Chaz Bono?

[gibsomstreet]

I think "Chaz" will look something like this after surgery.

No, more like this

 

[Don]

I don't have a personal stake in this issue one way or another. Nor have I ever been personally close to a transgendered person. But I think your statement shows a basic ignorance of the issue at hand. In this case, the person has a female body with all the usual parts but feels with every fiber of their being that they are in fact male. The transition is a social one, not a medical one.

So people can dismiss them as misguided and wrong, since they have a vagina rather than a penis, if they want. But that does not change their own reality, which is that they are male in a female body.

I could be wrong but I assumed that what defines you as male or female is biological, not mental. I mean I know a white guy who is a rapper and says he considers himself "black" because of where he grew up and who he identifies with. But despite his strong association with being black, he's still a white guy.

 

[Frank Fingers]

You again?

***

Just trying to make you feel welcome...

...

Listen, I don't love you and you're not my friend.

Now stop stalking me and go play with your toy Millenium Falcon!

 

[toughb]

Listen, I don't love you and you're not my friend.

***

I'm just devastated...

...

 

[Questor]

I could be wrong but I assumed that what defines you as male or female is biological, not mental. I mean I know a white guy who is a rapper and says he considers himself "black" because of where he grew up and who he identifies with. But despite his strong association with being black, he's still a white guy.

This is where we differ in our opinions. I think you feel this way partly because you happen to think you are male and you have a male body.

I think race is somewhat different than sex, although it may still be relevant for terms of comparison. I have known indigenous Canadians who look as English as the Queen of England. The community where they were born is an old Hudson Bay post. So there is a strong mix of European blood. Their first language is Cree. They have been raised in a hunting/fishing culture in Northern Canada. They consider themselves Cree. And everything about them except the colour of their skin is Cree. I say they are Cree. More importantly, they say they are Cree. No doubt you would say they are Caucasian. I think part of our difference boils down to what Gen said about gender identification.

Transitioning, for most people, happens along a spectrum, rather than from one end to another of a binary. In other words, to understand the reality of transitioning and transgenderism, you need to start thinking about gender as a spectrum of realities and experiences, rather than as binary framework. You also need to think of gender as being made of more than (or in spite of) the pink-bits.

Also, it is usually considered common courtesy and decency to respect another person's gender self-identification, rather than assert yourself as the judge of who/what they are based on your understanding of a reality and experience that isn't yours.

Well said Gen.

Don, if reading it the first time did not help you to reconsider, then I doubt reading it a second to time will do the trick. My hope is that others reading threads like this will begin to see the light. It is through discussion of ideas that attitudes begin to change.

 

[Rockslinger]

Also, it is usually considered common courtesy and decency to respect another person's gender self-identification, rather than assert yourself as the judge of who/what they are based on your understanding of a reality and experience that isn't yours.

Actually, Don raised an interesting point. If we can do gender self-identification, why can't we also do race self-identification? If White guy self-identifies as Black, then he is Black. Or, does he have to apply charcoal to his skin?

 

[genintoronto]

Actually, Don raised an interesting point. If we can do gender self-identification, why can't we also do race self-identification? If White guy self-identifies as Black, then he is Black. Or, does he have to apply charcoal to his skin?

Actually, people also self-identify in terms of race: most commonly people of mixed raced self-identifying with one race more than another, and there's also a history of people of color "passing" as white (more common in the States in pre-civil rights period).

But your example seems to assume that gender self-identification and transgenderism is the result of a whim of sort, that people transition just for the fun of it.

In reality, transitioning and living as a transgender is a very difficult and dangerous process. Most transgenders live in constant fear of being outed, of their gender being challenged, of their very existence and rights as human beings being denied because of their gender self-identification. How often do people who barely know you ask you intrusive questions about your genitalia? Having to use public bathrooms -- a mundane activity for us cis-gender people -- is often the source of deep fear and a very real threat for many transgender people. And those are only two mundane examples of what transgender people have to deal with in their daily life. They are also one of the social group with the highest risk and occurence of being brutalized, raped, and/or murdered.

Transitioning is not just a game. People don't transition just for the fun of it. It's a long, difficult, and often dangeous process, but something that transgender people will still go through because those challenges are still worth being true to who they are and how they want other people to see them. The least we can do as cis-gender people who were lucky enough to be born with "matching" genitalia and appearance is to respect their choice and their right to live according to the gender they self-identify with.