Unexpected News: The Wachowski Sisters! Second Wachowski Sibling Comes Out As Trans.

[Poetic Nova]

Yeah being trans is terrifying. I only started hormones a few months ago and so far the effects have been pretty amazing. All kinds of emotional problems are going away but I've already been disowned by my dad and I'm terrified of coming out at work and losing my job. I'm not out yet so I haven't had to deal with any harassment or skip using the bathroom out of fear yet like a lot of other trans folk.

I'm sorry to hear that you've been disowned.
I've been myself, on top of family members thinking that it is "just a phase".

The worst part is that all these issues are being caused because people think that whats between my legs is some how more important then whats between my ears. I have a female brain, the effects of the hormone treatment proves that. So if you must have an objective truth to tie your pronouns too then use my brain because that determines who I am far more then my body does.

Honestly, that's why my social phobia wont go away anytime soon. When not at home I pretty much block out the whole outside world by listening to music with my headphones on high volume.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I didn't call him bigoted, I tried to make that clear, not that he is a bigot.

You said "the linguistic argument is used to back up personal bigotries". That doesn't sound like you're separating the statement from the person to me, BUT if that's what you meant to do, that's cool.

Well my intention was to attack the argument, not the person making it.

I...did not. But from what I could gleam from google, XY Female Syndrome prevents you from experiencing puberty. Could you link a source for those that go undiagnosed due to no conditions? Because I assume you'd notice. I couldn't find anything myself. XX Male syndrome could certainly go unnoticed given the only symptoms are stated to be a small penis and infertility and "varying degrees of breast growth" going by wikipedia.

The thing is with XY females, we only generally find out a female who has the condition when something goes wrong, same thing with XX male syndrome. There are varying severities from what I understand an we only really learn about the more extreme case. There was a study I was shown a while back that had some large number of XY females in it, they concluded XY females actually make up a statistically significant portion of the general population. Wikipedia and a lot of other sources only have the academically relevant stats, where the genetic condition was found as a result of targeting people with the symptoms associated with the condition. They found evidence to the contrary recently, that XX males and XY females more likely than not don't show classic symptoms of lack of puberty, late puberty, infertility, deformed genitals, and so on.

The closest I've been to this issue is "Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome" from an episode of House, and I'm not entirely sure how accurate that was. The hard thing is though....that's not normal in the slightest. They're mutations, anomalies. Most people are only aware of Male is XY, Female is XX. Crazy combinations screw with peoples heads because its not even something they can vaguely relate to or comprehend. Genetically XXMales and XYFemale people are actually the opposite sex, they just appear male or female. Which of course screws with peoples heads, 50 years of subconscious pattern recognition are very difficult to break. People talk in very general terms of what is normal and familiar, matey with XXXY genes doesn't come into their heads when discussing the matter, because they likely don't even know he exists, nor is he really part of the discussion because he's so anomalous it shouldn't effect the discussion.

Well most people don't even think genetics when they think of someone as a man, woman, girl, or boy. They take only what they can visually observe of the person to determine that person's gender. That's why androgynous guys with long hair, or masculine women with short hair, might get mistaken for the wrong gender. It's the same thing with genitals in this case, in much of the world you don't get to see someone's genitals, so they don't come into the equation for determining gender for the most part either. Basically both are generally empty arguments used exclusively to invalidate trans folk, because genetics and genitals are information people generally don't have in these situations.

Obviously there are people that use it to cut down trans people, many many people. But some don't do it out of spite, they do it because it fucks with their headspace. To those people, its like trying to explain colour to a blind person. John is now Jane makes no sense to them, because from their POV, John is still visually John, only John now has a dress on. It's part of the reason the changing room debate has been going on for so long. /Especially/ when you have people who haven't physically transitioned. Jane being in the changing room with her visually male body swinging his dick about is obviously very difficult to swallow for a lot of people. And of course it is, again 50 years of subconscious pattern recognition is difficult to break.

Well the debate over facilities like restrooms, locker rooms, and etc is actually because we're clinging to Victorian ideas about gender. Specifically with women and LGBTQ+ folk fighting for general equality, straight cisgender men see that as a threat, because their traditional advantage is being eroded. It's not just men, straight, or cisgender for that matter, who cling to the old ideas, as people are always uncomfortable with change. It's also not 50 years of biasing in this manner, more like two and a half centuries, probably more. For the changing room debate in particular, we're running headlong into the wall of why gender segregated facilities are kind of an unworkable idea. It's actually more efficient to have non-gendered facilities with individual private changing, bathroom, and shower stalls.

