What do you think when you hear the word "transexual?"

[Gmans uncle]

One of my best friends is trans, I always think of her whenever I hear the word.
Sorry for the boring answer, but hey, you asked.

 

[Antwerp Caveman]

I draw the line at transsexual.
I believe that a person who thinks he/she is transsexual has a problem and needs help.
I find myself open, tolerant and transparent. But mutilating your body to look like that of the other gender is insane.

I also find the doctors, psychologists and surgeons, who enable this are very irresponsible.
People should accept who they are. You can be straight, bi or gay, but if you are born as a man, then have your body remodeled to look like a woman and then have sex with men? You're just a gay man with a mutilated body.

I also find it insulting to Gay's, lesbians and bisexuals to use the term LGBT because that puts transsexuals in the same category as LG&B people.

Being bisexual myself, I have no problem putting T in that category. Is transsexualism a sexual orientation? No. But it goes through roughly the same mistreatment and misunderstanding and has the same need for a equal rights movement than the rest of the group. It's grouped there not as a scientific consensus, but as because the two movements have roughly the same goals and problems.

A lot of the time, 'and straight allies' are placed with the group, too, and that in no way offends me either.

But telling them to 'accept who they are' means they should accept that their gender identity isn't the same as their biological or chromosomal sex. And what is more important of who you are, your personality or your DNA?

I'm not judging you for your opposing stance on accepting transsexuality, on the contrary, that is what this debate is about, but to counter your arguments:

- If you want to group everyone together who is judged for, or experience prejudice for similar cases, you can also include pedofiles and zoophiles (animals). They are technically far closer to the same cause than transsexuals. And since homosexuality was illegal in so many countries not 100 years ago, it is not impossible that pedophilia will be legal in another 100 years. There is currently a political party in The Netherlands trying to get elected to parliament and pass legislation.

- In this case DNA should be the clear indicator. You are not really turning into the other gender, you just have your body chopped up to look like it.

It is a severe case of Body Dismorphic Disorder and I think it's terrible that this is not treated with therapy but that there are actually doctors who enable this behaviour.
Why do we distinguish between a man that wants to cut his leg off or a man that wants to cut his penis off?

 

[Montezuma's Lawyer]

I need to get the fuck out of this thread before the ignorance consumes me...

OT: I think of nothing, because the term makes no difference in the way I treat people.

 

[Damien Granz]

I'm not judging you for your opposing stance on accepting transsexuality, on the contrary, that is what this debate is about, but to counter your arguments:

- If you want to group everyone together who is judged for, or experience prejudice for similar cases, you can also include pedophiles and zoophiles (animals). They are technically far closer to the same cause than transsexuals. And since homosexuality was illegal in so many countries not 100 years ago, it is not impossible that pedophilia will be legal in another 100 years. There is currently a political party in The Netherlands trying to get elected to parliament and pass legislation.

First, transsexualism and homosexuality doesn't inherently involve the rape or otherwise the harm of another person or being, where pedophilia certainly does and zoophilia arguably does. So your slippery slope point is rendered automatically moot because of that key difference.

Second, you're a bit barking up the wrong tree if you're trying to use that scare tactic against me, because I have no real problem with better treatment and understanding of people with these (again, most likely non chosen) sexual orientations too, and I have no problem with them finding healthier outlets for those desires that don't involve actually harming another living person (or animal or whatever), and I'd have no problem with the start of a constructive dialogue to the situation, it'd certainly be more constructive and fair rather than the knee-jerk anger/disgust reaction where torture instruments start being brought out.

Because frankly, if you could take the harm/rape aspect out of those situations (and I'm not saying you could, but if you could), or find some sort of non-harmful outlet (and there probably is), then frankly I'd have no problem with it. It might not do it for me, but there's plenty of vanilla shit that don't do it for me too.

So sorry if the disgust and fear bile didn't instantly rise up in reaction to that slippery slope.

- In this case DNA should be the clear indicator. You are not really turning into the other gender, you just have your body chopped up to look like it.

I'm sorry but my DNA says I should be fucking dead, and it's only modern medicine as the reason why I'm here now, so you'll bare with me if I decide to tell my DNA to eat shit. My body's been modified once already to keep me alive, so I ain't sure why this time I should be like "Oh, well, a bunch of unintelligent randomized flesh knows best!".

Shit, I'm extremely allergic to shit that's common in the air. This is like saying my body decided that the best way to protect me from a common atmospheric substance is to kill itself. I'm weeeeell beyond the point of trusting it 'knows best'.

