Unexpected News: The Wachowski Sisters! Second Wachowski Sibling Comes Out As Trans.

[Naldan]

Well,

Stop reading Daily Mail if you had before. Congratulations to her.
A little funny since I had the impression that she (then he) looked a bit buff and sometimes like Silent Bob.

 

[CrystalShadow]

You know the only thing I really don't like about trans individuals?

They get to choose their names, I feel like that's cheating.

Well, you know....
Strictly speaking, unless you live in a country that is a bit of a dick about such things, anyone can change their name...

Hell, if you are in the UK specifically, you can change your name on a whim, even to something completely stupid, and it is legally valid.

Also, you could change your name 5 times a year there without too much hassle.


Names are a lot less permanent than you might think really... XD

Diffirent in The Netherlands however, you can only change your name twice, and your family name once. And it can be quite costly aswell. Will be fun when I can apply for the name change in a few months.

Wait, you can only change your family name once?
That sounds like a pretty serious headache for any woman that has been married more than once...

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

In which case, your metric is going against both the legal and scientific consensus. Don't imagine for a moment you're being more "objective" in disregarding expert opinion.

This is putting aside that you're also being unduly insulting in disregarding somebody's identity, of course.

Which metric is against consensus? That a person with XY chromosomes is a man, regardless of how they subjectively identify or dress themselves?
Making an objectively verifiable statement is not insulting, and I don't see how any "expert"'s opinion would change that.

 

[Silvanus]

Which metric is against consensus? That a person with XY chromosomes is a man, regardless of how they subjectively identify or dress themselves?

That a person with XY chromosomes is always male in both sex and gender, yes, that's against both legal and scientific consensus. It's simplistic and dismissive of the evidence at hand.

Making an objectively verifiable statement is not insulting, and I don't see how any "expert"'s opinion would change that.

Firstly, it's not objective. Objectivity is very frequently claimed, but rarely appropriate.

Secondly, it should be quite obvious why it's insulting; it's rejecting a part somebody else's identity. They are the one with the relevant experience, here, which is often tremendously difficult. For someone to come and tell them they're wrong-- without any relevant experience, just insisting their opinion is of greater importance-- is clearly insulting.

Consider those people who insist that bisexuals don't exist, and that a bisexual is merely a gay man in denial, or a straight man experimenting. They have no relevant experience. They're claiming to merely be reporting a fact, despite its contradiction of expert opinion. Y'can see why that's insulting, no?

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

There isn't a "thing" so much as there are "things". Studies have found that, for example, trans-men have brain plasticity, reaction times, and spatial awareness that is more similar to the brains of non-trans men than it is to women. This is in addition to physical qualities like the finger digit ratio that actually is different on average between men and women but a trans-man's average digit ratio lines up with non-trans men more than women. There is also a statistically significant correlation where if one twin pursues transition surgery that the other twin will as well. That points strongly to a biological cause well beyond anything environmental since that twin study was only capturing actual transitions rather than whether or not the other twin identified as transgendered which should be a lot higher.

Consider what this means if transgenderism has actual distinguishable physiological differences that actually does line up with the opposite sex and if there are clear causative correlations with biological factors.

Fair enough - there are also men that have more feminine traits and women who have masculine ones, but they are still men and women - that is, barring situations that make them sterile they are still sexually compatible for reproduction, which is the reason sexes have evolved the way they are. Perhaps one day they will find a biological configuration that affects some men and women which will then generate a new classification, but this will be in addition to their sex, no a replacement of it.

Even if I myself would feel the need of dressing or behaving like the opposite sex I certainly wouldn't be offended by someone addressing me using an objectively accurate statement, and I was offended it would be my decision. There is offending, and there is taking offense.
Because of all this I really don't understand this whole "being offended by facts" business.

As for "objective situation", you have probably met a lot more transsexual people than you realize. Watching my spouse going through it (Please note that this was a surprise to me, a straight male, and if anyone should be mad here it would be me) led me to be around a large number of people in the trans community. Let me tell you, depending on how long they've been on hormones and what procedures they've undergone you have NO idea what sex chromosome order they have. What would you do then if someone that clearly objectively looks male tells you they were born female? Do you start using female pronouns with that additional information or do you continue using male ones?

I remember going to a dinner with a bunch of guys and afterwards my spouse said to me, "Did it occur to you that you were the only person at the table with a dick?" No, it hadn't occurred to me because most of them were years into treatment and totally looked like their gender identity.

