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

[Lightknight]

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.

Three points to make here:

1. Law of averages does not account for the outliers. Yes there are men who are more effeminate than other men while still being straight and non-trans. The point here lies in the average. The average trans man actually differs from the average woman in physical and neurological ways that align with the average non-trans male. That's a significant point. It goes beyond mere effeminate or masculine traits in behaviors, though those happen too. It's also possible that the majority of effeminate or masculine people are closeted transgendered people or somewhere on the scale towards the opposite sex. Possible, but I have found no research seeking out effeminate men or masculine women along those lines. It's also impossible to proclaim that a person is transgendered if they are refusing to identify as that.

2. One could argue that transgenderism is advantageous for our species. If you have a transgendered man in your harem, then you've got additional protection for the other women in a transman that carries more masculine traits suited for defense. If you've got a transmale as a husband then it's possibly beneficial to have a more nurturing parent. Those are just a couple examples. It is only recently that we've been able to prescribe hormone adjustments and surgeries. Less than 100 years does not negate the evolutional advantage of history.

3. Terminology has changed. Male and Female have both branched out to either be describing gender or sex. Sex would be what you are exclusively assigning male or female to. Gender is their internal identity. Now that modern science has begun to recognize that the gender does not always match the sex, this split became necessary. You are right that they are still sexually male or female, no matter what surgery or hormone they take. But you are not right that their gender matches their chromosome.

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.

Because the terms have changed, gendered pronouns no longer purely reflect sexual identity but also include gender identity.

A trans person would have no right to be upset with your misgendering them unless they were clearly presenting as the other sex. If you are made aware of their gender identity and then misgender them, then you would at fault for offense. People who take offense right off the bat without you having any way of knowing are just being dicks and most trans people would be on your side there. No one thinks you're going to be psychic.

Think of it like the person has an exotic name and you're just pronouncing it right.

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.

Yes, my background in this is somewhat tragically informed, particularly tragic because of my orientation being straight and something I cannot/should not change. I do not expect my previously very happy marriage to survive the transition and that breaks my heart. But what of my question? If you saw a person who looked male by all accounts and you'd always thought was a male, you'd use male pronouns. But if they told you that they were born female, would you then change your pronouns or try to figure out their former female name and use that instead of the one you'd been using?

Let me give you an example, the below picture is a now famous photo of a transman explaining why birth bathroom use laws (requiring you to use the bathroom of the sex you were assigned on your birth certificate) can get particularly awkward. A transwoman runs serious risk of harm going into a men's room and a transman runs a serious risk causing quite a stir going into a woman's room.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/79b1a87560961d115178eb05eacb8bfd/tumblr_inline_nl4aipQk0n1s0q1be.png

Would you honestly think to call this guy a woman or use "her" when referring to him? I mean, observationally the term would clearly be male, right?

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.

It isn't about accepting themselves. It's about mitigating the depression caused by body dysphoria. For a lot of them, it's either this or suicide or severe sometimes debilitating depression and as such the medical community has responded.

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.

Strange, you are saying things which might be seen as "ignorant" by certain groups but you do not appear to be behaving rudely to people specifically. Then again, I've mostly only been reading your responses to me directly so perhaps in a specific post somewhere you crossed the line. People learn best when they present an idea that is incorrect and are then able to discuss it with people who know the correct answer. Also, on subjective issues people do well when communicating with people of different backgrounds to hear more ideas and grow with them.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

See, here's where you're encountering problems. What you call "factually accurate" and "objectivity" is neither of those things; they're just your personal views on the situation that are built upon little, if any, actual foundation. Your facts and objectivity aren't even supported by science, medicine, or psychology.

Honestly, I'm not sure what you are referring to here - the only hard statement I made is that a person with XY chromosomes is a man regardless of their sexual preferences or behavior or whatnot. What exactly are you contesting?

And what greater good is achieved through denying your own personal identity?

I didn't completely deny my identity, but I would have been ready to do so if that was a requirement to have a family. The greater good achieved, in this case, is the continuation of my family on a minor level and of the society at large in the grand scheme of things.

Except they are making an incorrect statement about someone's socially acknowledged identity. That you want to pretend that a trans person being misgendered by their employer is the same thing as calling an obese person fat, that's on you, because, like everything else, it is rooted in nothing other than your personal, unsupported views.

Uhm... no..? Precisely because sexual identity and gender (or sex) are two separate things. I will be frank: if you support punishment by means law of factually correct statements simply on the grounds that people can be offended by factually correct statements, you are part of the problem.

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.

You misunderstand. These people do not hold a different definition for bisexuality; they know the word refers to people attracted to those of either sex. They simply believe such people do not exist.

They're willing to invalidate the experiences of the people who actually identify as such, as well as expert opinion, to assert such. But in what way is this "sillier" (or less silly) than invalidating the existence of gender dysphoria?

Is this a similar approach to the one that Ahmadinejad took when he had a speech in a US university and claimed that there are no gays in Iran? Either way it's an indredibly dumb proposition.

It's about punishing a factually accurate statement because someone chooses to be offended about it, no matter how sincerely.

Then once again, Emanuele Ciriachi, I am forced to ask how you or your so-maligned brother in ideology possess specific knowledge of this person's chromosomes, since you hold that as the only relevant factor in either sex or gender, that allow you to assert with certainty that you know better than the trans person what his or her sex is. Have you an answer for this?

I don't know for certain of course, it's an assumption based on his appearance, name, pronouns used and the news that he has now choosen to adopt a female identity.

Nothing is inherently offensive about anything. It is always a subjective response. Nothing about its subjectivity invalidates a sense of offense, though, and neither does your disagreeing with it absolve you of your responsibility for knowingly and repeatedly saying things others will reasonably be offended by.

Great, we have agreed on the difference between "offending" and "taking offense". Because I also can choose to be offended, and indeed I am, by quite a number of things people think and say - but this is just a fact of life that I accept and move on.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

First off I never called you mentally ill, never said transphobia, or transphobic behavior constitute mental illnesses, they're just words used to represent a prejudice, discriminatory, and/or bigoted attitude related to rejection transgenderism as a legitimate condition. The DSM-V talks extensively about gender dysphoria and how the correct manner of addressing it, calling a trans woman a man at any time accordingly is patently incorrect. Meaning you're using selective reading of the DSM for political reasons, that's not how medical manuals work. I never called you mentally ill, but insisting on not sharing any common decency is jerk behavior. Note, I'm not saying you are a jerk, just that you're behaving like one. Also regressiveness requires ignoring progress.