As for your "John is now Jane" analogy... That kind of doesn't fly, when someone whose starts taking hormone replacement therapy it does change how they look. That's leaving aside surgeries the person might have to change how masculine/feminine they look, in the mean time. Still the rejection of identity is more about rejecting a person on a fundamental level for selfish reasons.

Yeah you're right, 95% of the time, it isn't going to work. But engaging in debate, no matter how frustrating when the other person stonewalls you (truth be told I am on the opposite side of the fence to you), you will get through to one person, one day and it will be marvelous. Always stick to your guns.

The major issues is that as a trans person these stances are used to personally hurt me and many other people in my circle of friends. So it should be easy to understand why I just won't have much patience with the argument at all, especially because I encounter it constantly, on a literally daily basis. A lot of people don't realize that trans folk get really fed up with people constantly questioning, then invalidating, our identities. We tend to have short fuses in this regard, because it is a constant external assault on us on a personal level.

People do use those tactics for sure, but I like to be optimistic that most people are just ignorant. Not that I'm saying you feel this way or that I'm getting those vibes from you(in fact, I may have bitten off more than I can chew here for discussion, hoo boy), but assuming everyone actively hates you just breeds paranoia and hostility. Obviously the below doesn't apply to genes specifically so much as the issue in general.

As I said above, it's a constant barrage of this kind of thing, it gets real tiring really fast. That means trans folk tend not to have a lot of patience with people once they start saying these sorts of things. It's double so when Emanuele said that you can't change your gender, which isn't something trans people do mind you, we actually transition to live as the gender we are. As gender and sex aren't the same thing and gender lives in the mind, not the junk. It's not an assumption that everyone hates us, virtually all trans folk are aware that most people couldn't give a flying fuck. It's the people who spread harmful misinformation that gets us agitated. Speaking of which groups like the FRC is using statements like Emanuele used as a method to push legislation to actively outlaw all legal rights for trans people. They're literally trying to prevent us from getting help to transition, prevent us from being legally able to change our names and gender makers, working to deny us protections in housing and employment... It's really ugly and "reasonable" sounding language like Emanuele used that's the back bone of this hate and discrimination campaign.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/meredithtalusan/cissexist-bullshit-translator#.ldbDWNEj2

Now, this link is....quite hyperbolic but it is genuine. It's basically the extremist version of what we're discussing but that is what I fear happens quite a bit. I have been attacked quite a bit in the past for trying to educate myself or for saying things I didnt even know were offensive. Now, it doesn't happen that much but I believe shit like this actually harms the trans cause. I mean those comics fuck me off. They genuinely make me angry at the toss pot who wrote them. Now it's possible that the author could just have been worn down by the world, but I think not, barring some areas, the western world isn't actually that hostile to transpeople. The last two especially do not help. Clearly neither of the people in those 2 strips are bigots or even vaguely offensive, but the author just decides the best way to respond to any interaction to do with trans...ism(?, word?) is to be a passive aggressive twat and assume everyone hates him. Of course if that is how he actually behaves, of course everyone hates him...because he's a passive aggressive twat, and some use that as ammunition to demonstrate that people are bigots.

Well I've seen the "cissexist bullshit translator" page before, and it gave me a good laugh, because it's true and that makes it funny. Mind you the whole thrust of that series of comics though is about unsolicited opinions thrown at us, along with backhanded compliments people tend to pay people they know are trans. That's what cissexism is though, it's an unintentional thing people do, because they're used to the negative tropes that surround trans people. Specifically the trope that says all trans people are; "ugly burly men who dress like women and have deep voices."

Now, believe it, or not, the developed western world likes to think of it self as progressive, accepting, and friendly towards LGBTQ+ folk; however, this isn't exactly the truth. Gay and lesbian people are far more likely to be assaulted than the general public, just because they're not straight, trans people are far more likely to victims of crimes because of anti-trans rhetoric. Considering that in most of the developed world a trans person has to have a risky and expensive surgery to just get the correct gender listed on a passport, that's not exactly friendly. Especially considering a lot of trans people are so called "non-op", opting not to get the bottom surgery for several reasons. LGBTQ+ folk don't have legal protections in most of the western world to protect us from discrimination in employment, housing, and access to services. Even when we do have those legal protections, we still get discriminated against anyways, and it's big news when someone wins a case in these scenarios, because winning a legal case against LGBTQ+ discrimination is rare as hell.