That is very interesting - I see how you know so much about this subject.

Ultimately at some point you've got to ask yourself, what is this to you? Someone in the world is walking around with one more or one less dick. In what way are you or anyone you know personally impacted? Lower surgery technology isn't even really there right now so a lot don't even pursue it and just stick with upper surgery depending on the degree of dysphoria they have. Upper surgery is there and is relatively cheap to pursue and does have the greatest impact on individual happiness.

But you've got to understand that this isn't simple dislike of the body they were given. This isn't like some non-trans female looking at the mirror and not liking her cheek bones or breast size. It's dislike to the point of being a full-blown disorder that can frequently cause extreme depression that greatly impacts their lives (or even lead to the end of it). In order for medical doctors to justify this kind of intensive surgery there must be an established medical need for it. Otherwise they're just doing harm.

Think of it this way, for a small segment of the population, using pronouns that do not match their gender is like insulting them and they're already going through enough. Does it really cost you so much to be mindful of what the medical field calls a condition? Even if you personally think it's a mental condition rather than a biological one, what good is you misgendering them? It only hurts their feelings and what else?

I think that if someone goes as far as suffering all those symptoms, the answer is not a surgery that - amont the other things - may remove one's ability to reproduce, it's accepting themselves for what they are. You may reply that this is what they are doing, but if they are going to change their body to match their deside I think they are doing it wrong. And the fact that they choose to have their feelings hurt by a plainly verifiable statement is just one more symptom of their self-rejection.

NOTE:
This is an intriguing topic, but I just received a warning because a moderator decided that someone could be offended by what I wrote, and this apparently warrants such reprisal. Just a heads up - I might not be able continue this discussion because of such dubious policies.

 

[Silvanus]

I think that if someone goes as far as suffering all those symptoms, the answer is not a surgery that - amont the other things - may remove one's ability to reproduce, it's accepting themselves for what they are. You may reply that this is what they are doing, but if they are going to change their body to match their deside I think they are doing it wrong.

There is strong medical consensus that reassignment surgery is generally the most appropriate method of dealing with gender dysphoria. It tends to have, by far, the best results in terms of emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, and a dozen other indicators. There are a host of studies on this (which I've posted in the past; if you like, I'll grab them and put them here).

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

Except you don't have access to most people's genitals, birth record, or genetics to make that distinction. You're not being objective here, you're not addressing an objective situation either, because again most people aren't going to let you check their genitals, birth record, and genetics just so you can gender them. What you're doing is taking private information as a means to disrespect someone and reject their identity. Which when you do that, refusing to use the preferred gender pronouns with a trans person, that's called being transphobic. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that, it's behavior that means one is being transphobic and it's being a jerk.

I am not aware of any phobia in the DSM labeled as such. So you are accusing me of being mentally ill (and a jerk) because I'm calling a man a man when a man prefers to be called something that he is not? Because this is the kind of culturally regressive nonsense that triggers me.

For example if we met in person at an event for The Escapist, but you didn't know which forum name I used, you'd gender me as female, in spite of my being trans. If I told you my forum name, or that I'm trans and then you started misgendering me, you'd be doing a number of horrible and selfish things: 1) You'd be outing me against my will to people I hadn't told yet. 2) You'd be putting me in physical danger, because some people react violently to finding out someone is trans. 3) You'd be personally disrespecting me. 4) You'd be personally disrespecting all trans folk, especially those in ear shot. 5) You'd cause a lot of confusion doing such a thing. 6) You'd be doing something that personally hurts and if you continued to do it intentionally I might file a complaint with security of the venue, because you're the one making an issue. 7) You'd make it difficult for me to use facilities at the event, by calling my gender into question, when no one would have noticed in the first place. 8) Everyone who wasn't clinging to a biological essentialist view point would see you as a jerk for doing such a thing.

More over don't use language insinuating that trans people are sick for making the choice to transition. Transition, especially hormone replacement therapy(HRT), actually improves a trans person's physical and mental health, along with improving quality of life, like by reducing stress, depression and anxiety. HRT is especially potent in this regard, because it can literally stop chronic anxiety and chronic depression in a trans person. Meaning that trans people going on the correct hormones fixes a hormonal imbalance in their brains that cause chronic depression and chronic anxiety. Also a lot of trans people I know had joint issues before they went on HRT, but when they got on HRT those joint issues went away. That means that not transitioning when one needs it is the ailing choice, not the other way around.