And you know what? My brain also suffers from mental illnesses, most of them being genetically influenced. And yet nobody blinks and eye when I (legally, I might add) chemically change the entire composition of my brain to better suit what I want out of it.

But plastic surgery, and suddenly I'm playing god? What?

And I'm not even talking about some sort of transhuman replacement that makes me smarter or physically better, I'm talking about something to make me feel normal and happy and adjusted.

But here's the thing, I guess you're missing. Transsexuals don't 'chop up' their body to make it another gender. They're already another gender. And most of them get along just fine if they're not messed with.

It is a severe case of Body Dismorphic Disorder and I think it's terrible that this is not treated with therapy but that there are actually doctors who enable this behaviour.
Why do we distinguish between a man that wants to cut his leg off or a man that wants to cut his penis off?

Um, it often is treated with therapy. Just because you lack understanding of the therapy and it's causing you to have hangups with the therapy doesn't mean it's not treated.

I'm sorry, but the therapy doesn't just magically make them cisgendered like you'd prefer, any more than people dealing with sexual orientation issues don't just magically come out of a doctor's office cured of gay either.

I need to get the fuck out of this thread before the ignorance consumes me...

OT: I think of nothing, because the term makes no difference in the way I treat people.

I'm sorry, but I'm thinking the same thing too, honestly.. :-\

 

[twohundredpercent]

Actually if you want to know who I think of when I hear that word, I think of two people.
One of them is smug fatass who makes bad fanfiction and lives with his parents, who is turning 30 soon and may be going to prison.

The other is an extremely whiny goth who has had problems with drug addiction and claims to be open to incest. He also worships the Norse gods and is into S&M. He constantly writes terrible goth poetry about his problems and his family hates him. He also once assaulted his psychiatrist. Anyway, the way he constantly whines about being a Norse god worshiping, 'two spirited androgyne' just kind of makes him look like someone desperate for attention.

But those aren't very positive portrayals. One the up side, there was the dude from Breakfast on Pluto and that one movie with that big black transvestite, but they were kind of fictional so....

 

[Damien Granz]

This will be a hard topic to cover. I'm looking for real responses from the whole gambit of the Escapist community. But I'm also seeking real answers- that goes for the bad impressions too. I'm a M2F transwoman, and quite successful in my transition. But something a friend of mine and me were talking about last night struck a cord with me.

So now I wonder; what is the first thing (or couple things) that come to mind when you think of transsexual people?


I don't want this to turn into a flame war, nor do I want to get people banned- I want discussion without the vitriol of the internet. If you want to speak your mind fully and fear it may get mod wrath, then feel free to PM me your thoughts rather than post.

If you do surgery on your dick to make it become a vagina, do you get a clitoris?

Isn't it hard to masturbate or orgasm (but I think you can do this without clit/glans) as a transsexual, y'know, with no dick (and no clitoris)?

You realize that, before hormones in fetal development have their way, that the glans/clitoris are the same organ, with most the same nerves and what not?

So I'd venture to guess they would have a clitoris. Gender reassignment surgery does a bit more than just takes an axe to them.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I honestly think of someone having sex with a train. Blame Cyanide and Happiness.

DAMN YOU CYANIDE AND HAPPINESS.

 

[orangeban]

This came to mind:

I saw it on Reddit recently, but just found it again on some Tumblr page. I think it's probably more complicated than this diagram implies, but (and I can only say this from an inexperienced point of view, as I'm not transsexual, and don't know anybody that is), I think it goes some way to gracefully forging some kind of tangible understanding for the uninitiated.

That's such a good image! Rockin'! In fact ,that's really helped me put my gender troubles into perspective. Here's what I'd say about myself:

Sex: Male
Gender: Genderqueer
Orientation: Bisexual (well, pansexual but close enough)
Expression: Femenine

Thanks for sharing it! I dunno if it's accurate but it's close enough.

 

[Damien Granz]

This will be a hard topic to cover. I'm looking for real responses from the whole gambit of the Escapist community. But I'm also seeking real answers- that goes for the bad impressions too. I'm a M2F transwoman, and quite successful in my transition. But something a friend of mine and me were talking about last night struck a cord with me.

So now I wonder; what is the first thing (or couple things) that come to mind when you think of transsexual people?


I don't want this to turn into a flame war, nor do I want to get people banned- I want discussion without the vitriol of the internet. If you want to speak your mind fully and fear it may get mod wrath, then feel free to PM me your thoughts rather than post.