I'm aware of what is intended with those words, the fact remains that they use the name of a mental illness in a naked attempt to offend and discredit people with different opinions and values, to single out their political and ideological opponents not just as wrong, but malevolent. This very often distorts and offends the people subject of those epithets, trying to present them as some sorts of "racists".

As for the selective reading, I assume that the DSM is referring to a person's chosen identity, while I refer to their biology - it is all the more confusing that the same pronouns cover both meanings.

Non-sequitur! Genetics are not objective, verifiable truth. I was born physically male and assigned male at birth, I have XX chromosomes, I transitioned to living as a female, I have not had SRS. In a casual conversation there are two pieces of information you are not going to have about the person you're talking to; their genetic profile, and their genitals. You have way too thin a comfort zone if you're defaulting to genetics, because in a casual encounter that is information you cannot have, you're also ignoring the existance of XX males, XY females, and people with XXY, XXXY, XXYY, and etc chromosomal setups. Genetics isn't the set-in-stone object truth you seem think it is.

See you're the one making assumptions, because you're putting everything on genetics, which you don't seem to understand as well as you think you do. Again that's not information you're going to have, unless you genetically test everyone you talk to in person before you gender them, which is realistically really unreasonable. So I'm gonna say on this subject you're all full of assumptions and scientific misunderstandings.

One assumption I will make, if we met in person and you had no idea that I am the same person attached to the forum name I have here... You'd be referring to me using female pronouns. I actually know this for a fact, because I pass as female well enough that people who don't know I'm trans refer to me as female. I only ever get misgendered after a friend who knows I'm trans outs me to strangers. Even after I'm outed most strangers still refer to me as female, many who want to misgender me as male usually can't do it, as it almost makes them visibly physically uncomfortable, due to how feminine I look and present.

At any rate the genetic argument doesn't excuse behaving with a lack of basic respect and common decency. Misgendering people on the basis of sex over gender identity is objectively insensitive, disrespectful, offensive, and dangerous to the person you're misgendering. You already pointed out that you wouldn't misgender a feminine cisgender man, or a masculine cisgender woman, so doing insisting on misgendering trans folk is at best a double standard.

Fair enough - if I didn't knew your genetics there would be absolutely nothing wrong in addressing you with the wrong words because of your appearance; precisely because you can dress and behave the way you want regardless of them. I still contest that using sex-based pronouns constitutes a lack of respect or decency. Because it's not nor it is implied by me.

Gender identity and sexual preference are separate and different things. Being transgender is not a sexual preference. I hope we're clear on that now.

All right, got that.

I want to be absolutely clear on something here, now, with no wiggle room. When universities gather statistics on the transgender community they find that at least 41% of respondents have attempted suicide. That's 41% of transgender people, who have attempted suicide, not counting the ones that succeeded in actually committing suicide. Do you know what causes this? Social rejection and an inability to access transition. What you're doing is contributing to that culture which results in a society that damages trans people, that's not guilt by association, you've actually contributed to a culture that harms trans people, by rejecting our conditions. I'm part of the 59% who have never attempted suicide, mostly because through out my life I've been accepted at least by the people who really matter to me, because I've never experienced an inability to access medical transitional care. The views you're endorsing through out your post here are the views that contribute to trans folk being discriminated against in housing, employment, and access to services, in being unable to transition, in being rejected from society. Please understand that's not guilt by association, it's active contribution, no matter how small, to the problems trans folk face.

Finally, most people disregard buzzword terms like transphobia, homophobia, and islamophobia, they're pretty empty terms any more. They're not silencing you. What needs to stop in culture is the exclusion and devaluation of people for being different.

I have again to disagree with the bold statement (emphasis mine). We all have to contend with other people's expectations and opinions; promoting and encouraging models of behavior do not damage in any way those that, through no fault of their own, are unable or unwilling to live up to them.
My set of values do not have the well-being and satisfaction of myself at their core; rather I expect to face difficulties and to have to go against my own interest and selfish ego in order to channel my potential toward the public good; according to your logic, this would "contribute to a culture which results in a society that damages people" (unable or unwilling to live up to such expectations).
This, at best, is a slippery slope.

Why? Because in both cases it's the right thing to do, using correct gender pronouns for one group, but not another is a double standard.

You are using pronouns relative to one's gender identity, I am using pronouns related to one's sex (if known). There is no contradiction as we are referring to two different things.

Your explanation regarding sexual reproductive capability threw infertile people, people born without reproductive parts(like women born without a uterus, men born without testicles), and intersex people under the bus. As in you just dismissed their existence entirely. People are not the sum of our reproductive parts, we do not form personalities from our reproductive parts, thus reproductive parts are also not an excuse for misgendering people.

This is a strawman, as big as a house.

That's because just dressing and acting like the opposite gender isn't the same thing as being transgender. There is a lot of neuro-scientific evidence that points to the fact that trans women have brains much the same as cisgender women, and trans men have brains of cis men, and non-binary identifying people fall somewhere between. That's objective scientific fact for you. Even if you dressed and acted like the opposite gender, so long as you're gender identity aligned with your sex assigned at birth, you'd use the pronouns of the sex you're assigned at birth. Chiefly because in such case you wouldn't be transgender. Why is that so hard to understand?

I can acknowledge this, but I still don't see how this relates to my position.

I see you didn't answer the question there. Would you have switched gender pronouns if you found out someone you thought was one gender was assigned the opposite one at birth?

Yes, of course - I would use the correct one.

It might help if you looked outside your own perspective, because as a trans person I can tell you your statements do actually come off as offensive.

I left that last part outside the spoilers for a reason, because this is a very sensitive topic, especially because there are trans people active in this thread. Emanuele Cirachi, I apologize if I've come off as overly harsh, but this situation is sensitive especially considering the people who are participating.

I said it again: i bear no ill will toward you or anyone else, but if truth offends you then you should stop a little to think about why you feel offended.

 

[JimB]

You know, the alert to this quote came right on the heels of me saying I don't think Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is all that bad. I was just sure I was going to open my inbox and see someone calling me a traitor to cinematic history or something.