You are making a whole lot of assumptions here. If you think that calling someone who has XX chromosomes a woman causes all those things, you probably have a way too thin comfort zone, and are literally offended by objective, independently verifiable truth.

EDIT: mis-typed XX as YY. Apparently I am very gender-confused today.

Mutilating? Are you talking about Sexual Reassignment Surgery? Tell me do you call it mutilation when someone gets piercings, or tattoos? Do you call it mutilation when someone has failing teeth removed and gets dental implants, bridges, or dentures? Do you call it mutilation when someone gets a cancerous growth, organ, or body part removed? If someone needs surgery to correct their genitals and they aren't trans, would you call that mutilation? I bet not. So how come a medically necessary genital corrective surgery is mutilation when someone happens to be trans?

If Lilly Wachowski decides she needs to correct her genitals with surgery, then she'll do so under the advice of her doctors. She won't be getting mutilated, she'll be having a birth defect corrected. You misgendering her and calling her medical needs mutilation only shows one thing: You're amongst the people who know virtually nothing about transgender people, yet still think they're qualified to moral and medical judgments against us. That is the place where transphobia develops, people being ignorant, then using their own ignorance to make judgments about a situation they don't understand. I'm not saying you're an abject transphobe, or a horrible person, because I don't believe that's true, but you are kind of buying into transphobic arguments. I'd suggest doing three things: The first is easier, look at how you're being judgmental about people's situations which don't understand, then tell your self to stop being judgmental. Second, get educated, go around and look at real scientific sources on transgenderism, so you can start to understand. Also avoid anything like the Family Research Council, they're not scientific, they're using pseudo-science to back up bigoted biases. Third, listen to trans folk when we tell you something, we're the ones with the conditions, we're the ones science and the law tends to favor, that means when we're in conflict with you on an issue, we're almost always the ones who are correct.

Yes, I mean exactly that, minus referring to Lilly Wachowski as a woman. I have expanded on this subject in my answer to LightningKnight.

The linguistic argument "well if words still mean what they mean" is an argument used by people who default to a strict dictionary definition to back up personal bigotries and biases. Some examples of people like this are Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists(TERFs), people who believe the Earth is Flat, Young Earth Christians, and so on. People who reject science, and they do it so that they can violate the rights of other people, just because those people are different from them. Transphobia, Homophobia, Sexism, Racism, those all try to use incorrect and proven wrong pseudo-science in the place of real science, so that the people who hold those views can oppress others for being different than them. Misusing dictionary definitions is also an example of this sort of "logic". Because the strict dictionary definition as the only correct view, as with the biological essentialist view "people can't change their gender" is flat wrong, it's based on disproved ideas... It's a rejection of science. All it is is a cover that's the same thing as saying: "I'm not racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic, but..." Line. It's someone trying not to sound bigoted when they're being a bigot, nothing more, nothing less.

I see, but this would be an example of Guilt by Association. A broad classification based on sex still exists, and while finer one based on sexual preferences may also exist, this does not make the other one irrelevant.
I may also add that words like "homophobia", "islamophobia" and "transphobia" do not describe any actual phobia (which is a very specific medical term and has specific symptoms) and are often used by some people to smear as mentally ill people whose opinion they don't like, to try and engineer an artificial sense of guilt in western society, to redefine our values as prejudices and to silence legitimate opinion and the free exchange of ideas that have made us what we are and that have given us our strength. I believe this is damaging our society in a fundamental way and it has got to stop.

 

[JimB]

Even if I myself would feel the need of dressing or behaving like the opposite sex I certainly wouldn't be offended by someone addressing me using an objectively accurate statement, and I was offended it would be my decision. There is offending, and there is taking offense.

There is probably no way to ask this question without triggering a defensive response, but I'm going to ask you this in total sincerity: Do you genuinely not see how saying, "I don't have this condition, and the things I say about it are at odds with the experiences had by the people who do have the condition and the general consensus of the medical community, but even so, I consider myself an authority who can say that if I did have this condition, I'd totally be so much cooler about people saying to me the things I say to them than the people I'm inaccurately portraying are" can rightly piss some people off? I understand that you think you're correct in your stance, but you have not at all demonstrated how your position is rooted in anything but the most shallow understanding of science with no particular basis in the specifics, which makes it seem very much like you're arguing from a prejudice you'd prefer to confirm than from any actual schooling on the topic.