If you do surgery on your dick to make it become a vagina, do you get a clitoris?

Isn't it hard to masturbate or orgasm (but I think you can do this without clit/glans) as a transsexual, y'know, with no dick (and no clitoris)?

You realize that, before hormones in fetal development have their way, that the glans/clitoris are the same organ, with most the same nerves and what not?

So I'd venture to guess they would have a clitoris. Gender reassignment surgery does a bit more than just takes an axe to them.

Oh, ok...

Sorry if I came of as stupid, I'm not very into the subject

It's.. OK. I'm sorry if I snapped at you too. My tension and tolerance in this thread was fairly frayed, so I shouldn't had been so mean or dismissive of you too.

This came to mind:

I saw it on Reddit recently, but just found it again on some Tumblr page. I think it's probably more complicated than this diagram implies, but (and I can only say this from an inexperienced point of view, as I'm not transsexual, and don't know anybody that is), I think it goes some way to gracefully forging some kind of tangible understanding for the uninitiated.

That's such a good image! Rockin'! In fact ,that's really helped me put my gender troubles into perspective. Here's what I'd say about myself:

Sex: Male
Gender: Genderqueer
Orientation: Bisexual (well, pansexual but close enough)
Expression: Femenine

Thanks for sharing it! I dunno if it's accurate but it's close enough.

It's an alright start for somebody just learning about this sort of thing, but it's still not as clear cut as those 3 graphs make it out to be. I'd note that not all intersex individuals are 'between' male and female, and that not all sexual orientations are between male and female too (after all, some people are sexually attracted to intersexual individuals, for example, and some people aren't attracted to anybody, and some people are aromantic but not asexual, etc. etc.).

 

[Antwerp Caveman]

I'm not judging you for your opposing stance on accepting transsexuality, on the contrary, that is what this debate is about, but to counter your arguments:

- If you want to group everyone together who is judged for, or experience prejudice for similar cases, you can also include pedophiles and zoophiles (animals). They are technically far closer to the same cause than transsexuals. And since homosexuality was illegal in so many countries not 100 years ago, it is not impossible that pedophilia will be legal in another 100 years. There is currently a political party in The Netherlands trying to get elected to parliament and pass legislation.

First, transsexualism and homosexuality doesn't inherently involve the rape or otherwise the harm of another person or being, where pedophilia certainly does and zoophilia arguably does. So your slippery slope point is rendered automatically moot because of that key difference.

Second, you're a bit barking up the wrong tree if you're trying to use that scare tactic against me, because I have no real problem with better treatment and understanding of people with these (again, most likely non chosen) sexual orientations too, and I have no problem with them finding healthier outlets for those desires that don't involve actually harming another living person (or animal or whatever), and I'd have no problem with the start of a constructive dialogue to the situation, it'd certainly be more constructive and fair rather than the knee-jerk anger/disgust reaction where torture instruments start being brought out.

Because frankly, if you could take the harm/rape aspect out of those situations (and I'm not saying you could, but if you could), or find some sort of non-harmful outlet (and there probably is), then frankly I'd have no problem with it. It might not do it for me, but there's plenty of vanilla shit that don't do it for me too.

So sorry if the disgust and fear bile didn't instantly rise up in reaction to that slippery slope.

- In this case DNA should be the clear indicator. You are not really turning into the other gender, you just have your body chopped up to look like it.

I'm sorry but my DNA says I should be fucking dead, and it's only modern medicine as the reason why I'm here now, so you'll bare with me if I decide to tell my DNA to eat shit. My body's been modified once already to keep me alive, so I ain't sure why this time I should be like "Oh, well, a bunch of unintelligent randomized flesh knows best!".

Shit, I'm extremely allergic to shit that's common in the air. This is like saying my body decided that the best way to protect me from a common atmospheric substance is to kill itself. I'm weeeeell beyond the point of trusting it 'knows best'.

And you know what? My brain also suffers from mental illnesses, most of them being genetically influenced. And yet nobody blinks and eye when I (legally, I might add) chemically change the entire composition of my brain to better suit what I want out of it.

But plastic surgery, and suddenly I'm playing god? What?

And I'm not even talking about some sort of transhuman replacement that makes me smarter or physically better, I'm talking about something to make me feel normal and happy and adjusted.

But here's the thing, I guess you're missing. Transsexuals don't 'chop up' their body to make it another gender. They're already another gender. And most of them get along just fine if they're not messed with.

