Transgenders, Transsexuals, and the Whole Gamut
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I completely agree. Your answer is my viewpoint on everything in life, basically.Monkfish Acc. said:
the comments i was responding to weren't directed at anyone in particular. here it is again:orangecharger said:
You asked a general question about the Escapist forums, which as a long-time poster i felt qualified to comment on. You also referred to the original poster in the third person, from which i inferred you weren't addressing him directly. You made what i felt were unwarranted assumptions about the OP's motivations, so i shared what i had inferred from his original post and presented them as an alternative.orangecharger said:
This is a fairly unreasonable assumption to make on a public forum where any user may respond to any other. I spoke from my own experience having read his posts here; I can't speak to his activities on other sites because i am not aware of them, nor can i speak for the feelings of all transgendered persons and their supporters.orangecharger said:
The next time you want to clearly direct your comments to the OP, quote the post you are responding to (so that the site will notify them), refer to them in the first person, and if you don't want anyone else to respond, consider sending them a private message instead.orangecharger said:
Oops.. I'm not transgendered myself, and don't want to be seen as speaking for those who are.BGH122 said:
I'm an occasional transvestite, sure, but I'm relatively comfortable with my own body and don't seem to have much trouble getting involved with people of either sex. I just know a good number of people for whom its not that easy. It is pretty heartbreaking to watch a close friend consistently have men falling over her only to vanish or react violently when she reveals that, in actually real physical terms, they might need to use lube if they want to have sex.
People don't react like that because they're naturally turned off by lube. They do it because they feel ashamed that they, a heterosexual man of all things, were attracted to a body which happened to be surgically constructed. That shame isn't necessarily innate to people's sexuality.
It's not really what I meant, but let's roll with it anyway.BGH122 said:
I'm assuming you mean the physical structure of people's post-op (or even pre-op) bodies still? If you mean something else, you might have to explain.
I don't think it's impossible to be flexible even around people's bodies. I think it becomes so if you have an ingrained disgust of anything you wouldn't find in a mens magazine, but we always compromise on some things for the sake of others.
It's not that it shouldn't be a factor, but for most of you it doesn't seem to be about any kind of attraction or otherwise to people's bodies. In fact, it sounds much more like a principle, something which would hold true even if the bodies in question were perfect, and that's something I don't understand at all. It's not something which reflects my experience of sexuality or anything I've actually observed in other people.
To put it bluntly, it seems to be a problem only heterosexuals have. Even most exclusively gay people recognize that there have been point of blurring, points at which their sexuality was tested or the limits pushed, even if it ultimately reinforced their commitment to their homosexuality. They may not talk about those things in public, but they also don't tend to feel anything like the same shame. For this reason, I can't see that shame as a 'natural' part of your sexuality.
Worse, I find it slightly degrading to both you, as a person who is made to feel shame at the mere possibility of 'failing' at heterosexuality, and to me as a person who has already lost that exclusive privilege of being a successful heterosexual. Until you learn not to fear being non-heterosexual, how do you expect those of us who are to feel that you respect us at all?
Ugh, I'm not explaining myself well. Suffice to say that my point wasn't that you should ignore your sexual selection criteria, just to be aware that there might be more to do your sexual selection criteria than meets the eye. Especially if you could theoretically meet someone and progress quite far into a relationship with them before realizing they were transgendered. Heck, you might not necessarily even realize at all - modern surgical techniques aren't that bad.
I know, and it was totally obvious you weren't malicious.Monoochrom said:
Malicious people don't want to know or understand anything, they've already made up their mind. You certainly didn't come across as one of those people.
Thank you Monoochrom. I really wasn't picking you out because I felt you needed 'a teaching' or anything. But rather that you raised a lot of points that I hear often, and your post was a good jumping point for me to clear up some misconceptions that are sadly common. I apologize if that post was kind of rambling and got off track towards the end... I was quite sick yesterday and it was hard for me to concentrate.
For what it is worth, I can understand many of your reservations. I went through the same inner conflicts myself (from the other side, obviously) after I found out about transgender people and before I came to the decision that I had to transition. And it really was a 'had to' situation.
Most people who aren't that familiar with transsexualism think this is some choice that we make. "Oh, I think I'll be a woman now." I never thought that. And I never met anyone who was really transsexual who thought that. In fact, anyone who told me they did think that, I would tell them to seriously think about what they want. Being trans, of any variety, is a hard road that lasts you entire lifetime. The honest fact is.. I don't want to be transsexual. But I can't live as a man, as my biology tells me. The discomfort is to great, even the thought of going back makes me ill now. So no, it wasn't a choice. My only choice was do I transition, or do I kill myself and hope for a better reincarnation next time.
And I have sacrificed a lot to be where I am. My family, my home, friends, potential lovers and a lot of time and money. There is also the certainty that I will lose more in the future for being who I am. And to be honest, I have moved from being one of the most privileged groups in the US, the while male, to one of the most misunderstood and threatened, the transgender woman. And I wouldn't give it up, because it means I am finally myself and finally happy with my life, despite all of that. Up until then, I was absolutely miserable all the time.
Now to get to the point... I know, I'm long winded. Despite all of what I said before, there are things I regret. I do worry about what people may think of me. Both on a personal level, and on a safety level. Sure, I live in a pretty liberal town and nearly everyone I meet is accepting, even sometimes welcoming to me. But all it takes is one person or one group to take a violent dislike to me. And it is always a major consideration of myself as to any place I visit and especially if I am thinking of moving there. How friendly and open are they, and how likely is it that I will be attacked?
