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In order for this topic to stay open, keep in mind the following: - Understand the difference between sex and gender- Please be respectful to those involved, particularly the transgendered - If you post without reason, or do not add to the discussion, you will be met with moderator action - If you don't know which pronoun is appropriate please feel free to read the topic and inform yourself before posting. We're all for debate but this is a sensitive subject for many people. |
On April 04 2012 04:35 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:34 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:23 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:22 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:18 Squarewalker wrote:
To those who think that gender is socially constructed; me and many others would transition even if we lived alone on an island, because it's not just focused on how others perceive us, but it's also very important to us not to be dysphoric about our bodies.
Imagine being trans this way: you wake up the next day as the opposite sex and stay that way for the entire rest of your life and people would see that as normal, and if you try to do anything to change back: you might lose your family, your friends, your job, your love life will be really tough, and you're put out to violence, discrimination and most people don't see you as and hate you for who you identify yourself as.
Also while it's good news that they let her back into the competition, in her place I wouldn't go back to there after that. This is good perspective but gender is defined by plenty of authors and experts in sexology as being a social construct. If you truly lived alone on an island, having never been influenced by social whims entailed by living with other humans, you'd have no reason to think anything about your body as being male, female, or otherwise. tl;dr maybe I'm reading you incorrectly, but this is not a sound argument against gender being a social construct. Nowadays hardly anyone respectable would argue that gender is a social construct. Nor would anyone respectable argue that it is a simple biological fact. Therefore, it has to stem from our own perceptions and interactions. Nitpick about using the term "social construct", but that's what it is. It's not a biological fact. Gender is disparate from sex. Actually the existence of gender roles are very much so a biological fact. It is an inescapable product of our biology as I have argued above.
Those are sex roles, not gender roles. Gender is obviously influenced by sex and the biological facts it entails, but it is clearly not merely a biological concept. It's also influenced by social interaction.
Perhaps you are not cognizant of the gender vs. sex distinction? Sex relates to the biological features, drives, etc, to which you refer above, but gender is not perfectly interchangeable with sex as a term.
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On April 04 2012 04:11 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:05 Barrin wrote:
If anyone cares, I want to apologize if my words in the last thread offended anyone. Perhaps I can express myself more clearly and respectfully this time (I did want to express myself before but now I just want to clear it up).
If a person truly finds it within themselves to associate their self with the gender of 'female', this is fine by me (and vice versa of course, my longest standing friend is essentially of this sort btw). That is what she is, and everyone should call her a girl/woman. She should be able to do everything a woman does, like use women's locker rooms and bathrooms and be in female divisions of sports and be in beauty pageants, etc, etc.
But if someone were to go out of their way to ask me (a mere one person) if I think there should be a vague footnote of sorts written somewhere for a beauty pageant that a certain winning contestant was in fact not born with a vagina and accompanying organs, my answer would be yes. If a girl wants to have a sexual or yes even romantic relationship with me, she'd better let me know beforehand if she wasn't naturally born with a vagina/etc; and yes this is entirely relevant to my vote on the vague footnote so don't give me that.
If that makes me a bigot etc then I am truly sorry, because I actually try very hard not to be otherwise (and at risk of being arrogant am fairly successful at ^^). Again, I have no problem at all being friends with transgendered people, they're generally uniquely interesting from my experience. I am actually legitimately curious and I do not mean to be confrontational at all. Why does it matter if she was born with the vagina or not? I mean, if you were in a relationship with someone and you cared deeply for them and everything you understood about them was "woman" is the fact that their vagina came from a surgeon really a deal breaker?
It would be sort of like if you were eating some cookies, and they taste pretty good, but then someone tells you that there's an ingredient you really hate in them. For me, that would be coconut. Now you can't stop noticing the slight hint of coconut whenever you taste it, and every time you bite into one you're thinking about coconut.
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On April 04 2012 04:39 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:35 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:34 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:23 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:22 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:18 Squarewalker wrote:
To those who think that gender is socially constructed; me and many others would transition even if we lived alone on an island, because it's not just focused on how others perceive us, but it's also very important to us not to be dysphoric about our bodies.
