Regnes said:
Da_Vane said:
Regnes said:
No, I don't care what gender a person believes they are, you are as you appear to be, not as you think you are.
A guy feels like he's a woman, sorry bro, you're not a woman, you're just gay. Same thing for women, they're lesbians, not men.
This is where statements like "sorry bro, you are just gay" are completely ignorant, and verging on bigotry. Few people have the experience to make that sort of judgement and override someone's identity like that. It's something people feel they have the right to do all the time, however, particularly online, because they have a lack of respect. This is asking or querying whether or not they might actually just be gay, but outright asserting and overruling their own identities with an individual's ill formed opinions.
I'm aware that I didn't word my statement as well as I could have, but this thread isn't about transgender rights or how they view themselves. This is basically a thread asking if you personally acknowledge the transgender concept as valid, and I do not. It doesn't matter if you feel like a woman, it doesn't matter if you feel like a man, it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, you are as you were physically born. They're free to think what they want, that's the sanctity of their own mind, they're free to say who they feel they really are, that's their freedom of speech, but there is no freedom for others to decide what I personally think of matters.
It is my freedom to choose how I perceive the world, and I choose not to acknowledge their condition. I'm not attacking their rights, even if I said it right to their faces that I think they are wrong, they still have their rights and their world does not revolve around my opinions on matters.
All that aside, I was in the wrong to generalize that all transgender people are gay/lesbian. But if a woman who believes she's a man wants to go on a date with me, I'm simply going to be turned off, mainly because I don't date people with overwhelmingly masculine behaviors, even if her interest does lie in physical males such as myself.
Furthermore, while I do not acknowledge transgenders to whatever degree, I'm not saying people don't have overwhelming traits typically paired with the opposite sex. Just I believe it to be incorrect to come to the conclusion what gender you are based on these traits.
I'm not alone either, I'd be willing to bet every single person in this thread doesn't acknowledge transgender people. It's rooted deep within our minds, let's say we all have this female friend who believes she's a man, we may respect that out of our friendship with her, we will never tell her she's wrong. But we will also never view her as a man, she will always be a woman who is convinced she's a man. Try as we may, she will always be a woman to us.
This is because we are hardwired to recognize gender based on physical form, it's not even anything to do with our upbringing, it's just nature, instinct. It cannot be overridden.
DENIED! I am in this thread. I DO acknowledge transgenders to whatever degree. You argument has therefore been shown to be completely false.
Famous quote time: "It only takes one exception to disprove the rule. I am that exception."
We are not actually hardwired to anything - sexuality is based on hormones and brain chemistry, combined with pheromones and psychology. In short, if you like women, and it looks, feels, and smells like a woman, you will like it. More importantly, these can all be faked, and are not hardwired or defined exclusively by physical traits. This is why there is a fragrance industry, for a start.
The sense of smell goes straight into the emotional cortex of the brain, so you can trigger emotions through smell. This means that you can trigger things like lust through spell - put some female pheromones on your jock buddies for a laugh, but try not to get too close unless you really want a bromance, because too much can have you all questioning your sexuality for a while.
Humans don't have a gender identity until between the age of 2 to 3 - although by this time, their parents will have already started conditioning them based on their gender role according to their sex. It is not until the age of 4 to 5 that humans even begin to understand the relevance of gender roles, and are able to differentiate others based on gender roles. It is at this time when they will start to favour one parent over the other based on gender, and start favouring certain types of gendered playmates. Between these two periods, and often for a period of up to a year later, children often believe that gender roles are fluid. That is, that they can change gender roles, or that gender roles are not fixed. This may be because they do not associate a certain role to a certain gender - i.e. that being a mother requires being female - or because they have not yet learnt that gender roles tend to be fixed in society because of convention and the general idea that gender and sex are normally the same.
So, far from being "hardwired based on instinct" this is all actually learnt as part of childhood. Sex is instinctive - and is basically, if we like it, we're going to screw it. The genitals work based on hormones. The penis goes in something. The vagina is for putting things in. That's instinct. But how we feel about it, whether we enjoy it, whether it is actually right, that's all learnt.
The main part of sex happens in our head - that's where our hormones, our brain chemistry, our perceptions, and our psychology works. That's where it all comes together. When we orgasm, it happens in our head. The pleasure centres, and everything else, all function in our head. Everything that makes us human is in our head. That's why we have sexual fantasies. That's why we have porn. That's why there's a rule 34 of the internet.
Life is a mental illness.
Transsexuals know when something is wrong. It is an overgeneralisation to classify all transsexuals the same way, because they are pretty diverse themselves, but in general, when they have sex, they have sex as their chosen gender. This is normally part of the problem. It means there is a mismatch between certain sensations and actions, between certain behaviours. Brain scans of activity of MtF transsexuals have shown that they react like women during sex, rather than men, regardless of their genitalia.
It is unknown whether this is due to the fact that their gender identity is strong enough to actually change their behaviour during sex on a subconsious level, or whether they actually have an altered neurological system. It is known that hormones change the growth of the brain, and autopsies on MtF transsexuals have revealed that they have similar, if not identical, brains to women after hormone therapy. What is does mean is that besides the reproductive system, they do have a physiology that is similar to their chosen gender after hormone therapy for at least two years, and thus are biologically to be considered their chosen gender.
More importantly, anyone who actually PASSED their biology studies will know that the sex chromosomes code hormones for growth, and that the hormone therapy transsexuals undergo consist of those to replace those do not naturally produce, and those to counter the ones that they do, so that they are in the hormonal environment of their chosen gender. Thus, the body will be growing to their chosen gender as if they had the relevant chromosomes in the first place.
So, if you want to get biological on transsexuals and their right to be accepted, then get the facts right, because for all intents and purposes transsexuals will be physiologically identical to their chosen gender. The only ones they would vary on are sexual intercourse and reproduction, and if you are getting that intimate with a transsexual, then you've probably already made your mind up about whether or not you would be with them. Trust is a big thing for most transsexuals, who normally have issues with relationships anyway, for understandable reasons, and if you get that far, they'll let you know long before fun time comes along. You should probably stop watching all that shemale porn if you think otherwise - they are porn stars, and real life just isn't like that.