I don't know for certain of course, it's an assumption based on his appearance, name, pronouns used and the news that he has now chosen to adopt a female identity.

Then what you keep representing as objective facts is nothing but a bundle of prejudices based on superficial observations that you can't possibly verify except with another assumption, this one outcome-determinative based on a begging the question fallacy.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

First off I never called you mentally ill, never said transphobia, or transphobic behavior constitute mental illnesses, they're just words used to represent a prejudice, discriminatory, and/or bigoted attitude related to rejection transgenderism as a legitimate condition. The DSM-V talks extensively about gender dysphoria and how the correct manner of addressing it, calling a trans woman a man at any time accordingly is patently incorrect. Meaning you're using selective reading of the DSM for political reasons, that's not how medical manuals work. I never called you mentally ill, but insisting on not sharing any common decency is jerk behavior. Note, I'm not saying you are a jerk, just that you're behaving like one. Also regressiveness requires ignoring progress.

I'm aware of what is intended with those words, the fact remains that they use the name of a mental illness in a naked attempt to offend and discredit people with different opinions and values, to single out their political and ideological opponents not just as wrong, but malevolent. This very often distorts and offends the people subject of those epithets, trying to present them as some sorts of "racists".

Well in most cases when people spout rhetoric that's linked with an active hate movement, they get associated with said hate movement. Adamantly refusing to use correct gender pronouns with trans people, the correct gender pronouns are by consensus based on gender identity and presentation, is how transphobic movements attempt to invalidate trans folk.

As for the selective reading, I assume that the DSM is referring to a person's chosen identity, while I refer to their biology - it is all the more confusing that the same pronouns cover both meanings.

First of transgender people do not chose to be trans, gender identity is not a choice, we do not chose to have gender dysphoria either. If you've read the DSM-V and paid attention to the section of the DSM-V dealing with Gender Dysphoria, you'd know that it's not a choice. Second the brain is a valid biological system and it's where all of the important parts of human personality, identity, and such are formed. Trans women for example have brains that work on female norms, that's biology. On the other hand reproductive organs contribute nothing to who a person actually is, just how they reproduce. Gendering based on the latter also requires knowing private information about a person that the public is not entitled to. We gender based on how someone presents themselves, so it's still incorrect to suddenly swap pronouns if you find out they have different genitals at birth.

-sniped for post length-

Fair enough - if I didn't knew your genetics there would be absolutely nothing wrong in addressing you with the wrong words because of your appearance; precisely because you can dress and behave the way you want regardless of them. I still contest that using sex-based pronouns constitutes a lack of respect or decency. Because it's not nor it is implied by me.

If by wrong words you mean using female pronouns for me and addressing me as a female... Seriously? I pass as female, in fact my life experience is that of being unable to pass as male despite being born physically male, part of that is I started transition young. Also being trans isn't just about dressing and behaving like the opposite sex, it's way more of that and it's fundamentally tied into a biological system, the brain. The brain decides who a person is, not their genitals. Finally you can contest it all you want using sex based pronouns exclusively is not only disrespectful, but it's also dishonest to think you're always doing it that way. You probably have met a lot of trans people who pass and used the pronouns of their gender identity, never knowing they're trans. Genitals don't matter is what I'm saying, that's private privileged information you're not automatically entitled to, nor that you always have. Switching gender pronouns on someone that's trans because you find out they're trans then is disrespectful, it's also dangerous. It's both in no small part because you're outing them publicly against their will, while also invalidating them as a person run by a brain, reducing them to their genitals. Selectively favoring genitals as a means to address someone with gendered pronouns isn't a defensible position for so many reasons.

Gender identity and sexual preference are separate and different things. Being transgender is not a sexual preference. I hope we're clear on that now.

All right, got that.

Good now can you also understand that being trans means more than "dressing a certain way, and acting a certain way"? Because it really is deeper than that, there's a lot more to it than than, and that oversimplification is totally inaccurate on every level, especially a psychological level.

I want to be absolutely clear on something here, now, with no wiggle room. When universities gather statistics on the transgender community they find that at least 41% of respondents have attempted suicide. That's 41% of transgender people, who have attempted suicide, not counting the ones that succeeded in actually committing suicide. Do you know what causes this? Social rejection and an inability to access transition. What you're doing is contributing to that culture which results in a society that damages trans people, that's not guilt by association, you've actually contributed to a culture that harms trans people, by rejecting our conditions. I'm part of the 59% who have never attempted suicide, mostly because through out my life I've been accepted at least by the people who really matter to me, because I've never experienced an inability to access medical transitional care. The views you're endorsing through out your post here are the views that contribute to trans folk being discriminated against in housing, employment, and access to services, in being unable to transition, in being rejected from society. Please understand that's not guilt by association, it's active contribution, no matter how small, to the problems trans folk face.

Finally, most people disregard buzzword terms like transphobia, homophobia, and islamophobia, they're pretty empty terms any more. They're not silencing you. What needs to stop in culture is the exclusion and devaluation of people for being different.

I have again to disagree with the bold statement (emphasis mine). We all have to contend with other people's expectations and opinions; promoting and encouraging models of behavior do not damage in any way those that, through no fault of their own, are unable or unwilling to live up to them.

Except that you're doing something that is a classic tactic of damaging a person on a personal level in society. Having one's gender identity rejected publicly is dangerous because then people out us against our will, which makes us targets for assaults, sexual abuse, and murder. It's also personally damaging, most trans people are rejected their entire lives, you contributing to it is harmful, not helpful and it is a contributing factor to trans suicides. So while we have to contend with other people's expectations, being invalidated deep personal level and endangered publicly is not justifiable.

My set of values do not have the well-being and satisfaction of myself at their core; rather I expect to face difficulties and to have to go against my own interest and selfish ego in order to channel my potential toward the public good; according to your logic, this would "contribute to a culture which results in a society that damages people" (unable or unwilling to live up to such expectations).
This, at best, is a slippery slope.

You say that, but people who do the same things you do also try to erase trans folk by taking our legal rights away... They say the same things you've been saying, they do it to invalidate and harm us, and you saying the same things is part of what gives them sway. Less a slippery slope, more deflecting the concept that adding to harmful attitudes is what supports them. Which in the treatment of women, civil rights, gay rights, and so on is a proven fact. People who do continue to support the structures of prejudice are actively oppressing others, that's why racial segregation actually was allowed for so long, because people backed casual racism.