It is a severe case of Body Dismorphic Disorder and I think it's terrible that this is not treated with therapy but that there are actually doctors who enable this behaviour.
Why do we distinguish between a man that wants to cut his leg off or a man that wants to cut his penis off?

Um, it often is treated with therapy. Just because you lack understanding of the therapy and it's causing you to have hangups with the therapy doesn't mean it's not treated.

I'm sorry, but the therapy doesn't just magically make them cisgendered like you'd prefer, any more than people dealing with sexual orientation issues don't just magically come out of a doctor's office cured of gay either.

I need to get the fuck out of this thread before the ignorance consumes me...

OT: I think of nothing, because the term makes no difference in the way I treat people.

I'm sorry, but I'm thinking the same thing too, honestly.. :-\

To your first point, you talk of rape and harm. Not all children see it as a negative, I'm not just talking about infants and toddlers, but everything to below the age of consent. Organisations like NAMBLA want that a 11 year old or a 15 year old can also consent to intercourse. We protect them by saying no, because they need more time to be educated and to consider the consequences of those choices.
I say that the same should be said to transgender prospects (hereafter I will refer to them as BDD patients). They should be told NO and learn to see the consequences of their mistake. In my considered opinion (this is not the first time I had this conversation) that is the only responsible solution. I believe in personal responsibility and making your own choices in life. But society should step in at some point (like with pedophilia).

To your second point: I have no idea what scare-tactic you mean. I am truly saying everything here as a considered opinion explained by a logical comparison.

To the later point: I do not know what you mean with "vanilla shit" and I really do not aim toward 'fear and disgust'.

To the following point: I am glad to hear modern medicine helped you cure of a serious illness, I do not know the details, but did the cure involve you gaining a penis or fake-breasts? (I have not checked your profile for your (current) gender)
Let's not generalise all modern medicine, let's look at it case-by-case.
Painkillers (in moderation) are great, antibiotics for infections are great, chemo- and radiation therapy for cancer are great, immunesystem-support for HIV and AIDS patients are great and stemcell research will relieve the human race of much suffering.
But electing to build a fake penis or fake breasts are as bad as cutting your own leg off because you think it does not belong there.

To continue; you talk of a mental illness caused by your genes.
As far as I know, no such link has ever been proven. This is a nature vs. nurture point.

I'm also not saying anything about playing God, because there's no such thing. (yeah, atheist).
And they really aren't another gender. They just think they are, like some others think they are Superman or the reincarnation of Christ (also not real, but beside the point, couldn't help myself).

To your last reply: It is often treated with therapy, but seemingly not enough, because still people undergo these procedures.
In my opinion these procedures should be stopped immediately and the afflicted patients should continue their therapy to live with themselves in another way. Cruel, from their perspective, probably. But I believe this to be right.

I'm affraid you might take me far less serious for saying this last bit, but South Park had an episode on this once that I strongly agree with (about 90%).

There isn't really much for me to add to these messages increasing in length, almoast becoming unmanageble.
If you would like to continue this conversation point by point, please send me a private message, we could do it over any kind of chat service.
Thank you for reading.

 

[isometry]

To your first point, you talk of rape and harm. Not all children see it as a negative, I'm not just talking about infants and toddlers, but everything to below the age of consent. Organisations like NAMBLA want that a 11 year old or a 15 year old can also consent to intercourse. We protect them by saying no, because they need more time to be educated and to consider the consequences of those choices.
I say that the same should be said to transgender prospects (hereafter I will refer to them as BDD patients). They should be told NO and learn to see the consequences of their mistake. In my considered opinion (this is not the first time I had this conversation) that is the only responsible solution. I believe in personal responsibility and making your own choices in life. But society should step in at some point (like with pedophilia).

In many ways you're right about society protecting children from their own irreversible life-changing decisions. The problem is that unlike having sex, which can be postponed until adulthood without consequences, treatment for transgendered people is much more effective it is delivered before or as they just start puberty.

But electing to build a fake penis or fake breasts are as bad as cutting your own leg off because you think it does not belong there.

No. Think of it like reconstructive surgery for someone who was born with a birth defect, or suffered an accident, or survived cancer, etc.

A post-masectomy breast cancer survivor enhancing her quality of life with "fake breasts" is not analogous to elective amputation. You have to think of these prosthetics as medical treatment, not cosmetic surgery.

In my opinion these procedures should be stopped immediately and the afflicted patients should continue their therapy to live with themselves in another way. Cruel, from their perspective, probably. But I believe this to be right.