The comics you shared here aren't really intended for the vast majority of cisgender heterosexual folk, they're more of an in-joke, and source of frustration for trans people. Actual cisgender trans allies who actually listen to their trans friends would probably understand why the comics are funny. That's the thing, it's more or less poking fun at the way cisgender people tend to treat us, which is to say in an unintentionally bad way. People always say stupid things to groups they're not intimately familiar with. Like when a white person says "you're really well spoken" to a black person, or when a straight person says "I would have never thought you're gay" to a gay person. Things like that happen a lot, people generally don't mean any harm, but just voicing somethings they're actually meaning the opposite of what they say. Again all those comics were basically snark for the way cis folk tend to treat trans folk.

Finally saying things like that harm the trans community, that's not constructive, it's called tone policing, and it's a way of shutting down dissent. No movement whose objective is equality ever won ground by being excessively nice and "reasonable", all such movements have to be aggressive and in your face, they have to make people uncomfortable. If we're not making people uncomfortable with the awful ways they tend to treat us, with the ways they tend to dehumanize us as a group, then those people never, ever change.

Now... Read this comic on tone policing from Robot Hugs! It'll show you better what I'm talking about. [http://www.robot-hugs.com/tone-policing/]

A side note, the word you're looking for when referring to trans-ness as a general state is "transgenderism". Hope that clears things up for you.

Essentially this is the extreme demonstration of why I originally said your attitude was unhealthy to begin with. Obviously your post makes it abundantly clear I was in the wrong with that description but there you go.

It wouldn't seem so extreme if you were exposed to these kinds of attitudes on a daily basis, I am and I see a lot of familiar situations in those comics. Again calling our anger and frustration with constant poor treatment and dismissive attitudes "unhealthy" is classic tone policing. We're gonna come off as angry because we're being treated poorly, it's something we deal with constantly too, telling us basically to shut up, or to "calm down" doesn't help, it just comes off as dismissive.

Oh definitely, her outing her self was probablly the best reaction to the scenario, I'm just saying I think it would be better to headline the stuff around the outing rather than the actual outing, if you catch my drift. That way you bang on the daily mail for being dickbags as the main talking point rather than adding to the sensation-ism

Well one thing is, Lilly coming out as trans was big news to the trans community, because we don't have all that many famous and successful role models to look up to. I mean it's sad that a trans person's coming out, especially when the one who's a celebrity, is still sensational news, but that's partially because of our typical experience of exclusion. Still slapping down the Daily Fail as a shit-rag tabloid run by giant douches was a main thrust of my whole point, but that doesn't detract from the importance of Lilly coming out either.

Blimy, we're going to have fun formatting this from here on out aren't we?

Hah! Says you, I am the the forum quote code sorceress! ... Not really, but it's pretty easy to figure out, I can even quote people I have on my ignore list because I learned how the system works. I still bugger it up on a regular basis though.

 

[Cati]

*checks date* when did all this take place? Because I'm sure I saw mention of "The Wachowski Sisters" some time ago, like last month at least oO

Regardless, fuck the daily mail, and any other publication that makes public things about people that the rest of the world doesn't need to know, especially against their wishes.

 

[Silvanus]

Obviously there are people that use it to cut down trans people, many many people. But some don't do it out of spite, they do it because it fucks with their headspace. To those people, its like trying to explain colour to a blind person. John is now Jane makes no sense to them, because from their POV, John is still visually John, only John now has a dress on. It's part of the reason the changing room debate has been going on for so long. /Especially/ when you have people who haven't physically transitioned. Jane being in the changing room with her visually male body swinging his dick about is obviously very difficult to swallow for a lot of people. And of course it is, again 50 years of subconscious pattern recognition is difficult to break.

If ignorance was followed by a willingness to learn, I would agree wholeheartedly. Usually, though, it's followed by the opposite; dismissiveness or rejection.

Those aren't the reactions of someone who just honestly lacks the information. Those are the reactions of someone unwilling to take information into account.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Sorry, I should have been a little more clear, you don't actually beat people TO DEATH. In fact, the nice thing about using a stick as a weapon is that you can afford to be a lot more selective about how you defend yourself, and keep some separation. As I'm sure that you know, tossing someone headfirst into the pavement works wonders, but you're probably lucky that he wasn't talking out of one side of his mouth for the rest of his life, or dead. As you say, legal entanglements are to be avoided.