Why? Because in both cases it's the right thing to do, using correct gender pronouns for one group, but not another is a double standard.

You are using pronouns relative to one's gender identity, I am using pronouns related to one's sex (if known). There is no contradiction as we are referring to two different things.

Gender identity is commonly considered correct by the law, medical, psychological, and scientific standards. You're still using birth sex as a means of invalidating a person's identity. Also, how in the world do you refer to intersex people, who may, or may not have been assigned the correct gender at birth? Besides I default to gendering people how they present, if they tell me they want to be gendered differently, I respect that because it's just the commonly decent thing to do. You're saying common decency is meaningless and that you're going to back systems used to oppress trans and intersex people regardless.

Your explanation regarding sexual reproductive capability threw infertile people, people born without reproductive parts(like women born without a uterus, men born without testicles), and intersex people under the bus. As in you just dismissed their existence entirely. People are not the sum of our reproductive parts, we do not form personalities from our reproductive parts, thus reproductive parts are also not an excuse for misgendering people.

This is a strawman, as big as a house.

It's a strawman, you ignored the existence of people who are intersex, infertile, born without reproductive parts, then you refused to address the point. Calling my point a strawman is a strawman in this case.

That's because just dressing and acting like the opposite gender isn't the same thing as being transgender. There is a lot of neuro-scientific evidence that points to the fact that trans women have brains much the same as cisgender women, and trans men have brains of cis men, and non-binary identifying people fall somewhere between. That's objective scientific fact for you. Even if you dressed and acted like the opposite gender, so long as you're gender identity aligned with your sex assigned at birth, you'd use the pronouns of the sex you're assigned at birth. Chiefly because in such case you wouldn't be transgender. Why is that so hard to understand?

I can acknowledge this, but I still don't see how this relates to my position.

Because what you've been asserting is that's what all transgender people are. People who dress and act like the opposite sex, nothing more, that's what you've been asserting transgender people are.

I see you didn't answer the question there. Would you have switched gender pronouns if you found out someone you thought was one gender was assigned the opposite one at birth?

Yes, of course - I would use the correct incorrect one.

I changed that because you're actively rejecting medicine, psychology, psychiatric, and scientific standards regarding trans people. So you would be switching to using the incorrect pronoun, both by objective consensus and social standards. You'd also be putting any trans person you did this to in danger, if you do it in a public place, because it puts a massive target for violence and abuse on our backs.

It might help if you looked outside your own perspective, because as a trans person I can tell you your statements do actually come off as offensive.

I left that last part outside the spoilers for a reason, because this is a very sensitive topic, especially because there are trans people active in this thread. Emanuele Cirachi, I apologize if I've come off as overly harsh, but this situation is sensitive especially considering the people who are participating.

I said it again: i bear no ill will toward you or anyone else, but if truth offends you then you should stop a little to think about why you feel offended.

Except your stance doesn't represent truth, objectivity, or factual correctness. Your position is in truth a tool used to discredit trans life experiences and justify discriminatory tactics used by cissexist and transphobic people against transgender people. You have no factual, truthful, objective, legal, scientific, medical, psychiatric, or social standards to back you up here. You're using your subjective ideas about gender and sex to justify invalidating trans people, that's what makes it offensive. You've rejected all objective standards and clung purely to your subjective view, so with that I can see we're not going to have any agreement. So I'll just say, have a good life and I hope you realize your subjective prejudice here, for the sake of any trans people you may find your self in a close relationship with.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

AAARRRRGGGGHHH! Fuck the fucking Daily Mail. I don't know of a single person who doesn't think (read: know) that it is so full of shite you can't even use it as toilet paper. For those that aren't from the UK/not familiar with the paper, it is just a hate and fear mongering, right wing propaganda paper. So much so that it's a common joke for the nation's comedians, writers, and basically everybody else.

Cunts, the lot of them. Most of what they print isn't even nearly fact, and 100% of it is heavily biased and opinionated. They are absolute fucking bastards and the very reason we need tighter reporting laws in the UK.

And they claim not to be a tabloid. They just are. By definition. It sucks that Lilly had to come out like this, and because of them. I'm sure she'd have been much happier to do it on her own terms, but good for her from taking the story away from them.

 

[Poetic Nova]

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.

If you really want to see someone in a severely depressed state, to the point of suicide, go ahead, keep this mindset.
Not everyone who is transgender may want SRS, but it is still no fucking reason to refer someone, who is transgender, by their birthsex.

I honestly think the warning you got was justified, all I see is you being severely disrespectful towards anyone who is transgender. Have some respect for others, and refer them by the pronounce someone prefers, instead of basing it off of someone's genitals.

People like you is what can really push my buttons.

 

[Silvanus]

Honestly, I'm not sure what you are referring to here - the only hard statement I made is that a person with XY chromosomes is a man regardless of their sexual preferences or behavior or whatnot. What exacfly are you contesting?

Sexual preferances have never been relevant, and you are the only one who has brought them up. They are unrelated to sex and gender (except in loose correlation).

Is this a similar approach to the one that Ahmadinejad took when he had a speech in a US university and claimed that there are no gays in Iran? Either way it's an indredibly dumb proposition.

There was no scientific "approach" at all; only assertion, against scientific evidence and consensus. But there is no greater validity to the bizarre notion that gender dysphoria is not valid. That's just as baseless.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

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.

If you really want to see someone in a severely depressed state, to the point of suicide, go ahead, keep this mindset.
Not everyone who is transgender may want SRS, but it is still no fucking reason to refer someone, who is transgender, by their birthsex.

I honestly think the warning you got was justified, all I see is you being severely disrespectful towards anyone who is transgender. Have some respect for others, and refer them by the pronounce someone prefers, instead of basing it off of someone's genitals.

People like you is what can really push my buttons.

This person has made it pretty clear and spent two pages defending the fact he's not going to respect any trans person's wishes. All the mental gymnastics and excuses to attempt to justifying doing just that, should tell you all you need to know about how much a little human decency apparently costs him personally. Because apparently his subjective views on gender trump all science, medical, and legal evidence, that it's more "confusing" and inconvenient for him to use someone's identified gender.