I know that paragraph got a little bitchy, but only to try to illustrate why the things you have said can be genuinely upsetting to someone. I apologize if that attempt at illustration ruined the message.

I think that if someone goes as far as suffering all those symptoms, the answer is not a surgery that, among the other things, may remove one's ability to reproduce; it's accepting themselves for what they are.

That is really not how psychiatric disorders work. Telling someone to simply get over the way their brain works is like telling someone with a broken arm to just get over the broken bones. These symptoms are not ephemeral, magical phenomena with no basis in physical reality; they are grounded in the fleshy physical systems of the brain, and asking people to try to solve the problem by living in denial is asking them to live in a much more delusional state than accepting the reality of gender dysmorphia and transgenderism.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

That a person with XY chromosomes is always male in both sex and gender, yes, that's against both legal and scientific consensus. It's simplistic and dismissive of the evidence at hand.

Not both, just in sex - assuming you mean gender as sexual orientation.

Secondly, it should be quite obvious why it's insulting; it's rejecting a part somebody else's identity. They are the one with the relevant experience, here, which is often tremendously difficult. For someone to come and tell them they're wrong-- without any relevant experience, just insisting their opinion is of greater importance-- is clearly insulting.

No, of course it's not. If someone's identity conflicts with their own biology, there is nothing insulting in referring to the latter - identity is subjective, biology is objective.

Consider those people who insist that bisexuals don't exist, and that a bisexual is merely a gay man in denial, or a straight man experimenting. They have no relevant experience. They're claiming to merely be reporting a fact, despite its contradiction of expert opinion. Y'can see why that's insulting, no?

Are there such people? Because their conundrum strikes me as very silly - it is merely an issue of definition, which can be resolved by agreeing on what defines a bisexual or a gay person.

 

[Something Amyss]

That's because a lot of people have this paranoia that being cisgender is somehow a bad thing... When it's not. A lot of them are so paranoid that they actually think cisgender gender identities could be banned by law, especially cisgender male identities, just because of trans activism...

Ahhh yes, the whole "human rights are a zero sum game" thing.

Fucking hell, people, I just want to live my life without constant fear of being murdered.

Well the debate over facilities like restrooms, locker rooms, and etc is actually because we're clinging to Victorian ideas about gender.

Victorian times were faar more liberated than we give them credit for, though that's getting way off-topic at this point.

Any likely self defense situation you can't get out of with Escrima and some sticks, or a knife, you probably weren't going to get out of anyway.

Yeah, and I've taken on a guy with a .45 using hand-to-hand combat and an expanding baton and I was the one who was scrutinised by the police. By the way, the gun was fired. Multiple times. My hands got pretty cut up in the process, but I'm alive. The unfortunate thing is that the guy never saw any punishment and they focused their attention on me. The one who was not only attacked, but more visibly hurt. I don't like to hurt people, even in self-defense, so I focused on arts that deal with grappling and manipulation. I was the dangerous one. I was the threat. I threw no punches and my baton was used in a defensive fashion only (by the way, a stick can be damn lethal, even unintentionally, and anyone worth their salt will tell you that. Even my baton, with a "safety tip," warned of the potential for damage).

The larger problem is that if you're always the threat, you're in an inordinate amount of danger.

[He's not wrong, they are still genetically brothers.

They're still genetically related. They're not genetically brothers, because our society doesn't work that way. And hell, neither do related scientific fields.

He didn't say anything hostile, just a cold, hard scientific fact. That doesn't innately mean he's bigoted or anti trans. Obviously I should imagine it's immensely frustrating to have your gender questioned as a trans person, but that doesn't change what your chromosomes are.

I don't even know what my chromosomes are. I wager upwards of 90% of the population doesn't. And weirdly enough, despite the genetics argument, I've only come across a single biologist who was on that side of the genetics argument.

This isn't so cold or hard, and the "science" acknowledges it. When people ignore that, when people insist upon it, one tends to expect ulterior motives. I'd also borrow a page from Silvanus, even if his lack of Snape avatar disturbs me. There are people willing to learn. This individual has instead opted to argue.