I'm glad that you made it out though, and I hope the guy who tried to hurt you still has headaches.

Eh that's generally what I consider people are saying when they say "beat the life out of someone". Anyways, I didn't slam him into the ground hard enough to do any permanent damage, just enough to leave him moaning on the ground long enough for police and paramedics arrived. I was lucky I had a few witnesses too, because had I not, I probably would have been arrested for assault, probably convicted too, in spite my dozens of reports of the guy stalking me. Last I heard he got a pretty stiff prison sentence for something else though.

*checks date* when did all this take place? Because I'm sure I saw mention of "The Wachowski Sisters" some time ago, like last month at least oO

Regardless, fuck the daily mail, and any other publication that makes public things about people that the rest of the world doesn't need to know, especially against their wishes.

There were two cisgender Wachowski sisters, the other two, who used to be known as "The Wachowski Brothers" are the ones who have now both come out as trans women. So in total there are now 4 Wachowski sisters.

Also it's tabloid "journalism", they make all their money by spreading lies and personal secrets of people in the public eye.

 

[Cati]

There were two cisgender Wachowski sisters, the other two, who used to be known as "The Wachowski Brothers" are the ones who have now both come out as trans women. So in total there are now 4 Wachowski sisters.

Also it's tabloid "journalism", they make all their money by spreading lies and personal secrets of people in the public eye.

This was definitely in relation to the two trans Wachowski sisters. Sometimes, I get memories from the future :|

And you don't have to tell me that I think pretty much all of the "news" media is trash with no scruples. That's why they don't get my money and clicks - hit 'em in their pockets and don't reward their awful practices with custom.

 

[Dango]

You know the only thing I really don't like about trans individuals?

They get to choose their names, I feel like that's cheating.

 

[CrystalShadow]

What are the odds of them both being trans? I assume genetics is a factor here but to be honest, I don't know a damn thing about the underlying causes of trans-sexuality.

Who can say?

I've seen this first-hand though, and while two trans people from the same family seems improbable, it does happen.
Though the one case I know of is even more unlikely because they are step-siblings, so you can't make an argument about genetics about them.

It's bizarre statistically, but it happens.
Does make you wonder...

 

[CrystalShadow]

You know the only thing I really don't like about trans individuals?

They get to choose their names, I feel like that's cheating.

Well, you know....
Strictly speaking, unless you live in a country that is a bit of a dick about such things, anyone can change their name...

Hell, if you are in the UK specifically, you can change your name on a whim, even to something completely stupid, and it is legally valid.

Also, you could change your name 5 times a year there without too much hassle.

Names are a lot less permanent than you might think really... XD

 

[Poetic Nova]

You know the only thing I really don't like about trans individuals?

They get to choose their names, I feel like that's cheating.

Well, you know....
Strictly speaking, unless you live in a country that is a bit of a dick about such things, anyone can change their name...

Hell, if you are in the UK specifically, you can change your name on a whim, even to something completely stupid, and it is legally valid.

Also, you could change your name 5 times a year there without too much hassle.


Names are a lot less permanent than you might think really... XD

Diffirent in The Netherlands however, you can only change your name twice, and your family name once. And it can be quite costly aswell. Will be fun when I can apply for the name change in a few months.

 

[Naldan]

Well,

Stop reading Daily Mail if you had before. Congratulations to her.
A little funny since I had the impression that she (then he) looked a bit buff and sometimes like Silent Bob.

 

[CrystalShadow]

You know the only thing I really don't like about trans individuals?

They get to choose their names, I feel like that's cheating.

Well, you know....
Strictly speaking, unless you live in a country that is a bit of a dick about such things, anyone can change their name...

Hell, if you are in the UK specifically, you can change your name on a whim, even to something completely stupid, and it is legally valid.

Also, you could change your name 5 times a year there without too much hassle.


Names are a lot less permanent than you might think really... XD

Diffirent in The Netherlands however, you can only change your name twice, and your family name once. And it can be quite costly aswell. Will be fun when I can apply for the name change in a few months.

Wait, you can only change your family name once?
That sounds like a pretty serious headache for any woman that has been married more than once...

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

In which case, your metric is going against both the legal and scientific consensus. Don't imagine for a moment you're being more "objective" in disregarding expert opinion.

This is putting aside that you're also being unduly insulting in disregarding somebody's identity, of course.