Honestly everything he said in this thread, shows that no matter how much evidence and personal experience is showed, he's going to keep misgendering trans folk. Really for what are strictly political reasons, no less.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

I said it again: i bear no ill will toward you or anyone else, but if truth offends you then you should stop a little to think about why you feel offended.

...dude.

The truth is you're transphobic. Your adamant defense of calling someone by their 'birth gender' is blatantly transphobic and incredibly disrespectful, since you're upholding your own - incredibly wrong - opinions over the identities (and scientific realities) of transgendered people.

The only time you should refer to a transgendered person by anything but their desired pronouns is if they aren't out yet and you're in public, or if they are in a situation where being refered to by their desired pronouns would result in bodily harm coming to them. That's it.

Going 'I'll call them their birth gender regardless' isn't the 'truth', it's just straight up transphobia.

You can bare as little ill will as you think you do, but when you refuse to call someone by their preferred gender... you're just being transphobic.

This isn't even a case of people being 'offended' by you... just exasperated over yet-another person with zero understanding of gender refusing to budge from their ill-informed views, even when you have people explaining in detail why what you're doing is fucked up.

Just... come on. Come on. Be better than this.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

3. Terminology has changed. Male and Female have both branched out to either be describing gender or sex. Sex would be what you are ploy to make you buy shitty hardwarely assigning male or female to. Gender is their internal identity. Now that modern science has begun to recognize that the gender does not always match the sex, this split became necessary. You are right that they are still sexually male or female, no matter what surgery or hormone they take. But you are not right that their gender matches their chromosome.

[...]

Because the terms have changed, gendered pronouns no longer purely reflect sexual identity but also include gender identity.

They still retain their original meaning. It would have been easier if they had introduced new terms that reflect gender identity - the two classifications are not mutually ploy to make you buy shitty hardware.
This is merely an issue of definition, one that can be easily solved by deciding which words describe objective sex and which subjective "gender".

A trans person would have no right to be upset with your misgendering them unless they were clearly presenting as the other sex. If you are made aware of their gender identity and then misgender them, then you would at fault for offense.

No, absolutely. For the n-th time, I contest both this definition of "misgendering" and the fact that addressing a man as a man constitutes an offense. Regardless of how someone perceives itself.
I will not actively pursue the opportunity for doing so, but there is absolutely nothing wrong or offensive in using the correct pronoun for their sex.

But what of my question? If you saw a person who looked male by all accounts and you'd always thought was a male, you'd use male pronouns. But if they told you that they were born female, would you then change your pronouns or try to figure out their former female name and use that instead of the one you'd been using?

I would start using female pronouns of course, the correct one.

Let me give you an example, the below picture is a now famous photo of a transman explaining why birth bathroom use laws (requiring you to use the bathroom of the sex you were assigned on your birth certificate) can get particularly awkward. A transwoman runs serious risk of harm going into a men's room and a transman runs a serious risk causing quite a stir going into a woman's room.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/79b1a87560961d115178eb05eacb8bfd/tumblr_inline_nl4aipQk0n1s0q1be.png

Would you honestly think to call this guy a woman or use "her" when referring to him? I mean, observationally the term would clearly be male, right?

If I didn't knew otherwise I would certainly address her as a man. I'm also sure nobody would have anything to say if she'd use man's bathroom... provided they have facilities fitting for her biology.
Having said that, not all people look so much like the opposite sex - there have been situations in schools were parents protested for boys claiming trans status who wanted the right to use women's shower facilities - I can certainly empathize with those.

It isn't about accepting themselves. It's about mitigating the depression caused by body dysphoria. For a lot of them, it's either this or suicide or severe sometimes debilitating depression and as such the medical community has responded.

I can't really comment on that as I cannot imagine how someone would feel in their shoes. I also can't imagine how doing so would mitigate such depression - many post-op trans don't quite look like the opposite sex too much..? I wouldn't really know what to recommend, I think being loved by their families and immediate acqauintances should be a great start.

It's really difficult for me to imagine being in such a place. I see sexuality as a mean to an end, I myself would probably try and succeed to dismiss feelings of uneasiness toward my own body reminding myself the reason I am what I am. But again, I realize that not everyone shares such a... pragmatic approach.

Strange, you are saying things which might be seen as "ignorant" by certain groups but you do not appear to be behaving rudely to people specifically. Then again, I've mostly only been reading your responses to me directly so perhaps in a specific post somewhere you crossed the line. People learn best when they present an idea that is incorrect and are then able to discuss it with people who know the correct answer. Also, on subjective issues people do well when communicating with people of different backgrounds to hear more ideas and grow with them.

I have been in touch with the moderation and the warning has since been lifted - it must have been a particularly trigger-happy mod.

 

[elvor0]

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.

mm, I get ya

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.

Huh, that is /really/ interesting. I shall have to look into that, the more you know.

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.

Yeah but my point was that most people aren't even aware that those combinations might exist in the first place and the general rule for perhaps 83% of the population(12% was the most recent statistic for people who identify as Trans I believe? And the extra for people who might be mistaken for the opposite sex) is if it looks like a bloke, its a bloke and is very likely to have bollocks, which I believe IS a very reasonable assumption.Essentially, even without proper conformations, assumptions about a persons genetics and genitals are going to be true in mostly 80% of cases, which I think are reasonable assumptions. There's also the issue that they don't /need/ to think about genetics. Men are XY, Women are XX with no debate or variation as far as they're concerned. That's what I was taught in school and I'm only 25.

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.

Well I meant 50 years as an individual not as society. All in all I'm not sure how I feel about mixed gender changing rooms. I don't think we're ready as a society for that yet. People are bastards. Absolute bastards. We've been having quite a few problems here in Finland recently with men going into the womens changing rooms to grope them(not people posing as transwomen, just regular men). Private stalls is a good idea in theory but I think its unlikely to happen in most places. I don't think its something you can just enforce overnight either. On the one hand trans people would gain rights, but you'd have people who felt like /their/ rights were being taken away...which breeds hostility, because it would actually effect them in /some/ way, it's going to be a slow, steady shift I think, regardless of how you cut it.

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.

Yeah I know, I can completely understand why it must be frustrating and a good amount of the time, blood boilingly infuriating. But sometimes some people are asking questions out of curiosity or non understanding and they get beaten down themselves and this does not warm them to a cause if their experience tends to be radical members of that cause berating people for not being psychic. Obviously most transpeople aren't like that, but the noisy few are, and I just think its better to try and stay above that mud pit. I don't think fighting hostility with hostility is good.