A big thing is children... I find it very depressing that I will never be able to have children. I never wanted them before transition. The idea of being a 'father' is... repulsive to me, really. Yet to be a mother... What I wouldn't give... I love children, and it would be nice one day if I could adopt, or get into a relationship and become a stepmother to their children. But not being able to have children of my own fills me with sadness. But everything has it's price. This just happens to be one involved in transition now.
For what it is worth, I can understand many of your reservations. I went through the same inner conflicts myself (from the other side, obviously) after I found out about transgender people and before I came to the decision that I had to transition. And it really was a 'had to' situation.
Most people who aren't that familiar with transsexualism think this is some choice that we make. "Oh, I think I'll be a woman now." I never thought that. And I never met anyone who was really transsexual who thought that. In fact, anyone who told me they did think that, I would tell them to seriously think about what they want. Being trans, of any variety, is a hard road that lasts you entire lifetime. The honest fact is.. I don't want to be transsexual. But I can't live as a man, as my biology tells me. The discomfort is to great, even the thought of going back makes me ill now. So no, it wasn't a choice. My only choice was do I transition, or do I kill myself and hope for a better reincarnation next time.
And I have sacrificed a lot to be where I am. My family, my home, friends, potential lovers and a lot of time and money. There is also the certainty that I will lose more in the future for being who I am. And to be honest, I have moved from being one of the most privileged groups in the US, the while male, to one of the most misunderstood and threatened, the transgender woman. And I wouldn't give it up, because it means I am finally myself and finally happy with my life, despite all of that. Up until then, I was absolutely miserable all the time.
Now to get to the point... I know, I'm long winded. Despite all of what I said before, there are things I regret. I do worry about what people may think of me. Both on a personal level, and on a safety level. Sure, I live in a pretty liberal town and nearly everyone I meet is accepting, even sometimes welcoming to me. But all it takes is one person or one group to take a violent dislike to me. And it is always a major consideration of myself as to any place I visit and especially if I am thinking of moving there. How friendly and open are they, and how likely is it that I will be attacked?
A big thing is children... I find it very depressing that I will never be able to have children. I never wanted them before transition. The idea of being a 'father' is... repulsive to me, really. Yet to be a mother... What I wouldn't give... I love children, and it would be nice one day if I could adopt, or get into a relationship and become a stepmother to their children. But not being able to have children of my own fills me with sadness. But everything has it's price. This just happens to be one involved in transition now.
It seems to me that there's an awful lot of presumption going on here. I don't think it's wise to presume the cause of others' motives unless there's some strong scientific evidence for the presumption. If there's proof that some vague notion of heterosexuality and gender identity is the cause here then I'd be happy to hear it, but it seems more likely to me that they're avoiding the transgendered for the same reason people get iffy if one tells them one has a brain cyst or some such ailment: people tend to be naturally sexually repulsed by infirmity.evilthecat said:
No, not necessarily the physical. In the same way that a given personality can break a sexual relationship if it doesn't tie in with one's sexual selection criteria, so too could the mere fact that one is transgendered if that's against one's partner's criteria. Saying "But it's no big deal!" isn't very effective if to the beholder it is a big deal.evilthecat said:
Blaming porn seems like a cop-out. I agree that the vast majority of our gender identities are socially learned and so it follows that, at least to some degree, sexual selection criteria must be socially learned too. However, it also stands to reason that at lest some of our sexual selection criteria must be evolutionarily fixed because the species from which we've speciated lacked the advanced social learning that current humans posses (there's even good evidence that the progenitors of the Homo genus, Homo Habilis, lacked even basic weaponry abilities or the ability to form hunting parties). Since breeding did occur in our recent ancestors without socially learned sexual selection criteria then it follows that we must have some non-learned sexual selection criteria that are evolutionarily fixed.evilthecat said:
Firstly, I know you're annoyed at the situation, fairly so, but I'd rather you not direct that annoyance at me as if I ought to apologise for a crime I've never committed. I'm me, not all heterosexual males. Your argument is starting to sound very 'you people' and to lump entire groups together like that is intellectually lazy. I sincerely doubt you'd address a black person as 'you blacks'. However, I'm sure you intended no offence.evilthecat said:
To be honest, I suspect the reason that (if true) heterosexuals are less likely to experiment with paraphilia than those of non-standard sexual orientation is much the same reason that people who sample minor illegal substances are more likely to go on to take more serious illegal substances than those who never took any at all: once one has broken the taboo once then there's little stopping one from doing so again.
However, there's a massive leap of logic from that position to 'all straight men fear all non-straight people'. This isn't the 50s. Unless one is from a really backwater town then this position just doesn't ring true. Out of my friends, roughly one third are of a non-standard sexual orientation, be it homosexual, bisexual or genderqueer (admittedly, gender issues are divorced from sexuality, but I'm lumping them in for ease of writing). I don't fear those with non-standard sexual orientations and I don't know anyone (outside of the lower-class community) who does.
There is a giant leap of logic from 'I don't find you attractive for whatever physical or psychological reason' to 'I don't find you attractive because I fear you'.
I've answered this point above, so I'll briefly reiterate: Infirmity is off putting. If trangenderism is viewed by an individual as an infirmity then it will be off putting. This isn't due to some evil of heterosexuality, this is due to millions upon millions of years of evolution teaching us to avoid mates who can't bear or look after our young.evilthecat said:
Auh!!! Ohh!!!! STINGGG!!!Kukulski said:
I mean seriously, if they perma-banned the guy above you for his comment, they should have MURDERED you!
I view Transsexuals and Transgenders much in the same way I view people who enjoy eating mushrooms; I have no objection to it in any way, and I fully support them if that's what makes them happy, it just confuses me.