Which metric is against consensus? That a person with XY chromosomes is a man, regardless of how they subjectively identify or dress themselves?
Making an objectively verifiable statement is not insulting, and I don't see how any "expert"'s opinion would change that.

 

[Silvanus]

Which metric is against consensus? That a person with XY chromosomes is a man, regardless of how they subjectively identify or dress themselves?

That a person with XY chromosomes is always male in both sex and gender, yes, that's against both legal and scientific consensus. It's simplistic and dismissive of the evidence at hand.

Making an objectively verifiable statement is not insulting, and I don't see how any "expert"'s opinion would change that.

Firstly, it's not objective. Objectivity is very frequently claimed, but rarely appropriate.

Secondly, it should be quite obvious why it's insulting; it's rejecting a part somebody else's identity. They are the one with the relevant experience, here, which is often tremendously difficult. For someone to come and tell them they're wrong-- without any relevant experience, just insisting their opinion is of greater importance-- is clearly insulting.

Consider those people who insist that bisexuals don't exist, and that a bisexual is merely a gay man in denial, or a straight man experimenting. They have no relevant experience. They're claiming to merely be reporting a fact, despite its contradiction of expert opinion. Y'can see why that's insulting, no?

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

There isn't a "thing" so much as there are "things". Studies have found that, for example, trans-men have brain plasticity, reaction times, and spatial awareness that is more similar to the brains of non-trans men than it is to women. This is in addition to physical qualities like the finger digit ratio that actually is different on average between men and women but a trans-man's average digit ratio lines up with non-trans men more than women. There is also a statistically significant correlation where if one twin pursues transition surgery that the other twin will as well. That points strongly to a biological cause well beyond anything environmental since that twin study was only capturing actual transitions rather than whether or not the other twin identified as transgendered which should be a lot higher.

Consider what this means if transgenderism has actual distinguishable physiological differences that actually does line up with the opposite sex and if there are clear causative correlations with biological factors.

Fair enough - there are also men that have more feminine traits and women who have masculine ones, but they are still men and women - that is, barring situations that make them sterile they are still sexually compatible for reproduction, which is the reason sexes have evolved the way they are. Perhaps one day they will find a biological configuration that affects some men and women which will then generate a new classification, but this will be in addition to their sex, no a replacement of it.

Even if I myself would feel the need of dressing or behaving like the opposite sex I certainly wouldn't be offended by someone addressing me using an objectively accurate statement, and I was offended it would be my decision. There is offending, and there is taking offense.
Because of all this I really don't understand this whole "being offended by facts" business.

As for "objective situation", you have probably met a lot more transsexual people than you realize. Watching my spouse going through it (Please note that this was a surprise to me, a straight male, and if anyone should be mad here it would be me) led me to be around a large number of people in the trans community. Let me tell you, depending on how long they've been on hormones and what procedures they've undergone you have NO idea what sex chromosome order they have. What would you do then if someone that clearly objectively looks male tells you they were born female? Do you start using female pronouns with that additional information or do you continue using male ones?

I remember going to a dinner with a bunch of guys and afterwards my spouse said to me, "Did it occur to you that you were the only person at the table with a dick?" No, it hadn't occurred to me because most of them were years into treatment and totally looked like their gender identity.

That is very interesting - I see how you know so much about this subject.

Ultimately at some point you've got to ask yourself, what is this to you? Someone in the world is walking around with one more or one less dick. In what way are you or anyone you know personally impacted? Lower surgery technology isn't even really there right now so a lot don't even pursue it and just stick with upper surgery depending on the degree of dysphoria they have. Upper surgery is there and is relatively cheap to pursue and does have the greatest impact on individual happiness.

But you've got to understand that this isn't simple dislike of the body they were given. This isn't like some non-trans female looking at the mirror and not liking her cheek bones or breast size. It's dislike to the point of being a full-blown disorder that can frequently cause extreme depression that greatly impacts their lives (or even lead to the end of it). In order for medical doctors to justify this kind of intensive surgery there must be an established medical need for it. Otherwise they're just doing harm.

Think of it this way, for a small segment of the population, using pronouns that do not match their gender is like insulting them and they're already going through enough. Does it really cost you so much to be mindful of what the medical field calls a condition? Even if you personally think it's a mental condition rather than a biological one, what good is you misgendering them? It only hurts their feelings and what else?

I think that if someone goes as far as suffering all those symptoms, the answer is not a surgery that - amont the other things - may remove one's ability to reproduce, it's accepting themselves for what they are. You may reply that this is what they are doing, but if they are going to change their body to match their deside I think they are doing it wrong. And the fact that they choose to have their feelings hurt by a plainly verifiable statement is just one more symptom of their self-rejection.