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."

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.

But all the examples in those comics are clearly people trying to be friendly. Yeah some of them would be backhanded if said by some ***** from Real Housewives, but here they're not. Some of them are a bit crap, but they're clearly said with good and friendly intent. The last one being "I don't have a problem with trans people" being translated as "I have a problem with trans people" riles me up because it itself is prejudice and judgmental.

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.

But the people in those comics aren't being awful. They're being friendly if misguided or at least /trying/ to be accepting. It rubs me up the wrong way because it seems to paint a picture of "if you aren't one of us, you're a judgmental, malicious fuckhead." Being in your face is great, of course it is for civil rights. Calling everyone a bastard even when they're trying to be accepting, isn't.

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.

Well I know what tone policing is, but I think the example presented isn't quite the same. I'm not so much critiquing the tone of the message of those trans comics as I am critiquing the message it sends. Which as far as I can see, is "everyone's a bastard if they're not one of us" and "treat attempts at acceptance with snarky derision". It does not make me chuckle and I am pro LGBT. Like I said, I think the author of that comic is a twat.

I think the word must've slipped my brain. Cheers.

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.

Well you're right. I'm not really exposed to it that much, I've spent time with trans people, but nothing bad ever happened on those occasions. You've made lots of excellent points but I think I might be recycling myself if I go off on one again. I think what I wanted to say has been said over the course of this post in response to this quote.

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.

Oh well I suppose if you take it and make it your own, that's even better when you put it like that.

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.

Its easy enough, I just fucking hate doing it >< I always loose track of the end quote boxes.

[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.

How are they not still /genetically/ brothers? Do you mean they're not socially brothers? Because you'd be right there, but I don't understand how the former is correct at all. I don't actually understand what you mean by "They're not genetically brothers, because our society doesn't work that way." How does society come into it? I will respect their gender being female as red but that doesn't change the fact that they both started life as genetically male and genetically are still brothers. It doesn't actually matter what their genetics are at the end of the day socially, but I don't understand where you're coming from here.

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.

-sorry, reaaaly need to snip your post for space-

Well up until 2 days ago during my discussion with KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime: I didn't even know XXXXY or other crazy combinations existed. As I'm sure is the case with most people, it's at least an "objective cold science" fact from their point of view. I was more urging KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime not to immediately label people as bigoted if they weren't being directly hostile(hostility begets hostility etc, etc). That wasn't actually what KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime was doing, but point still stands. You might wanna jump to our discussion for that or I'm likely to be repeating myself.

 

[Silvanus]

I would start using female pronouns of course, the correct one.

This is still conflating your position with a demonstrable or objective one. It's not.

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

But all the examples in those comics are clearly people trying to be friendly. Yeah some of them would be backhanded if said by some ***** from Real Housewives, but here they're not. Some of them are a bit crap, but they're clearly said with good and friendly intent. The last one being "I don't have a problem with trans people" being translated as "I have a problem with trans people" riles me up because it itself is prejudice and judgmental.

The thing about the statement "I don't have a problem with trans people" is it is the rough equivalent of "I'm not racist." It might be true, but 95% of the time when you hear it the statement is being used to excuse some prejudice. If someone feels the need to explain they don't have problems with trans people they almost certainly do, and they are almost always about to tell you exactly what that problem is.

"I don't have a problem with trans people, but I don't like seeing them at the store."

"I don't have a problem with trans people, but I wouldn't let one be around my kids."

"I don't have a problem with trans people..." and etc.

My parents, Olympic champions of "I don't have a problem with X" once spent an agonizing hour trying to convince me that they don't have any problem with trans people, and as soon as they were finished they started explaining to me why if I decided to so much as wear nail polish around them I wouldn't be welcome at family gatherings anymore.

It's just like every racist comment you have ever heard where the person doesn't want to believe they are racist but they don't care enough to actually not be racist. Like my boss. "I don't have any problem with Muslims, but I wouldn't hire one, they are too likely to go on shooting sprees."

Edit: at least in real life

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Oi gods is formating this post going to be an ass and a half...

Gonna see if I can't break this down with spoilers. Sorry if this is a little inconvenient @elvor0 these replies are long.

Spoiler: Genitals and Genetics

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.

Yeah but my point was that most people aren't even aware that those combinations might exist in the first place and the general rule for perhaps 83% of the population(12% was the most recent statistic for people who identify as Trans I believe? And the extra for people who might be mistaken for the opposite sex) is if it looks like a bloke, its a bloke and is very likely to have bollocks, which I believe IS a very reasonable assumption.Essentially, even without proper conformations, assumptions about a persons genetics and genitals are going to be true in mostly 80% of cases, which I think are reasonable assumptions. There's also the issue that they don't /need/ to think about genetics. Men are XY, Women are XX with no debate or variation as far as they're concerned. That's what I was taught in school and I'm only 25.

First off 12% of people identify as trans!? Where did you find that statistic? The most generous statistics I found puts us around between 0.7-1.3% of the total population, the most common average is around 0.3% of people are trans.

At any rate, the assumption is pointless, because it's information people generally don't use when gendering others, in virtually all cases a stocky manly butch woman with short masculine hair and a deep voice, or a delicate androgynous feminine guy with long feminine hair a high voice... Most people will just go with what either person says they are, with out any further evidence. Genetics and genitals literally don't matter in these cases, or any others, it's just an excuse to take a shot at trans identities.

Spoiler: Bathrooms and Progress

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.

Well I meant 50 years as an individual not as society. All in all I'm not sure how I feel about mixed gender changing rooms. I don't think we're ready as a society for that yet. People are bastards. Absolute bastards. We've been having quite a few problems here in Finland recently with men going into the womens changing rooms to grope them(not people posing as transwomen, just regular men). Private stalls is a good idea in theory but I think its unlikely to happen in most places. I don't think its something you can just enforce overnight either. On the one hand trans people would gain rights, but you'd have people who felt like /their/ rights were being taken away...which breeds hostility, because it would actually effect them in /some/ way, it's going to be a slow, steady shift I think, regardless of how you cut it.