Imagine being trans this way: you wake up the next day as the opposite sex and stay that way for the entire rest of your life and people would see that as normal, and if you try to do anything to change back: you might lose your family, your friends, your job, your love life will be really tough, and you're put out to violence, discrimination and most people don't see you as and hate you for who you identify yourself as.
Also while it's good news that they let her back into the competition, in her place I wouldn't go back to there after that. This is good perspective but gender is defined by plenty of authors and experts in sexology as being a social construct. If you truly lived alone on an island, having never been influenced by social whims entailed by living with other humans, you'd have no reason to think anything about your body as being male, female, or otherwise. tl;dr maybe I'm reading you incorrectly, but this is not a sound argument against gender being a social construct. Nowadays hardly anyone respectable would argue that gender is a social construct. Nor would anyone respectable argue that it is a simple biological fact. Therefore, it has to stem from our own perceptions and interactions. Nitpick about using the term "social construct", but that's what it is. It's not a biological fact. Gender is disparate from sex. Actually the existence of gender roles are very much so a biological fact. It is an inescapable product of our biology as I have argued above. Those are sex roles, not gender roles. Gender is obviously influenced by sex and the biological facts it entails, but it is clearly not merely a biological concept. It's also influenced by social interaction.
Sex roles isn't even a real thing dude. I was most definitely speaking about gender roles. But yes there is ofcourse interaction between environmental inputs and the exact gender roles.
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On April 04 2012 04:05 Barrin wrote:
If anyone cares, I want to apologize if my words in the last thread offended anyone. Perhaps I can express myself more clearly and respectfully this time (I did want to express myself before but now I just want to clear it up).
If a person truly finds it within themselves to associate their self with the gender of 'female', this is fine by me (and vice versa of course, my longest standing friend is essentially of this sort btw). That is what she is, and everyone should call her a girl/woman. She should be able to do everything a woman does, like use women's locker rooms and bathrooms and be in female divisions of sports and be in beauty pageants, etc, etc.
But if someone were to go out of their way to ask me (a mere one person) if I think there should be a vague footnote of sorts written somewhere for a beauty pageant that a certain winning contestant was in fact not born with a vagina and accompanying organs, my answer would be yes. If a girl wants to have a sexual or yes even romantic relationship with me, she'd better let me know beforehand if she wasn't naturally born with a vagina/etc; and yes this is entirely relevant to my vote on the vague footnote so don't give me that.
If that makes me a bigot etc then I am truly sorry, because I actually try very hard not to be otherwise (and at risk of being arrogant am fairly successful at ^^). Again, I have no problem at all being friends with transgendered people, they're generally uniquely interesting from my experience.
I don't really understand this much; if you couldn't tell in the first place why does it matter? I could understand if it was an issue over having children or something, but otherwise I just don't really understand why.
With that being said, her disqualification is completely justified, the rules CLEARLY state that you have to be born a female, which isn't the case for her. She was born a male and thus should be disqualified.
However, the rule itself is pretty stupid. She doesn't have any advantage over any other woman, and thus really shouldn't be banned in the first place. It's nothing like letting men into women's sports; a natural born male doesn't possess any inherent feminine qualities that trump that of an natural born female as far as I know.
On April 04 2012 04:41 Hinanawi wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:11 Klondikebar wrote:On April 04 2012 04:05 Barrin wrote:
If anyone cares, I want to apologize if my words in the last thread offended anyone. Perhaps I can express myself more clearly and respectfully this time (I did want to express myself before but now I just want to clear it up).
If a person truly finds it within themselves to associate their self with the gender of 'female', this is fine by me (and vice versa of course, my longest standing friend is essentially of this sort btw). That is what she is, and everyone should call her a girl/woman. She should be able to do everything a woman does, like use women's locker rooms and bathrooms and be in female divisions of sports and be in beauty pageants, etc, etc.
But if someone were to go out of their way to ask me (a mere one person) if I think there should be a vague footnote of sorts written somewhere for a beauty pageant that a certain winning contestant was in fact not born with a vagina and accompanying organs, my answer would be yes. If a girl wants to have a sexual or yes even romantic relationship with me, she'd better let me know beforehand if she wasn't naturally born with a vagina/etc; and yes this is entirely relevant to my vote on the vague footnote so don't give me that.