NOTE:
This is an intriguing topic, but I just received a warning because a moderator decided that someone could be offended by what I wrote, and this apparently warrants such reprisal. Just a heads up - I might not be able continue this discussion because of such dubious policies.

 

[Silvanus]

I think that if someone goes as far as suffering all those symptoms, the answer is not a surgery that - amont the other things - may remove one's ability to reproduce, it's accepting themselves for what they are. You may reply that this is what they are doing, but if they are going to change their body to match their deside I think they are doing it wrong.

There is strong medical consensus that reassignment surgery is generally the most appropriate method of dealing with gender dysphoria. It tends to have, by far, the best results in terms of emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, and a dozen other indicators. There are a host of studies on this (which I've posted in the past; if you like, I'll grab them and put them here).

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

Except you don't have access to most people's genitals, birth record, or genetics to make that distinction. You're not being objective here, you're not addressing an objective situation either, because again most people aren't going to let you check their genitals, birth record, and genetics just so you can gender them. What you're doing is taking private information as a means to disrespect someone and reject their identity. Which when you do that, refusing to use the preferred gender pronouns with a trans person, that's called being transphobic. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that, it's behavior that means one is being transphobic and it's being a jerk.

I am not aware of any phobia in the DSM labeled as such. So you are accusing me of being mentally ill (and a jerk) because I'm calling a man a man when a man prefers to be called something that he is not? Because this is the kind of culturally regressive nonsense that triggers me.

For example if we met in person at an event for The Escapist, but you didn't know which forum name I used, you'd gender me as female, in spite of my being trans. If I told you my forum name, or that I'm trans and then you started misgendering me, you'd be doing a number of horrible and selfish things: 1) You'd be outing me against my will to people I hadn't told yet. 2) You'd be putting me in physical danger, because some people react violently to finding out someone is trans. 3) You'd be personally disrespecting me. 4) You'd be personally disrespecting all trans folk, especially those in ear shot. 5) You'd cause a lot of confusion doing such a thing. 6) You'd be doing something that personally hurts and if you continued to do it intentionally I might file a complaint with security of the venue, because you're the one making an issue. 7) You'd make it difficult for me to use facilities at the event, by calling my gender into question, when no one would have noticed in the first place. 8) Everyone who wasn't clinging to a biological essentialist view point would see you as a jerk for doing such a thing.

More over don't use language insinuating that trans people are sick for making the choice to transition. Transition, especially hormone replacement therapy(HRT), actually improves a trans person's physical and mental health, along with improving quality of life, like by reducing stress, depression and anxiety. HRT is especially potent in this regard, because it can literally stop chronic anxiety and chronic depression in a trans person. Meaning that trans people going on the correct hormones fixes a hormonal imbalance in their brains that cause chronic depression and chronic anxiety. Also a lot of trans people I know had joint issues before they went on HRT, but when they got on HRT those joint issues went away. That means that not transitioning when one needs it is the ailing choice, not the other way around.

You are making a whole lot of assumptions here. If you think that calling someone who has XX chromosomes a woman causes all those things, you probably have a way too thin comfort zone, and are literally offended by objective, independently verifiable truth.

EDIT: mis-typed XX as YY. Apparently I am very gender-confused today.

Mutilating? Are you talking about Sexual Reassignment Surgery? Tell me do you call it mutilation when someone gets piercings, or tattoos? Do you call it mutilation when someone has failing teeth removed and gets dental implants, bridges, or dentures? Do you call it mutilation when someone gets a cancerous growth, organ, or body part removed? If someone needs surgery to correct their genitals and they aren't trans, would you call that mutilation? I bet not. So how come a medically necessary genital corrective surgery is mutilation when someone happens to be trans?

If Lilly Wachowski decides she needs to correct her genitals with surgery, then she'll do so under the advice of her doctors. She won't be getting mutilated, she'll be having a birth defect corrected. You misgendering her and calling her medical needs mutilation only shows one thing: You're amongst the people who know virtually nothing about transgender people, yet still think they're qualified to moral and medical judgments against us. That is the place where transphobia develops, people being ignorant, then using their own ignorance to make judgments about a situation they don't understand. I'm not saying you're an abject transphobe, or a horrible person, because I don't believe that's true, but you are kind of buying into transphobic arguments. I'd suggest doing three things: The first is easier, look at how you're being judgmental about people's situations which don't understand, then tell your self to stop being judgmental. Second, get educated, go around and look at real scientific sources on transgenderism, so you can start to understand. Also avoid anything like the Family Research Council, they're not scientific, they're using pseudo-science to back up bigoted biases. Third, listen to trans folk when we tell you something, we're the ones with the conditions, we're the ones science and the law tends to favor, that means when we're in conflict with you on an issue, we're almost always the ones who are correct.