Moreover, it's more than just frustrating. It's harmful to be misgendered. You're already dealing with a group with high suicide rates and an issue where there's a huge amount of stress surrounding this one "little" subject. Stress and maybe some other things. Not to mention, it's not just transfolk who flip out. I have a friend who is...well-intentioned. He ended up in an argument with a woman who insisted on calling Caitlyn Jenner by her birth name and calling her "him." So my friend started calling the woman in question "him" as well.

Now, I don't endorse this sort of action. I said as much, and it was my input, not the result, that led to him removing his comments. But holy fuck did she lose her mind and accuse him of hate speech and threatening him not only with repercussions on the platform, but legal implications as well. And then her family swooped down and told hi ho horrible he was to not treat a woman like a woman.

Which was his point.

Part of the takeaway here is that I really don't expect to be listened to, and it's so rare this stuck out. But if you (general you) think this is just a trans thing, you're off-base. I'd say try it for yourself, but you really shouldn't. Cisfolk get pissed off if accidentally misgendered all the time.

So imagine the response when someone declares they're going to do it intentionally.

Incidentally, it's also a cold, hard fact that black people are "niggers," as that's what the word means. I don't see anyone rushing to defend this argument, though. And I feel bad bringing it up even as a rhetorical device.

Honestly, that's why my social phobia wont go away anytime soon. When not at home I pretty much block out the whole outside world by listening to music with my headphones on high volume.

Yes, but in this day and age, how can you tell the difference? >.>

I know how you feel, though. I remember back in high school people always used to tell me that if I kept sitting outside under a tree with my headphones and sunglasses on reading a book, nobody would want to talk to me. Which was bullshit, because they apparently still did, but aside from that my response was basically "good." Because I wanted to be left alone for...some reason.

 

[JimB]

I remember back in high school people always used to tell me that if I kept sitting outside under a tree with my headphones and sunglasses on reading a book, nobody would want to talk to me. Which was bullshit, because they apparently still did, but aside from that my response was basically "good."

No one ever told me that, and if they did I think I'd laugh in their faces, because it's always when I'm reading a book in public that people decide I must not want to be reading, I must only have a book because no strangers whose crap I don't fucking care about haven't come over and nobly saved me from the boredom of page-turning. Yet no one pulls that shit when my nose is in my phone or tablet. Still haven't figured out why.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

Even if I myself would feel the need of dressing or behaving like the opposite sex I certainly wouldn't be offended by someone addressing me using an objectively accurate statement, and I was offended it would be my decision. There is offending, and there is taking offense.

There is probably no way to ask this question without triggering a defensive response, but I'm going to ask you this in total sincerity: Do you genuinely not see how saying, "I don't have this condition, and the things I say about it are at odds with the experiences had by the people who do have the condition and the general consensus of the medical community, but even so, I consider myself an authority who can say that if I did have this condition, I'd totally be so much cooler about people saying to me the things I say to them than the people I'm inaccurately portraying are" can rightly piss some people off? I understand that you think you're correct in your stance, but you have not at all demonstrated how your position is rooted in anything but the most shallow understanding of science with no particular basis in the specifics, which makes it seem very much like you're arguing from a prejudice you'd prefer to confirm than from any actual schooling on the topic.

I understand very well how this condition can lead to difficulties, can attract hate from intolerant/ignorant people and that it's important to be as open, compassionate and respectful with those who suffer as a result of it.

If someone feels better by dressing, behaving and appearing in a manner normally not associated with their sex, all the power to them.
What I will not do, is lie to them and pretend that they magically change their sex and become a person of the opposite sex - because currently there is no way of achieving this.

Furthermore, there are situations [http://www.mediaite.com/online/nyc-bans-employers-from-calling-transgender-employees-wrong-gender/] in the U.S. where laws pushed by the liberal regressive left can lead to situations where people could be fined tens of thousands of dollars to address people with their "wrong" - that is, their right - sex.
This require a reaction - it is great to be compassionate and inclusive, but not to the point of denying the reality of our nature and actually persecuting those that do not.

I think that if someone goes as far as suffering all those symptoms, the answer is not a surgery that, among the other things, may remove one's ability to reproduce; it's accepting themselves for what they are.

That is really not how psychiatric disorders work. Telling someone to simply get over the way their brain works is like telling someone with a broken arm to just get over the broken bones. These symptoms are not ephemeral, magical phenomena with no basis in physical reality; they are grounded in the fleshy physical systems of the brain, and asking people to try to solve the problem by living in denial is asking them to live in a much more delusional state than accepting the reality of gender dysmorphia and transgenderism.