Who is supposed to benefit from stopping these treatments?

Are you imagining that years down the road the people with BDD would thank you? Do you really think they would all say "Thank you for forcing me to live this way and preventing me from treatment, I finally see the wisdom of your way!"

I'm affraid you might take me far less serious for saying this last bit, but South Park had an episode on this once that I strongly agree with (about 90%).

South park is funny, but if you agree with 90% of that episode then you don't know much about real-life TS people. I suggest to read the story of Lynn Conway:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/LynnsStory.html

She has been very successful in her work on computer chip architecture, her contributions from the 1960s through the 1990s continue to impact the design of modern processors. Why would you deny this person the treatment that has allowed her to flourish in terms of happiness and success?

 

[Raika]

If it's a sexual thing, why not just be gay?

It isn't a sexual thing. It's an identity thing. It pertains to a person's mental state being that of discomfort with their physical sex. I don't really see how the desire to remedy that discomfort could possibly be objectionable by anybody with a working brain.

The word 'transsexual', to most(as in 99.999 percent of people), evokes images of fictional, corset-clad, attention-grabbing showgirls such as Frank N. Furter and Angel Dumott Schunard. The reality is much less outrageous, but very, very few people take the ten minutes necessary to discover that reality because 99.999 percent of people go out of their way to look for new things to hate. Are you transgendered and struggling to come to a point where you're comfortable in your own skin? Congratulations! 99,999 out of every 100,000 people want you dead for that!

Humanity disgusts me.

 

[orangeban]

This will be a hard topic to cover. I'm looking for real responses from the whole gambit of the Escapist community. But I'm also seeking real answers- that goes for the bad impressions too. I'm a M2F transwoman, and quite successful in my transition. But something a friend of mine and me were talking about last night struck a cord with me.

So now I wonder; what is the first thing (or couple things) that come to mind when you think of transsexual people?


I don't want this to turn into a flame war, nor do I want to get people banned- I want discussion without the vitriol of the internet. If you want to speak your mind fully and fear it may get mod wrath, then feel free to PM me your thoughts rather than post.

If you do surgery on your dick to make it become a vagina, do you get a clitoris?

Isn't it hard to masturbate or orgasm (but I think you can do this without clit/glans) as a transsexual, y'know, with no dick (and no clitoris)?

You realize that, before hormones in fetal development have their way, that the glans/clitoris are the same organ, with most the same nerves and what not?

So I'd venture to guess they would have a clitoris. Gender reassignment surgery does a bit more than just takes an axe to them.

Oh, ok...

Sorry if I came of as stupid, I'm not very into the subject

It's.. OK. I'm sorry if I snapped at you too. My tension and tolerance in this thread was fairly frayed, so I shouldn't had been so mean or dismissive of you too.

This came to mind:

I saw it on Reddit recently, but just found it again on some Tumblr page. I think it's probably more complicated than this diagram implies, but (and I can only say this from an inexperienced point of view, as I'm not transsexual, and don't know anybody that is), I think it goes some way to gracefully forging some kind of tangible understanding for the uninitiated.

That's such a good image! Rockin'! In fact ,that's really helped me put my gender troubles into perspective. Here's what I'd say about myself:

Sex: Male
Gender: Genderqueer
Orientation: Bisexual (well, pansexual but close enough)
Expression: Femenine

Thanks for sharing it! I dunno if it's accurate but it's close enough.

It's an alright start for somebody just learning about this sort of thing, but it's still not as clear cut as those 3 graphs make it out to be. I'd note that not all intersex individuals are 'between' male and female, and that not all sexual orientations are between male and female too (after all, some people are sexually attracted to intersexual individuals, for example, and some people aren't attracted to anybody, and some people are aromantic but not asexual, etc. etc.).

Yeah, I thought as much, but those things don't really apply to me, so it's good enough for me.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

I think of the few friends I have that are transsexual. Boyfriend has an interesting theory on them, I personally do not care enough about gender to give them much thought. It is their body, their choice and their life so I won't belittle it by thinking for them.

PS: Difference between Transsexuals and transvestites.

 

[Ellen of Kitten]

This thread has been most enlightening to me. thanks to all for going out of your way to post your thoughts.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

Transylvania.

(not a low content post! it's just my answer? is that so bad Mods? HUH?! IS IT?!?!)

Edit: Oops, transexual, not transvestite. damn.

new answer: i dunno, a woman with fake breasts, a strange voice that isn't quite high or low and make up covering what you SWEAR to be a 5 o'clock shadow.