Yes, I mean exactly that, minus referring to Lilly Wachowski as a woman. I have expanded on this subject in my answer to LightningKnight.

The linguistic argument "well if words still mean what they mean" is an argument used by people who default to a strict dictionary definition to back up personal bigotries and biases. Some examples of people like this are Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists(TERFs), people who believe the Earth is Flat, Young Earth Christians, and so on. People who reject science, and they do it so that they can violate the rights of other people, just because those people are different from them. Transphobia, Homophobia, Sexism, Racism, those all try to use incorrect and proven wrong pseudo-science in the place of real science, so that the people who hold those views can oppress others for being different than them. Misusing dictionary definitions is also an example of this sort of "logic". Because the strict dictionary definition as the only correct view, as with the biological essentialist view "people can't change their gender" is flat wrong, it's based on disproved ideas... It's a rejection of science. All it is is a cover that's the same thing as saying: "I'm not racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic, but..." Line. It's someone trying not to sound bigoted when they're being a bigot, nothing more, nothing less.

I see, but this would be an example of Guilt by Association. A broad classification based on sex still exists, and while finer one based on sexual preferences may also exist, this does not make the other one irrelevant.
I may also add that words like "homophobia", "islamophobia" and "transphobia" do not describe any actual phobia (which is a very specific medical term and has specific symptoms) and are often used by some people to smear as mentally ill people whose opinion they don't like, to try and engineer an artificial sense of guilt in western society, to redefine our values as prejudices and to silence legitimate opinion and the free exchange of ideas that have made us what we are and that have given us our strength. I believe this is damaging our society in a fundamental way and it has got to stop.

 

[JimB]

Even if I myself would feel the need of dressing or behaving like the opposite sex I certainly wouldn't be offended by someone addressing me using an objectively accurate statement, and I was offended it would be my decision. There is offending, and there is taking offense.

There is probably no way to ask this question without triggering a defensive response, but I'm going to ask you this in total sincerity: Do you genuinely not see how saying, "I don't have this condition, and the things I say about it are at odds with the experiences had by the people who do have the condition and the general consensus of the medical community, but even so, I consider myself an authority who can say that if I did have this condition, I'd totally be so much cooler about people saying to me the things I say to them than the people I'm inaccurately portraying are" can rightly piss some people off? I understand that you think you're correct in your stance, but you have not at all demonstrated how your position is rooted in anything but the most shallow understanding of science with no particular basis in the specifics, which makes it seem very much like you're arguing from a prejudice you'd prefer to confirm than from any actual schooling on the topic.

I know that paragraph got a little bitchy, but only to try to illustrate why the things you have said can be genuinely upsetting to someone. I apologize if that attempt at illustration ruined the message.

I think that if someone goes as far as suffering all those symptoms, the answer is not a surgery that, among the other things, may remove one's ability to reproduce; it's accepting themselves for what they are.

That is really not how psychiatric disorders work. Telling someone to simply get over the way their brain works is like telling someone with a broken arm to just get over the broken bones. These symptoms are not ephemeral, magical phenomena with no basis in physical reality; they are grounded in the fleshy physical systems of the brain, and asking people to try to solve the problem by living in denial is asking them to live in a much more delusional state than accepting the reality of gender dysmorphia and transgenderism.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

That a person with XY chromosomes is always male in both sex and gender, yes, that's against both legal and scientific consensus. It's simplistic and dismissive of the evidence at hand.

Not both, just in sex - assuming you mean gender as sexual orientation.

Secondly, it should be quite obvious why it's insulting; it's rejecting a part somebody else's identity. They are the one with the relevant experience, here, which is often tremendously difficult. For someone to come and tell them they're wrong-- without any relevant experience, just insisting their opinion is of greater importance-- is clearly insulting.

No, of course it's not. If someone's identity conflicts with their own biology, there is nothing insulting in referring to the latter - identity is subjective, biology is objective.