If that makes me a bigot etc then I am truly sorry, because I actually try very hard not to be otherwise (and at risk of being arrogant am fairly successful at ^^). Again, I have no problem at all being friends with transgendered people, they're generally uniquely interesting from my experience. I am actually legitimately curious and I do not mean to be confrontational at all. Why does it matter if she was born with the vagina or not? I mean, if you were in a relationship with someone and you cared deeply for them and everything you understood about them was "woman" is the fact that their vagina came from a surgeon really a deal breaker? It would be sort of like if you were eating some cookies, and they taste pretty good, but then someone tells you that there's an ingredient you really hate in them. For me, that would be coconut. Now you can't stop noticing the slight hint of coconut whenever you taste it, and every time you bite into one you're thinking about coconut.
Except that's 99% psychological and you're TRYING to taste the coconut. Hell, 90% of the time I could tell you coconut is there and you'd believe it, even if it isn't true.
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On April 04 2012 04:43 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:39 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:35 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:34 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:23 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:22 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:18 Squarewalker wrote:
To those who think that gender is socially constructed; me and many others would transition even if we lived alone on an island, because it's not just focused on how others perceive us, but it's also very important to us not to be dysphoric about our bodies.
Imagine being trans this way: you wake up the next day as the opposite sex and stay that way for the entire rest of your life and people would see that as normal, and if you try to do anything to change back: you might lose your family, your friends, your job, your love life will be really tough, and you're put out to violence, discrimination and most people don't see you as and hate you for who you identify yourself as.
Also while it's good news that they let her back into the competition, in her place I wouldn't go back to there after that. This is good perspective but gender is defined by plenty of authors and experts in sexology as being a social construct. If you truly lived alone on an island, having never been influenced by social whims entailed by living with other humans, you'd have no reason to think anything about your body as being male, female, or otherwise. tl;dr maybe I'm reading you incorrectly, but this is not a sound argument against gender being a social construct. Nowadays hardly anyone respectable would argue that gender is a social construct. Nor would anyone respectable argue that it is a simple biological fact. Therefore, it has to stem from our own perceptions and interactions. Nitpick about using the term "social construct", but that's what it is. It's not a biological fact. Gender is disparate from sex. Actually the existence of gender roles are very much so a biological fact. It is an inescapable product of our biology as I have argued above. Those are sex roles, not gender roles. Gender is obviously influenced by sex and the biological facts it entails, but it is clearly not merely a biological concept. It's also influenced by social interaction. Sex roles isn't even a real thing dude. I was most definitely speaking about gender roles. But yes there is ofcourse interaction between environmental inputs and the exact gender roles.
Hormonal homeostasis driving male / female sexual dimorphism confers "sex role". Social influence and interaction, combined with innate biological drives and sex features, constitute gender.
Here, maybe I'll try an analogy. Does genetic dysregulation cause an effect, or is it the environment? In many cases it is both. With regard to gender, I think it makes the most sense to consider it as a result of both social environment in addition to innate "hardware" and emotional circuitry at the brain, to which I refer as "sex" or "sex roles" in response to your use of gender roles.
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Transgender people absolutely don't have to justify the way they are, but I don't see why anyone should have to justify not wanting to have sex with them.
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I am happy that she is allowed to compete now. I dislike the discrimination against them its not fair.
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Social influence and interaction, combined with innate biological drives and sex features, constitute gender.
The real questions are which has more influence than the other, and how much "innate biological drives" or genetics if you will influences social construction.
You'll find plenty of zealots willing to boost social construct or innate drives into supremacy and cast the other into irrelevancy in this very thread. It's a classic chicken or egg type question that is impossible to answer.
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On April 04 2012 04:46 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:43 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:39 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:35 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:34 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:23 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:22 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:18 Squarewalker wrote:
To those who think that gender is socially constructed; me and many others would transition even if we lived alone on an island, because it's not just focused on how others perceive us, but it's also very important to us not to be dysphoric about our bodies.
