perhaps they should be the ones diagnosed with the mental illness. Because they are obviously lacking in the courtesy and empathy required to be a human being, and maybe they should understand and experience what it is like to be treated as if they will NEVER be something that they care about, as much as they desire it. To never be treated as a reasonable person that has the right to share opinions in public on the state of others should suffice in most cases.
I don't think that saying a genetic male will never be a female is in anyway undermining their rights, they have a right to think they are mentally a female and act accordingly and get cosmetic surgery etc. so they look like that but they will still not be female. That doesn't mean they aren't human and it doesn't mean i think they are doing something wrong or even repulsive just that genes are genes and they are male.
Specifically in your last paragraph, saying that you can't say that somebody will never be something unless you are crazy. That makes me think you are deluded, i can say with absolute certainty that you will never ever be a xenomorph
Again I have no issue with transgender people, do what makes you happy, but that doesn't mean that after cosmetic surgery they actually become what they are trying to look like. It's essentially a very extreme fancy dress. If it makes a person happier go ahead, I will still treat you like a human being and you have all the same rights as anyone else, but you aren't what you are dressed up as.
This all comes down to the fundamental question of what defines a man as a man and a woman as a woman.
Your entire argument comes down to the fact that you will support transgender people in their efforts to change, but you will not actually let them change. They can keep on striving all they want, but they aren't actually going to get anywhere, because you won't let them.
All because it challenges your perceptions of what a man and woman is, and the idea that things cannot change. You are transphobic - not because you have anything against someone with gender issues, but because you have something against people changing and crossing boundaries.
So don't bother with your claims that you support transgendered people, when you don't.
It can be said that identity itself is basically a very elaborate form of fancy dress. We are who we believe ourselves to be. We negotiate our identities based on these facts. Everything we say or do is based on an internal vision of who we believe we are. It is an internal world of make believe called the psyche that allows our ego to remain intact as we go through life.
Everything that makes us human comes from this internal world, because that is where we store all our meanings, based on the symbols and definitions we pick up from our culture and society. If is from this we know who we are and who we want to be. It is from this we can also determine who others are.
The symbology that defines what is a man and what is a woman comes from this internal world of meanings that we have all picked up, that is continually evolving. It is from here that we learn about gender identities and gender roles, and we define what makes a man and what makes a woman. We add these roles and identities to the myriad collection of other identities we learn throughout our lives.
This collection changes as society and people change - if you fear change, and want to cling on to your outdated concepts while still believing you are tolerant, you will fail. You will realise that you are not as tolerant as you would like to believe. All because you stick with outdated, essentialist principles that have been disproven.
It has been disproven that there is a difference between a male to female transsexual and a female on a genetic level. While this may not be every case, it only needs one exception to disprove flawed logic, and there have been exceptions.
And don't try to use absurd reductive arguments with me, unless you want me to start using absurd reductive arguments back. For example, it is pretty absurd to base your argument of the logical pretext that saying you are something doesn't make you something, which it is clear that this is not my argument. But to counter that, the answer is, actually I can, simply by changing the definition of whatever I claim to be so that it comes to define what I am.
This is the basis of Foucault's provocation theory, and has been the driving force between media, advertising, propaganda, and civil rights movements for the past century and a half now. It's all to do with the power of words and their meanings, because we define their meanings based on group consensus. Thus, I can become a xenomorph, simply by changing the definition of xenomorph. Before you wonder how that is possible, never underestimate the meme-tastic abilities of the internet.