Consider those people who insist that bisexuals don't exist, and that a bisexual is merely a gay man in denial, or a straight man experimenting. They have no relevant experience. They're claiming to merely be reporting a fact, despite its contradiction of expert opinion. Y'can see why that's insulting, no?

Are there such people? Because their conundrum strikes me as very silly - it is merely an issue of definition, which can be resolved by agreeing on what defines a bisexual or a gay person.

 

[Something Amyss]

That's because a lot of people have this paranoia that being cisgender is somehow a bad thing... When it's not. A lot of them are so paranoid that they actually think cisgender gender identities could be banned by law, especially cisgender male identities, just because of trans activism...

Ahhh yes, the whole "human rights are a zero sum game" thing.

Fucking hell, people, I just want to live my life without constant fear of being murdered.

Well the debate over facilities like restrooms, locker rooms, and etc is actually because we're clinging to Victorian ideas about gender.

Victorian times were faar more liberated than we give them credit for, though that's getting way off-topic at this point.

Any likely self defense situation you can't get out of with Escrima and some sticks, or a knife, you probably weren't going to get out of anyway.

Yeah, and I've taken on a guy with a .45 using hand-to-hand combat and an expanding baton and I was the one who was scrutinised by the police. By the way, the gun was fired. Multiple times. My hands got pretty cut up in the process, but I'm alive. The unfortunate thing is that the guy never saw any punishment and they focused their attention on me. The one who was not only attacked, but more visibly hurt. I don't like to hurt people, even in self-defense, so I focused on arts that deal with grappling and manipulation. I was the dangerous one. I was the threat. I threw no punches and my baton was used in a defensive fashion only (by the way, a stick can be damn lethal, even unintentionally, and anyone worth their salt will tell you that. Even my baton, with a "safety tip," warned of the potential for damage).

The larger problem is that if you're always the threat, you're in an inordinate amount of danger.

[He's not wrong, they are still genetically brothers.

They're still genetically related. They're not genetically brothers, because our society doesn't work that way. And hell, neither do related scientific fields.

He didn't say anything hostile, just a cold, hard scientific fact. That doesn't innately mean he's bigoted or anti trans. Obviously I should imagine it's immensely frustrating to have your gender questioned as a trans person, but that doesn't change what your chromosomes are.

I don't even know what my chromosomes are. I wager upwards of 90% of the population doesn't. And weirdly enough, despite the genetics argument, I've only come across a single biologist who was on that side of the genetics argument.

This isn't so cold or hard, and the "science" acknowledges it. When people ignore that, when people insist upon it, one tends to expect ulterior motives. I'd also borrow a page from Silvanus, even if his lack of Snape avatar disturbs me. There are people willing to learn. This individual has instead opted to argue.

Moreover, it's more than just frustrating. It's harmful to be misgendered. You're already dealing with a group with high suicide rates and an issue where there's a huge amount of stress surrounding this one "little" subject. Stress and maybe some other things. Not to mention, it's not just transfolk who flip out. I have a friend who is...well-intentioned. He ended up in an argument with a woman who insisted on calling Caitlyn Jenner by her birth name and calling her "him." So my friend started calling the woman in question "him" as well.

Now, I don't endorse this sort of action. I said as much, and it was my input, not the result, that led to him removing his comments. But holy fuck did she lose her mind and accuse him of hate speech and threatening him not only with repercussions on the platform, but legal implications as well. And then her family swooped down and told hi ho horrible he was to not treat a woman like a woman.

Which was his point.

Part of the takeaway here is that I really don't expect to be listened to, and it's so rare this stuck out. But if you (general you) think this is just a trans thing, you're off-base. I'd say try it for yourself, but you really shouldn't. Cisfolk get pissed off if accidentally misgendered all the time.

So imagine the response when someone declares they're going to do it intentionally.

Incidentally, it's also a cold, hard fact that black people are "niggers," as that's what the word means. I don't see anyone rushing to defend this argument, though. And I feel bad bringing it up even as a rhetorical device.

Honestly, that's why my social phobia wont go away anytime soon. When not at home I pretty much block out the whole outside world by listening to music with my headphones on high volume.

Yes, but in this day and age, how can you tell the difference? >.>

I know how you feel, though. I remember back in high school people always used to tell me that if I kept sitting outside under a tree with my headphones and sunglasses on reading a book, nobody would want to talk to me. Which was bullshit, because they apparently still did, but aside from that my response was basically "good." Because I wanted to be left alone for...some reason.