Imagine being trans this way: you wake up the next day as the opposite sex and stay that way for the entire rest of your life and people would see that as normal, and if you try to do anything to change back: you might lose your family, your friends, your job, your love life will be really tough, and you're put out to violence, discrimination and most people don't see you as and hate you for who you identify yourself as.
Also while it's good news that they let her back into the competition, in her place I wouldn't go back to there after that. This is good perspective but gender is defined by plenty of authors and experts in sexology as being a social construct. If you truly lived alone on an island, having never been influenced by social whims entailed by living with other humans, you'd have no reason to think anything about your body as being male, female, or otherwise. tl;dr maybe I'm reading you incorrectly, but this is not a sound argument against gender being a social construct. Nowadays hardly anyone respectable would argue that gender is a social construct. Nor would anyone respectable argue that it is a simple biological fact. Therefore, it has to stem from our own perceptions and interactions. Nitpick about using the term "social construct", but that's what it is. It's not a biological fact. Gender is disparate from sex. Actually the existence of gender roles are very much so a biological fact. It is an inescapable product of our biology as I have argued above. Those are sex roles, not gender roles. Gender is obviously influenced by sex and the biological facts it entails, but it is clearly not merely a biological concept. It's also influenced by social interaction. Sex roles isn't even a real thing dude. I was most definitely speaking about gender roles. But yes there is ofcourse interaction between environmental inputs and the exact gender roles. Hormonal homeostasis driving male / female sexual dimorphism confers "sex role". Social influence and interaction, combined with innate biological drives and sex features, constitute gender. Here, maybe I'll try an analogy. Does genetic dysregulation cause an effect, or is it the environment? In many cases it is both. With regard to gender, I think it makes the most sense to consider it as a result of both social environment in addition to innate "hardware" and emotional circuitry at the brain.
Yes, you are absolutely right. But that is a long way off being a social construct. So yeah, I geuss we were actually just arguing about the term social construct.
Edit: Also I am quite familiar with the distinction between gender and sex, if you got that from my post you have misinterpreted it.
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I think it is safe to say that the Miss Universe pageant is mainly concerned with the female shell, and not the female gender. What I mean by this is they do not care about the contents of a person, it ultimately boils down to whether you have been born with a vagina and whether you develop a nice set of breasts while keeping in shape. That is all that matters, and the same goes for the Mr. Universe pageant of course. If you want to compete in these things you have to realize this, and if you believe your identity, or gender, is more than how you look then there are better places to look for recognition.
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On April 04 2012 04:43 Skwid1g wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:41 Hinanawi wrote:On April 04 2012 04:11 Klondikebar wrote:On April 04 2012 04:05 Barrin wrote:
If anyone cares, I want to apologize if my words in the last thread offended anyone. Perhaps I can express myself more clearly and respectfully this time (I did want to express myself before but now I just want to clear it up).
If a person truly finds it within themselves to associate their self with the gender of 'female', this is fine by me (and vice versa of course, my longest standing friend is essentially of this sort btw). That is what she is, and everyone should call her a girl/woman. She should be able to do everything a woman does, like use women's locker rooms and bathrooms and be in female divisions of sports and be in beauty pageants, etc, etc.
But if someone were to go out of their way to ask me (a mere one person) if I think there should be a vague footnote of sorts written somewhere for a beauty pageant that a certain winning contestant was in fact not born with a vagina and accompanying organs, my answer would be yes. If a girl wants to have a sexual or yes even romantic relationship with me, she'd better let me know beforehand if she wasn't naturally born with a vagina/etc; and yes this is entirely relevant to my vote on the vague footnote so don't give me that.