True, one cannot just "will" someone else over their condition, but an effort should also be made toward trying to accept the gender associated with their sex.

It can also go the opposite way - think of those parents that are "trans-gendering" their three-years old son because he said that he likes to dress as a woman while playing. People that are unaware of what sexuality is about or that are going through transitional periods associated with growth are being further confused by projecting unto them a reality that may not be their own, that they may ultimately end up embracing when they could have avoided it.

I met gay men that say that you just become more and more gay/inclined to same-sex preferences through continuous exposure - gender is not set in stone, which is precisely way I utterly reject cultural criminalization of objectivity.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

If you think that calling someone who has YY chromosomes a woman

YY? Ever think that maybe you don't know as much about this as you've convinced yourself you do?

Whoops, typo.

 

[Jei-chan]

I find this to be an interestingly inverse situation to one that is taking place in South Korean pop culture at the moment. While the LGB side of LGBTQ+ people in Western society still see a lot of prejudice, I think it would be a fair statement to say that many Western people understand the concept of homosexuality better than they understand the concept of transsexuality. In Korea it's distinctly the opposite.

They are quite understanding of gender reassignment surgery and the idea of people being born with the wrong sex for their gender is a long-standing part of their culture, but a lot of times anyone who tries to come out as gay is met with a great deal of confusion. In particular, there is one very famous celebrity known as "the" Gay Celebrity, who often holds informative talks with communities and other celebrities trying to explain what homosexuality is, and he is constantly asked why he doesn't simply transition to a woman if he is interested in men, and has to explain very patiently that no, he is a man, he just also finds men attractive. When he announced once that he was dating a man, the country had a collective freak-out because "WHAT???? THERE ARE TWOOOOOO??!?!?! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST HIM?!?!?!?!?!?"

Right now a tabloid paper in South Korea has published an article stating that two members of a popular boyband (as yet unnamed, they put the rumour out there first to stir up speculation and presumably prompt the members in question to out themselves and possibly face extreme danger) are gay and the uproar is quite incredible (in a very "this makes me sad for the human race" kind of way).

I hope the human race gradually moves towards a more complete understanding of these things so we can stop hurting each other.

OT: Very big props to Lilly Wachowski for making the announcement herself even though it wasn't her intention. I wish her all the best!

 

[Something Amyss]

You know the only thing I really don't like about trans individuals?

They get to choose their names, I feel like that's cheating.

I'd gladly trade you the gender identity issues and fear of social repercussions for the right to swap names.

Also, just going to point out that nobody took issue with me going by an alias, but the minute I started going by "Amy," it became a problem.

There is strong medical consensus that reassignment surgery is generally the most appropriate method of dealing with gender dysphoria. It tends to have, by far, the best results in terms of emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, and a dozen other indicators. There are a host of studies on this (which I've posted in the past; if you like, I'll grab them and put them here).

There's a strong medical consensus that transitioning is the most appropriate method. This usually involves at least hormones, but even that isn't required and SRS certainly isn't. In fact, there are a lot of risks associated with SRS.

That is really not how psychiatric disorders work. Telling someone to simply get over the way their brain works is like telling someone with a broken arm to just get over the broken bones. These symptoms are not ephemeral, magical phenomena with no basis in physical reality; they are grounded in the fleshy physical systems of the brain, and asking people to try to solve the problem by living in denial is asking them to live in a much more delusional state than accepting the reality of gender dysmorphia and transgenderism.

This is one of the more frustrating elements. It sounds super pretty to just say "be yourself! Accept who you are!"

Except, overwhelmingly, we have medical and psych data that say otherwise.

Hell, accepting what you are is what we're doing. We're trans.

YY? Ever think that maybe you don't know as much about this as you've convinced yourself you do?

Maybe he's an alien!

>.>

Sorry, more fun than a typo.

 

[Something Amyss]

No one ever told me that, and if they did I think I'd laugh in their faces, because it's always when I'm reading a book in public that people decide I must not want to be reading, I must only have a book because no strangers whose crap I don't fucking care about haven't come over and nobly saved me from the boredom of page-turning. Yet no one pulls that shit when my nose is in my phone or tablet. Still haven't figured out why.