You can't point to a small proportion of offenders who are able to do something specifically because facilities are gender segregated. Because if they did this with men present, they'd either get grabbed and held until the police arrived, or just flat punched in the face by someone. Anyways progress always moves faster than people are comfortable with, ALWAYS, because people are uncomfortable with change, any change at all. Women's rights, racial civil rights, gay rights, and even trans rights all progress in spite of people's discomfort with the idea of equality, not at the pace in which people become comfortable with such ideas.

Spoiler: Hostility and Image

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.

Yeah I know, I can completely understand why it must be frustrating and a good amount of the time, blood boilingly infuriating. But sometimes some people are asking questions out of curiosity or non understanding and they get beaten down themselves and this does not warm them to a cause if their experience tends to be radical members of that cause berating people for not being psychic. Obviously most transpeople aren't like that, but the noisy few are, and I just think its better to try and stay above that mud pit. I don't think fighting hostility with hostility is good.

Well people who are honestly asking questions, speaking for my self here, get honest and patient answers, or told plainly, but not with any hostility, if their question is inappropriate, or none of their business. The thing is a lot of people ask invasive questions just so they can have ammunition to use against me and those like me. Really the trans community is a lot less hostile and a lot more patient than people assume. Even the noisy few amongst us aren't really a valid reason for people to vilify all of us, the vast majority don't don't buy that, and a single good experience changes the minds of many who do buy into it. Responding to hostility with hostility might not be constructive, but it's a natural reaction, if someone shouts at you, then you're gonna defend yourself. We all do it, but for some reason it's automatically a million times worse if a trans person is defending ourselves. Literally we're not allowed to defend our selves even in a calm verbal fashion, generally under threats of violence and potentially death.

Spoiler: About The Cissexist Bullshit Translator comic.

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."

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.

But all the examples in those comics are clearly people trying to be friendly. Yeah some of them would be backhanded if said by some ***** from Real Housewives, but here they're not. Some of them are a bit crap, but they're clearly said with good and friendly intent. The last one being "I don't have a problem with trans people" being translated as "I have a problem with trans people" riles me up because it itself is prejudice and judgmental.

No those comics aren't about people trying to be friendly, they're about people saying rather back handedly negative things about trans folk, while trying not to sound transphobic. These things are not said with real friendly intent, they highlight transgenderism as a means of attack, it's called negging, a negative compliment in this case. Trust me people don't say things like what was portrayed in the comic out of a stance of actual tolerance. "I don't have a problem with trans people" is never said without being followed by a "but", it's exactly the same as "I'm not sexist/racist/homopobic, but..." When these things are said they're always said with an ulterior motive and that ulterior motive is never a good one. It's always making an excuse for being exactly what they're saying they're not being, like saying you're not reinforcing a horrible negative stereotype, when that's exactly what you're doing. I didn't say "you" pointing directly at you elvor0, just as a general you, because tons of people everywhere do what I pointed out.

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.

But the people in those comics aren't being awful. They're being friendly if misguided or at least /trying/ to be accepting. It rubs me up the wrong way because it seems to paint a picture of "if you aren't one of us, you're a judgmental, malicious fuckhead." Being in your face is great, of course it is for civil rights. Calling everyone a bastard even when they're trying to be accepting, isn't.

They're reinforcing negative stereotypes at the minimum, that's in no way trying to be accepting, it's making an excuse for saying something patently wrong and dumb. The whole point of the cissexist bullshit translator comic is to point out how people really are kind of being shitty, at least when they say such backhanded things. This isn't saying "everyone is a bastard", it's saying that "you're trying to sound accepting when you're being anything but accepting. That's all, it's pointing out when people are being dishonestly tolerant, even when they don't realize they're doing it.

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.

Well I know what tone policing is, but I think the example presented isn't quite the same. I'm not so much critiquing the tone of the message of those trans comics as I am critiquing the message it sends. Which as far as I can see, is "everyone's a bastard if they're not one of us" and "treat attempts at acceptance with snarky derision". It does not make me chuckle and I am pro LGBT. Like I said, I think the author of that comic is a twat.

I think the word must've slipped my brain. Cheers.

Which is criticizing the the tone of the message, especially because you've made it patently obvious you don't understand the tone of the message being put foreword. Again you're writing a lot in and ignoring how backhandedly nasty these comments are, they're always back handed nasty comments. You can say you're "pro LGBT" until the cows come home, but you're still criticizing the tone of how we call out people who say snarky shit to us. Virtually every time one of those lines in the comic comes up, it's really an obvious attempt for that person to excuse their own transphobia, and dismiss trans issues. That's all it ever is, I know, I hear it all the fucking time, it's never not a backhanded attempt for someone to excuse their cissexist crap.

Spoiler: You just acknowleged my point after dismissing it elvor0

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.

Well you're right. I'm not really exposed to it that much, I've spent time with trans people, but nothing bad ever happened on those occasions. You've made lots of excellent points but I think I might be recycling myself if I go off on one again. I think what I wanted to say has been said over the course of this post in response to this quote.

That's the thing, without being exposed to the kind of cissexism that trans folk run into on a constant basis, you're not going to understand what we're talking about. While the comic sounds snarky to you, the things that are said in it without the translation always come off as snarky and backghanded to trans people. That's the point, without being exposed to these things first hand and constantly, it's not going to make sense to you from our perspective.

Horray back to the topic of the thread!

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.

Oh well I suppose if you take it and make it your own, that's even better when you put it like that.

Which is more or less what she did, it's just that she wasn't ready to come out, her having to is still heartbreaking to me.

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.

Its easy enough, I just fucking hate doing it >< I always loose track of the end quote boxes.

I've programed enough in the past to know how to string these sort of things, which give me an unfair advantage. You have to be able to keep track of lines of code, other wise the the program won't work correctly after the compile.

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.

How are they not still /genetically/ brothers? Do you mean they're not socially brothers? Because you'd be right there, but I don't understand how the former is correct at all. I don't actually understand what you mean by "They're not genetically brothers, because our society doesn't work that way." How does society come into it? I will respect their gender being female as red but that doesn't change the fact that they both started life as genetically male and genetically are still brothers. It doesn't actually matter what their genetics are at the end of the day socially, but I don't understand where you're coming from here.

They're not brothers, they're sisters, calling them brothers is still misgendering no matter how you slice it. They're genetically related, but in genetic relations gender only applies when tracing lineage paternally and maternally. I hope that clears up any confusion. Also we don't know their genetics so we can't say if genetically they're both categorically male. The fact is they're sisters, and that's all that matters.