If that makes me a bigot etc then I am truly sorry, because I actually try very hard not to be otherwise (and at risk of being arrogant am fairly successful at ^^). Again, I have no problem at all being friends with transgendered people, they're generally uniquely interesting from my experience. I am actually legitimately curious and I do not mean to be confrontational at all. Why does it matter if she was born with the vagina or not? I mean, if you were in a relationship with someone and you cared deeply for them and everything you understood about them was "woman" is the fact that their vagina came from a surgeon really a deal breaker? It would be sort of like if you were eating some cookies, and they taste pretty good, but then someone tells you that there's an ingredient you really hate in them. For me, that would be coconut. Now you can't stop noticing the slight hint of coconut whenever you taste it, and every time you bite into one you're thinking about coconut. Except that's 99% psychological and you're TRYING to taste the coconut. Hell, 90% of the time I could tell you coconut is there and you'd believe it, even if it isn't true.
That's the point, though. For some people, the fact that a person was once male is a psychological deal-breaker. I don't want to hear about how 'that shouldn't matter' or that they should just 'get over it', they're selecting a life partner, not someone they shake hands with at work.
LGBT, since before the T was added (what is it now, LGBTIQ2SA or something?) has always been about not having to feel bad about your sexual preferences. You're a man and you're sexually attracted to other men? Great, don't let anyone make you feel like you shouldn't. The same courtesy should be extended to people who are not attracted to transsexuals when they find out.
I'm gonna go ahead and coin a new term: Cissexual, possessing sexual attraction only to cisgendered persons. It's time for LGBTIQ2SAC.
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Thanks to everyone who has in this thread or elsewhere been supportive with kind words regarding my post in to the OP. It's been really awesome.
On April 04 2012 04:05 Barrin wrote:
But if someone were to go out of their way to ask me (a mere one person) if I think there should be a vague footnote of sorts written somewhere for a beauty pageant that a certain winning contestant was in fact not born with a vagina and accompanying organs, my answer would be yes. If a girl wants to have a sexual or yes even romantic relationship with me, she'd better let me know beforehand if she wasn't naturally born with a vagina/etc; and yes this is entirely relevant to my vote on the vague footnote so don't give me that.
If that makes me a bigot etc then I am truly sorry, because I actually try very hard not to be otherwise (and at risk of being arrogant am fairly successful at ^^). Again, I have no problem at all being friends with transgendered people, they're generally uniquely interesting from my experience.
I didn't see your comments in the last thread (I avoided the whole thing) but I wanted to address these two paragraphs quickly.
For the first part of your statement I absolutely disagree, because as per my previous posts that would have to exclude more than just trans women were it to be properly implemented as you've said. Further, it doesn't actually affect anyone else and although you could argue that you wouldn't want to accidentally vote for a trans woman, that is your issue, not one being forced on you.
It'd be like complaining at a feminine looking guy in a pub for catching your eye for a moment from behind, that's not their fault, they were going about their business in the same way that you acknowledged trans people should be allowed to. I just don't see why anyone who wants to live their life in such a way should be forced to out themselves to everyone, for something where they realisitically are causing no harm, or infringing on anyone else's privacy or rights. You're not being forced to find them attractive, or to vote for them or whatever else and that is not their fault.
As to having a romantic or sexual relationship with you personally I actually agree with you that you have a right to know at that point. That is involved in your privacy and your rights, and I don't think it'd be fair to force my or anyone else's beliefs about what is important regarding gender on to you, especially not in such an intimate way. You said that this point is relevant to needing a footnote in the voting system though, but I don't see how the two are comparible.
Regardless of your answer to that though, I don't think you're a bigot. Being honest about being involountarily uncomfortable with something isn't the same as using the belief to support bigotry, in my opinion at least.
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Glad to see her get to compete  She has female parts, etc so why not? Obviously if you are born mentally a female and physically a male, IMO you are a female because it is your mind that is and not your parts. That said I would not bring home a female with man parts.Shes really pretty.
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On April 04 2012 04:54 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:46 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:43 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:39 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:35 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:34 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:23 Crushinator wrote:On April 04 2012 04:22 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 04 2012 04:18 Squarewalker wrote:
To those who think that gender is socially constructed; me and many others would transition even if we lived alone on an island, because it's not just focused on how others perceive us, but it's also very important to us not to be dysphoric about our bodies.
Imagine being trans this way: you wake up the next day as the opposite sex and stay that way for the entire rest of your life and people would see that as normal, and if you try to do anything to change back: you might lose your family, your friends, your job, your love life will be really tough, and you're put out to violence, discrimination and most people don't see you as and hate you for who you identify yourself as.
