cobra_ky said:
I can't speak for him, but i think there's a certain level of 'squick' associated with a surgically crafted vagina (and for heterosexuals a penis are right out). Transgendered women have a medical condition that unfortunately, most straight men find sexually unattractive, and for most people, sex is important to a romantic relationship.
I can understand that level, certainly. It is difficult, and in many ways impossible to get around at the moment.
Fundamentally though, I don't understand exclusive heterosexuality. To me it makes absolutely no sense that you would find someone attractive yet wouldn't be able to go out with them simply because they used to be a different gender.
Monoochrom said:
What exactly is it that you understand as being a Male/Female? I mean, how would you want to know you are ''actually'' a Male if you are born a Female?
You've actually stumbled on a very big issue right now, and it cuts right to the heart of the difference between transexual and transgendered.
Just to bear in mind, there are several identifiable levels on which people can be said to be male or female.
Chromosomal sex is the literal configuration of a persons chromosomes. XX, XY, XXX XXY, XYY, etc. Traditionally, any combination of chromosomes which includes a Y has been identified as genetically male.
Biological sex (or just 'sex') is what is written on a person's birth certificate. It is based on an examination of a person's genitals by a doctor after they are born. In the case of intersexed people (about 1% of live births) there are a series of criteria used to determine which sex they fall closest to, and there may be some surgical intervention to make their sexual characteristics more pronounced.
Gender is the way in which sex is organized on a social level. It's a massive collection of social assumptions which allow us to identify people as male and female when we walk around, talk to them, interact with them, whatever.
None of the above are inherently linked. Chromosomal sex doesn't always match biological sex, and gender certainly doesn't always match either.
Now, cutting to the point.
Transexual people consider themselves to have been identified as having the wrong biological sex. Transexuality is based on a belief that there is something intrinsic to the way different sexes are biologically hardwired, a kind of 'neurobiological sex', and that they basically have the wrong brain. Such people tend to believe in very clear biological things which distinguish men and women, but that these things are not just based on the outward appearance of the body.
This is actually becoming increasingly medically unsound and the infrastructure to deal with it is being phased out to a degree.
Transgendered people generally don't consider their sex to be the inherent problem. The problem is that their gender (the way that society reads them) feels wrong and uncomfortable. They can look at their bodies and see that they follow a particular configuration, but they don't feel any identification with it. Such people don't necessarily believe they were 'born wrong' or even that nature made some big accident and stuck a female brain in a male body, they just know that socially they don't feel comfortable when they are treated as a man or a woman.
This is not to play down the fact that there are real physical consequences to not identifying with your own body, but the problem is not considered to be necessarily a biological one.
Monoochrom said:
I didn't grow up in a enviroment that pressed some kind of specific role upon me as a man, I just kind of did all these things on my own and I know I'm not alone with this, nobody around me from my generation ever really told me any different. So, sometimes I really wonder where the hell all these opressive and mean people are, it always seemed to me as if they were a minority not worth mentioning, I mean, isn't it common sense to ignore someone you don't like?
Since it's probably quite clear I adhere to a more gender-based interpretation, I may as well make it explicit.
Unless you grew up alone in a cave, I can promise you that you did receive some kind of instruction on how to be a man. There is no evidence that anyone is born with an inherent understanding of what being a man or being a woman means (especially considering that at least 1% of the population is not conclusively either) but people learn very fast because it affects their entire life. Just because you were never sat down and told 'this is what a man does, this is how a man behaves' doesn't mean you never learned.
Monoochrom said:
Ok, with that said, I think I can talk about the whole Operation thing. You see, thats what bothers me, I simply don't understand what that is supposed to help? I mean, isn't it your personality that you are trying to reflect? So, why do you need a vagina or penis to do that?
To an extent, I agree..
Hell, if they could take my brain out and stick in a female body, I'd sign up like a shot, but with the technology as it is I never quite saw it as in any way worth it.
But it's not meant to reflect your personality like getting a tattoo or something, it's about what makes you feel comfortable. There are people who genuinely feel no identification with their gender, and every time someone approaches them or speaks to them or addresses them by their name or expect them to act like a member of their gender it can be absolutely heartbreaking. For those people, the rewards outweigh the losses.
Monoochrom said:
But why do you think you have to cut yourself up? I mean, I really hope your atleast doing it for yourself and NOT because of the way ''society'' looks at you. You know why? Because, fuck society.
When it comes to gender, you can't really fuck society. Society makes you the gender you are, and it shapes everything from the way people address you to the type of clothes you're expected to wear to the way you're meant to act when things go to hell. You will never have a single day of interaction, a single conversation, you will never be able to step out of the front door in a way which is not in some way influenced by the way society has constructed and determined your gender.
I would say this, being a gender studies student, but it's one of the most important things in the social world. It's probably the first thing your mother asked about you when you were born (or when the ultrascan came through, depending how old you are). No element of your social life will ever be entirely seperate from it.
Monoochrom said:
It's just this, as much as you expect me to respect who you are, I expect to respect who I am, don't try to force me to go out with you, or other transgenders, I mean, I'm stating right here that it is currently atleast against my will, so we're incompatible in that sense anyway and trust me, your not missing out on much, I'm not the best looking guy and I'm not some kind of sex god either, but I am a pretty good friend and I can totally be that for you if your an ok PERSON.
That's all well and good, but how do you think it makes someone feel to hear that every time they try and get close to someone? 'Oh, it's okay.. you're a good person, but you're just not male/female enough for me to fall in love with you or have sex with you or do any of the other things which I would do without question had you just happened to be born with a slightly different looking crotch region'.
You putting yourself down doesn't make it any easier. If it was just you, then fine, but look at all the people on this thread saying the same thing. The exception to that rule is a very, very rare person.
All transexuals and most transgendered people don't want to be a special case third gender, they want to be men or women, and they want you to treat them like men or women, not just as indeterminate people. That's why it's not that simple for you to just say you don't get where the persecution comes from and you'll be nice to people when it comes down to it, because you're still contributing to a situation in which what these people want is always out of reach to them. That they're effectively denied everything which you, as a 'normal' heterosexual, can take for granted.
It's not necessarily your fault, and there's certainly not much you can do about it, but if you can't see why it hurts then I really think you need to think again.
GuerrillaClock said:
You know, as bad as generalising and abusing minorities like transgenders is, doing the same for the majority by flinging about words like 'transophobe' at anyone who isn't immediately accepting of a transgender rocking up on their doorstep is JUST AS FUCKING BAD.
Why?
I do not understand the logic.
No transgendered person or gay person could ever
not accept your sexuality. We're surrounded by it all the time and we
have to deal with it whether we want to or not. We can never doubt that you exist, we can never call you false or delusional, we can never accuse you of being wrong or disturbing or abominations and have it carry any real social weight. At the same time though, we can never live the lives you take for granted.
All we ever do is call you up on the privileges that we lack. If you are so wrapped up in those privileges that you see that as an attack of equal severity to not being okay with someone even existing, then I'd suggest you really need to think long and hard about how it feels to be on the other end.
I've said some things in this thread which I regret, true, but I won't accept the logic that doing so makes me equally intolerant. Attacking other people's intolerance is not the same as just attacking people for existing, and just because people have come to see their intolerance as utterly 'normal' doesn't make it somehow better for the people who are victims of it.
