believer258 said:
Pointing a finger at? I'm not making any sort of divisive or derisive finger. Fuck, I hate it when people assume that I'm totally against something when I make a statement. And I never claimed to be clever, either.
Alright. I'm not a collegiate level thinker. I'm only in my freshman year of college, and I have little to no interest in the field of biology. Call me ignorant. Sorry.
Here's what I'd like to know - are you arguing that there are different degrees of being male/female, like 10% male, 90% female? Or are you just saying that I shouldn't give one huge dividing line between males who were born males and males who want to be female? Because I'm not trying to do the latter.
If a person is male, but wants to be percieved as a female, that's fine. I don't care. It isn't my body, why should I care? But if you were born a male, then you really weren't "the first female to be president of some college organization", you were (and kill me for technicality here if you must) the "first transgender male to female to be president of some organization". TransMF and vice-versa need a better name.
What I'm looking for here is clarification - fine if you want to be female, but not being born that way means you can't be fully female. You can look like one, you can dress like one, you can lop your gonads off and pretend you've got the bits of one, but you still aren't fully female. It's not a divisive line, it's just that a person that has a change isn't and can't be as of now a fully formed female. There needs to be a new word for something beyond "used to be male but is now female".
Note that those are mostly hypothetical "you's".
Never said you claimed to be clever, I called you that due to the snarky wording of your quote. Though you may be ignorant of subject matter, I'd hardly use the term as an insult, as you do seem intelligent and more well spoken than many, ignorant, not stupid. We're all ignorant of something. Hell, I know jack and squat about automobiles and am lousy at programming...
But I digress. You, not a hypothetical or implied understood you - actually referring to you 'you' are indeed pointing most divisive and derisively. By agreeing with the original statement made you agree with an incorrect understanding of biological science and sociology in a way many people would find rather insulting. MTF or FTM transgenders are treated very differently by the law in Amerika than even homosexual persons which they are often misunderstood as. A case comes to mind in which a woman was found to have been post-op TG after her husband died in the line of duty as a firefighter. The couple had been wed for quite some time. And although friends admitted he was aware of this, his aghast parents refused to believe their son would marry 'a man' and sued in court that she be removed from his will, the same 'female' they had known for years and treated as family was now 'something else', despite years of love and loss endured together. By treating her as 'something that used to be a man' and not simply a woman, the parents were defying the wishes of their now dead child, insulting his memory over what amounted to their personal comfort. This example is mostly sociological, but I'm simply using it to prove my point, that by singling them out, Transgenders, it is both divisive and derisive.
And yes, that is...roughly... what I'm saying, your 10-90% question. There are 5 proven chromosomal patterns and studies on another two. It's been a proven fact for quite a long time now, just not a very popular one, for obvious reasons sadly. It's not so simple as just XX or XY, and many times is never going to be. To be 'fully male' or 'fully female' isn't the concept most seem to think it is.
I don't wish to kill you for technicality, but... Por ejemplo- I know many TG's and TS's who are in fact naturally occurring partial hermaphrodites, born somewhere in between their body's expression of their chromosomes' configuration. On the fetish scene, I've met a rather burly looking fellow, 6'2", hairy-chested, 'stache and all who had a vagina just as the counterparts also exist, the more socially fetishized 'she-males'. Now, what did this make them? They were born the way they are, not 'dressing like' or 'acting like' something they were not, because they were not naturally either. Do their chromosomes define their masculinity or femeninity? Or is it now the parts they possess? Or is it the role they play in social settings? Are they 'fully male'? Or 'fully female'? They were what they were to whoever perceived them, what they were perceived as. If one was seen as 'male' or 'female' then for all intents and purposes, they were, regardless of chromosomes, chemistry, hormones, blood counters and so on.
Now, I do agree with you that there should be, and is, different terminology for those identifying as being outside of typical gender boundaries and wishing to be perceived as such. In a growing fashion they are referred to as 3rds, or 3rd gender. But these are not all that is 'male' 'female' or 'other'. What you seem to be seeking is the difference between a GG or GM (genetic girl/man) and a MTF/FTM transgender, one who has been born as such that some physical alteration was required to their body to finish it's formation from one sex or the other. Sometimes, there is very VERY little factual difference.
As the old sayings go "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there's a damn good chance it might be a duck, regardless of what you think." Many 'females' would be surprised to know that biologically speaking, many of them are 'male' in some respects, be it organ content, chemically or chromosomal. And vice versa.
Again, this is no small number of people, millions of human beings, tax-paying, working, living and loving Amerikans, deserving of respect as everyone else. And the science supporting their claims is growing.
As to those 'you's' which were not mostly hypothetical...? Are you seriously questioning my womanhood in some manner of trying to undermine the validity of my argument?