Also while it's good news that they let her back into the competition, in her place I wouldn't go back to there after that. This is good perspective but gender is defined by plenty of authors and experts in sexology as being a social construct. If you truly lived alone on an island, having never been influenced by social whims entailed by living with other humans, you'd have no reason to think anything about your body as being male, female, or otherwise. tl;dr maybe I'm reading you incorrectly, but this is not a sound argument against gender being a social construct. Nowadays hardly anyone respectable would argue that gender is a social construct. Nor would anyone respectable argue that it is a simple biological fact. Therefore, it has to stem from our own perceptions and interactions. Nitpick about using the term "social construct", but that's what it is. It's not a biological fact. Gender is disparate from sex. Actually the existence of gender roles are very much so a biological fact. It is an inescapable product of our biology as I have argued above. Those are sex roles, not gender roles. Gender is obviously influenced by sex and the biological facts it entails, but it is clearly not merely a biological concept. It's also influenced by social interaction. Sex roles isn't even a real thing dude. I was most definitely speaking about gender roles. But yes there is ofcourse interaction between environmental inputs and the exact gender roles. Hormonal homeostasis driving male / female sexual dimorphism confers "sex role". Social influence and interaction, combined with innate biological drives and sex features, constitute gender. Here, maybe I'll try an analogy. Does genetic dysregulation cause an effect, or is it the environment? In many cases it is both. With regard to gender, I think it makes the most sense to consider it as a result of both social environment in addition to innate "hardware" and emotional circuitry at the brain. Yes, you are absolutely right. But that is a long way off being a social construct. So yeah, I geuss we were actually just arguing about the term social construct. Edit: Also I am quite familiar with the distinction between gender and sex, if you got that from my post you have misinterpreted it.
Yeah I see now that the real issue here is that I appropriated "social construct" due to ignorance, without knowing it's a special term with (I think?) very specific meaning in feminist circles or whatever. I totally didn't mean to say "social construct" in that particular way. I just wanted to appeal to the subjectivity involved in forming gender, versus "sex" which is just the hard science observed in the body
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Sorry if this has already been asked, and in the past 14 pages I'm sure it has, but how do we reconcile the notion of gender with things like segregated restrooms, locker rooms, showers, etc. Is it ok to discriminate against transgenders in those instances, or must we allow anyone who claims to be man/woman in the opposite area?
This topic is still very confusing to me. I understand what it means to feel an attraction to a person, but what does it mean to "feel" like a gender? I can't really identify any feeling, to "feel like a man" apart from sexual attraction, I simply recognize the stereotypes and the social norms associated with my gender and adhere to them.
I mean it just doesn't make sense to suggest there could be any inherent biological mechanism to feel the desire to wear a dress for example, it must be sociological rather than biological.
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On April 04 2012 05:20 liberal wrote:
Sorry if this has already been asked, and in the past 14 pages I'm sure it has, but how do we reconcile the notion of gender with things like segregated restrooms, locker rooms, showers, etc. Is it ok to discriminate against transgenders in those instances, or must we allow anyone who claims to be man/woman in the opposite area?
This topic is still very confusing to me. I understand what it means to feel an attraction to a person, but what does it mean to "feel" like a gender? I can't really identify any feeling, to "feel like a man" apart from sexual attraction, I simply recognize the stereotypes and the social norms associated with my gender and adhere to them.
I mean it just doesn't make sense to suggest there could be any inherent biological mechanism to feel the desire to wear a dress for example, it must be sociological rather than biological.
Read the spoiler post on the first page and you'll have the majority of your questions answered.
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United Kingdom3482 Posts
On April 04 2012 05:00 Iyerbeth wrote:
As to having a romantic or sexual relationship with you personally I actually agree with you that you have a right to know at that point. That is involved in your privacy and your rights, and I don't think it'd be fair to force my or anyone else's beliefs about what is important regarding gender on to you, especially not in such an intimate way. You said that this point is relevant to needing a footnote in the voting system though, but I don't see how the two are comparible.