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.

-sorry, reaaaly need to snip your post for space-

Well up until 2 days ago during my discussion with KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime: I didn't even know XXXXY or other crazy combinations existed. As I'm sure is the case with most people, it's at least an "objective cold science" fact from their point of view. I was more urging KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime not to immediately label people as bigoted if they weren't being directly hostile(hostility begets hostility etc, etc). That wasn't actually what KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime was doing, but point still stands. You might wanna jump to our discussion for that or I'm likely to be repeating myself.

Just so you know people use assumptions about science for malicious ends, especially in a society where being openly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or discriminator and prejudice for any reason is likely to get you ostracized immediately. People hide behind saying things like "cold hard scientific fact" and "I'm not racist, but" just so they can get the barest minimum of a pass for being bigoted in current society. A lot of people feel qualified to make scientific statements, when they actually have no clue what the science behind what they're saying actually is. Most people use phrasing like this as their dog-whistle, meaning coded political language, it doesn't remove the racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, or other bigotries. It just codes them in a way that people can easily deflect being called out for their bullshit.

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

But all the examples in those comics are clearly people trying to be friendly. Yeah some of them would be backhanded if said by some ***** from Real Housewives, but here they're not. Some of them are a bit crap, but they're clearly said with good and friendly intent. The last one being "I don't have a problem with trans people" being translated as "I have a problem with trans people" riles me up because it itself is prejudice and judgmental.

The thing about the statement "I don't have a problem with trans people" is it is the rough equivalent of "I'm not racist." It might be true, but 95% of the time when you hear it the statement is being used to excuse some prejudice. If someone feels the need to explain they don't have problems with trans people they almost certainly do, and they are almost always about to tell you exactly what that problem is.

"I don't have a problem with trans people, but I don't like seeing them at the store."

"I don't have a problem with trans people, but I wouldn't let one be around my kids."

"I don't have a problem with trans people..." and etc.

My parents, Olympic champions of "I don't have a problem with X" once spent an agonizing hour trying to convince me that they don't have any problem with trans people, and as soon as they were finished they started explaining to me why if I decided to so much as wear nail polish around them I wouldn't be welcome at family gatherings anymore.

It's just like every racist comment you have ever heard where the person doesn't want to believe they are racist but they don't care enough to actually not be racist. Like my boss. "I don't have any problem with Muslims, but I wouldn't hire one, they are too likely to go on shooting sprees."

Edit: at least in real life

While all of that is largely true, just remember not to forget that when people don't append "Buts" to their declarations, you need to not leap at them. After all, the 5% who don't match what you're saying are the 5% you most need not to hate on the basis of looking or sounding like the other 95%. After all, that is essentially the problem with your boss.

Well, obviously. Hence the 95% qualifier, which really shouldn't be needed. We all know what racism looks like and how bigots try to excuse themselves. We also all know that the situations where you actually have to say "I'm not racist" are extraordinarily rare, and if you find yourself saying it it is a sign that you should do some quick introspection to make sure you are being honest with yourself.

And really, it is quite easy to tell the difference between a jerk and someone who is trying in real life. Online can be a bit more difficult, but irl it is really easy. It only takes a few minutes of interaction with the subject in mind to spot the difference between a person who is going to be an ass and someone who may make missteps but is going to try their best and wants to let you know that.

And the fact of the matter is I am not going to be leaping at anyone. I hesitate to so much as correct a pronoun even among the most supportive of people. if I actually think a person is going to be an ass my strategy is to appease then avoid if possible. Letting a confrontation happen is basically never going to end well for me.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Well, obviously. Hence the 95% qualifier, which really shouldn't be needed. We all know what racism looks like and how bigots try to excuse themselves.

I would debate this. Hell, racial paternalism is still alive and well in every country on this planet with a native population displaced by former settler societies. Globalism and the rise of corporate colonisation of Africa is often spoken in a way that envisions a new age take on the idea of "The White Man's Burden." Not only that, but not all racism is necessarily bad... in that the effects of racial paternalism have been initiated on good foundations of responsibility and empathy, and has lead to positive social development.

Australian colonial authorities in Eastern Papua New Guinea during the 50s and 60s, for instance. Still racist, still colonial paternalism, genuinely effective of maintaining the public good.

Racism isn't obvious, it's a structural formation of societies of whom have only recently experienced modern ideas of the mobility of humanity across continents in a very short amount of time. It will likely be with us until there's been enough blurring of traditional ideas of racial difference, and most likely a chronic reduction of religious proclivity. When people say 'Muslim', many people don't think of South East Asian features ... though they should because Indonesia is the largest Muslim country on Earth.

(Edit) My mum is Filo, my dad of British/Germanic stock. Basically when someone like me is the norm rather than the exception to what we consider caucasian. It's getting there, however. Next we need to start working on blurring the ideas of nationhood and territory for which nationhood relies to define itself. Which we're getting on with as well with the rise of world capitalism and the slow degradation of democratic power in favour of corporate power. The problem is that these might make old concerns of immigration and the connection between race and territory seem trite to the growing 'cheapness' of human value in a world without borders. A planet of one gestalt culture and identification through no land, but merely a shared currency.

Of course, a land without racism or artificial divides of nationhood and racial identification with territory might have its positives ... on the flipside it might also not be preferable to the current mode of production. Though this isn't the only image of the future that may occur.

 

[elvor0]

-sorry, reaaaly need to snip your post for space-

After I just had to read through a novel of Kyuubi quotes, that makes me not want to bother. And if you're going to refer me to someone I have on ignore in order to complete a conversation, I definitely shouldn't bother.

I pointed you in that direction for expansion on my point. My main point being don't be so quick to label people if they're not being outright hostile because its not good behavior. Expand first, insult later because the latter gets used as lazy stonewalling all the time.

 

[inmunitas]

When people say 'Muslim', many people don't think of South East Asian features ... though they should because Indonesia is the largest Muslim country on Earth.

That's because when people say "Muslim" they think of "person who follows the religion of Islam" whom possess features such as following the religion of Islam.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

That's because when people say "Muslim" they think of "person who follows the religion of Islam" whom possess features such as following the religion of Islam.

After watching American TV, I know this not to be true.