Because normal people use tablets. Abnormal people read. >.>

Honestly, though, people will bug me even when I'm reading off a Kindle--which looks like a tablet--so I don't know if that works more broadly. But yeah, people seem to see reading as a cry for help, be it my Kindle today or a beat-up paperback in the 90s.

True, one cannot just "will" someone else over their condition, but an effort should also be made toward trying to accept the gender associated with their sex.

Has it ever occurred to you that this has probably occurred to each and every one of us in our lifetime before any other step is taken?

 

[JimB]

What I will not do, is lie to them and pretend that they magically change their sex and become a person of the opposite sex - because currently there is no way of achieving this.

I have never argued there is, nor have I, on an admittedly brief skim of this page, seen anyone else argue that. As the term "transgender" denotes, we are talking about gender; how a person is treated in society due to sex or perceived sex, not about biological constraints. However, since you keep bringing up biology and chromosomes, I am curious, how do you know the people whose sexes you insist on defining for them don't, say, have an uneven entanglement of chromosomes that caused the person's second chromosome to carry the opposite SRY chromosomal features, resulting in XX male syndrome or XY female syndrome? How do you know the people you're defining in absence of their own input don't have Klinefelter's syndrome, granting them a third chromosome? What exactly is your basis for making these determinations in complete absence of specific knowledge of their chromosomal pairings, and in a seeming absence of specific knowledge of how chromosomes actually work?

True, one cannot just "will" someone else over their condition, but an effort should also be made toward trying to accept the gender associated with their sex.

What effort is that, Emanuele Ciriachi? If you have some grounding in psychology, psychiatry, or therapy, then I would very much like to know what therapeutic regimens have been overlooked by the medical community that you have reason to believe are effective, or, if none currently exist, what regimens you have invented that you believe would be effective. Please, do share with us your research and methodology.

Think of those parents that are "trans-gendering" their three-years old son because he said that he likes to dress as a woman while playing. People that are unaware of what sexuality is about or that are going through transitional periods associated with growth are being further confused by projecting unto them a reality that may not be their own, that they may ultimately end up embracing when they could have avoided it.

I do not see what hypothetical, ignorant laypersons misdiagnosing their children has to do with whether a medical condition acknowledged and that has an accepted and effective course of treatments available is actually real. Quite frankly, it comes off as a "Won't someone please think of the children?" argument, and I am not impressed by it until and unless you can demonstrate to me with cited data that the damage you insist is being done is somehow caused by transgenderism being accepted as a genuine and real thing.

I met gay men that say that you just become more and more gay/inclined to same-sex preferences through continuous exposure; gender is not set in stone, which is precisely way I utterly reject cultural criminalization of objectivity.

You are misusing the words "gender" and "objectivity." The former, you are using as a synonym for "sexual orientation;" the latter you are misusing by assuming you have on visual inspection knowledge of a person's chromosomal makeup that you do not possess.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Wait, you can only change your family name once?
That sounds like a pretty serious headache for any woman that has been married more than once...

Dutch law can be really -pardon the language- ass backwards at times. A woman can choose to keep her own family name when married however (not sure if that is possible in every country?).
But that's a whole diffirent story.

Honestly, that's why my social phobia wont go away anytime soon. When not at home I pretty much block out the whole outside world by listening to music with my headphones on high volume.

Yes, but in this day and age, how can you tell the difference? >.>

I know how you feel, though. I remember back in high school people always used to tell me that if I kept sitting outside under a tree with my headphones and sunglasses on reading a book, nobody would want to talk to me. Which was bullshit, because they apparently still did, but aside from that my response was basically "good." Because I wanted to be left alone for...some reason.

For me it actually stems from being bullied for 12 years or so, which only stopped because someone pushed my buttons hard enough that I beat him up. I hardly hanged out with dudes, which was reasons enough to pick on me appearantly.

anyway. Ive been reading somewhere earlier in this thread that having friends while being trans can be a difficult thing to have, and it is something I have to agree on. The amount I have can be counted on pretty much on one hand, and only 2 of them I'm really close with; them being a guy who's my best friend for 10 years now, and my boyfriend who accepts me for who I am despite the fact that I wont start on HRT untill it is june.

I don't know if I wouldve come this far without those two. Considering I had a severe depression that still kinda lingers on.

Didnt expect ending up in a short rant, appologies.