I always figured most trans people would tell someone they were involved with. The trans friends I've had were all fairly open about it. Obviously noone is going to go around telling everyone they meet they are trans that would be fairly strange but I imagine if you were even friends with someone it would end up coming up in conversation.
edit: it's possible I have met an odd selection in this respect. We were all very accepting of their transness. I could understand not wanting to be open about it if you had had a lot of discrimination previously.
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On April 04 2012 02:59 KwarK wrote:
If you wish to discuss why you think transgender women should be discriminated against
Treating a person as male does not constitute discrimination.
On April 04 2012 04:18 Squarewalker wrote:
Imagine being trans this way: you wake up the next day as the opposite sex and stay that way for the entire rest of your life
I don't understand why that's a problem, provided I don't have to re-learn my new body. Why should I object to becoming female, or desire that other people consider me male when I can look down and see I'm not?
On April 04 2012 05:20 liberal wrote:
This topic is still very confusing to me. I understand what it means to feel an attraction to a person, but what does it mean to "feel" like a gender? I can't really identify any feeling, to "feel like a man" apart from sexual attraction, I simply recognize the stereotypes and the social norms associated with my gender
This.
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On April 04 2012 04:59 Hinanawi wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 04:43 Skwid1g wrote:On April 04 2012 04:41 Hinanawi wrote:On April 04 2012 04:11 Klondikebar wrote:On April 04 2012 04:05 Barrin wrote:
If anyone cares, I want to apologize if my words in the last thread offended anyone. Perhaps I can express myself more clearly and respectfully this time (I did want to express myself before but now I just want to clear it up).
If a person truly finds it within themselves to associate their self with the gender of 'female', this is fine by me (and vice versa of course, my longest standing friend is essentially of this sort btw). That is what she is, and everyone should call her a girl/woman. She should be able to do everything a woman does, like use women's locker rooms and bathrooms and be in female divisions of sports and be in beauty pageants, etc, etc.
But if someone were to go out of their way to ask me (a mere one person) if I think there should be a vague footnote of sorts written somewhere for a beauty pageant that a certain winning contestant was in fact not born with a vagina and accompanying organs, my answer would be yes. If a girl wants to have a sexual or yes even romantic relationship with me, she'd better let me know beforehand if she wasn't naturally born with a vagina/etc; and yes this is entirely relevant to my vote on the vague footnote so don't give me that.
If that makes me a bigot etc then I am truly sorry, because I actually try very hard not to be otherwise (and at risk of being arrogant am fairly successful at ^^). Again, I have no problem at all being friends with transgendered people, they're generally uniquely interesting from my experience. I am actually legitimately curious and I do not mean to be confrontational at all. Why does it matter if she was born with the vagina or not? I mean, if you were in a relationship with someone and you cared deeply for them and everything you understood about them was "woman" is the fact that their vagina came from a surgeon really a deal breaker? It would be sort of like if you were eating some cookies, and they taste pretty good, but then someone tells you that there's an ingredient you really hate in them. For me, that would be coconut. Now you can't stop noticing the slight hint of coconut whenever you taste it, and every time you bite into one you're thinking about coconut. Except that's 99% psychological and you're TRYING to taste the coconut. Hell, 90% of the time I could tell you coconut is there and you'd believe it, even if it isn't true. That's the point, though. For some people, the fact that a person was once male is a psychological deal-breaker. I don't want to hear about how 'that shouldn't matter' or that they should just 'get over it', they're selecting a life partner, not someone they shake hands with at work. LGBT, since before the T was added (what is it now, LGBTIQ2SA or something?) has always been about not having to feel bad about your sexual preferences. You're a man and you're sexually attracted to other men? Great, don't let anyone make you feel like you shouldn't. The same courtesy should be extended to people who are not attracted to transsexuals when they find out. I'm gonna go ahead and coin a new term: Cissexual, possessing sexual attraction only to cisgendered persons. It's time for LGBTIQ2SAC.
Of course he doesn't have to be attracted to them, but my point is that it doesn't make any sense really. That's why I asked why it would matter, because I can't see any logical reasoning behind it.
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EPT
