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

[zelda2fanboy]

See, it's that last part that is really kinda a kick in the nuts. A lot of GSM folk end up in a place where they can kinda rightfully say that they have no one that actually loves them. People who have been abandoned by, or had to abandon their own friends and families. That's still a shocking and heart shatteringly common scenario people face when they come out of the closet. For those people the best you can say to them is that, just because the people you thought loved you have abandoned you, doesn't mean you won't find others who love and support you. It also doesn't mean that your family and friends are lost, chances are better than not that eventually they'll come around.

Yeah, it really is. Very true.

 

[Silvanus]

I will keep using gender-based (that is, sex-based) pronouns because I'd rather use wording that describes an objective situation over one that is based on subjective and ailing choices.

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.

 

[Lightknight]

That would be true if you could find something measurable in the body or brain that objectively define your definition of gender - I might be wrong but I don't think such a thing exists, as behavior/sexual preferences cover such a wide range that any attempt of classification would be largely subjective. Facebook's ridiculous Gender Multilist is a prime example of this.

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.

I will keep using gender-based (that is, sex-based) pronouns because I'd rather use wording that describes an objective situation over one that is based on subjective and ailing choices.

While I certainly understand that gendered pronouns are typically intended to describe the sex of a person, and personally struggled with that notion myself, the intention of using a different pronoun for transgendered people falls more under not being a dick than being grammatically correct.

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.

Of course he can dress as he want and even change his name - I just hope he won't choose to reach the point of mutilating himself simply because he dislikes the body he was born with.

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?

 

[Lightknight]

I will keep using gender-based (that is, sex-based) pronouns because I'd rather use wording that describes an objective situation over one that is based on subjective and ailing choices.

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.

To be fair, most people do use gendered pronouns as a means of identifying the evident sex. This is the simple nature of the vast majority of the time being that gender ends up also matching sex and reinforced that when referring to someone you see you don't necessarily know what their gender is and so the default is to go with the visible sex. While the scientific community has evolved the terms to conform to gender identity rather than sex, this is not the common vernacular. I actually don't think society will ever stop using these terms at large to refer to the apparent sex of a person but will become more open to using apparently "incorrect" pronouns to defer to ones gender identity when that person's gender identity is known to be disparate from their sex.

So the primary point of using gendered pronouns for gender as opposed to sex is to use the terms in a correct medical sense and to not be dick. I wouldn't be so quick to put aside the "insulting" portion of why it is ethically bad to misgender and would actually place it at the forefront.

 

[Silvanus]

To be fair, most people do use gendered pronouns as a means of identifying the evident sex. This is the simple nature of the vast majority of the time being that gender ends up also matching sex and reinforced that when referring to someone you see you don't necessarily know what their gender is and so the default is to go with the visible sex. While the scientific community has evolved the terms to conform to gender identity rather than sex, this is not the common vernacular. I actually don't think society will ever stop using these terms at large to refer to the apparent sex of a person but will become more open to using apparently "incorrect" pronouns to defer to ones gender identity when that person's gender identity is known to be disparate from their sex.

This is true, and I don't think there's anything wrong with using the terms to refer to evident sex (well, unless somebody corrects you). As far as I can tell, though, Emanuele Ciriachi is going further, and saying that regardless of what someone does-- transitions, presents as their identified gender-- he would still consider, and call, them the terms associated with their birth sex.

Using the common vernacular in general usage is fine, as is merely making a mistake based on visible cues. Using the wrong terms when you know the person identifies as otherwise is not.

I wouldn't be so quick to put aside the "insulting" portion of why it is ethically bad to misgender and would actually place it at the forefront.

Good point.

 

[Lightknight]

To be fair, most people do use gendered pronouns as a means of identifying the evident sex. This is the simple nature of the vast majority of the time being that gender ends up also matching sex and reinforced that when referring to someone you see you don't necessarily know what their gender is and so the default is to go with the visible sex. While the scientific community has evolved the terms to conform to gender identity rather than sex, this is not the common vernacular. I actually don't think society will ever stop using these terms at large to refer to the apparent sex of a person but will become more open to using apparently "incorrect" pronouns to defer to ones gender identity when that person's gender identity is known to be disparate from their sex.

This is true, and I don't think there's anything wrong with using the terms to refer to evident sex (well, unless somebody corrects you). As far as I can tell, though, Emanuele Ciriachi is going further, and saying that regardless of what someone does-- transitions, presents as their identified gender-- he would still consider, and call, them the terms associated with their birth sex.

Using the common vernacular in general usage is fine, as is merely making a mistake based on visible cues. Using the wrong terms when you know the person identifies as otherwise is not.

Yes, that is exactly what Emanuele Ciriachi is doing. He is specifically tying gendered pronouns to chromosomes. My intention was to say that gendered pronouns really are intended to classify someone by apparent sex in the common vernacular and that it is a fairly new grammatical rule to use said pronouns to refer to gender instead once additional information to do so is given. This is the same reason why if we call a dude with long hair a she on accident we start saying he the moment he reveals that he's just got long hair. Additional information is supposed to change how we approach situations. However, I will add here that even gendered pronouns referring to apparent sex aren't referring to chromosomal sex. So it's weird to only enforce that for transgendered people when we would even apologize and correct ourselves if we misgendered someone who only looked like the other sex but wasn't that other sex or trying to look that way.

I actually had the same problem with pronouns awhile back and you guys helped me with that. Personally, I was afraid of using them and accidentally saying the wrong one and hurting my friends. Learning that it's more about not being a dick than being grammatically correct was what helped me get over this problem.

Emanuele may also benefit from learning about intersex people who are born with extra chromosomes yet regularly have one gender identity. It establishes that gender identity can exist separately from chromosomal expression.

 

[Something Amyss]

Being trans is not a temporary problem. You can be thrown in jail for being trans in about half of the world. Here in the United States at least a quarter of the population doesn't think it should be legal to be trans. These assholes will not go away in any of our lifetimes and will continue to make life hell for anybody trans during this time.

Trans panic is still a legal defense in 49 US states. Police are less likely to investigate the deaths of trans people or violence against trans people, assuming we even feel comfortable enough going to the police in the first place.

I will keep using gender-based (that is, sex-based) pronouns because I'd rather use wording that describes an objective situation over one that is based on subjective and ailing choices.

Of course it's not really objective, and we don't have any single objective marker for what makes someone male or female.

Claiming objectivity doesn't make you right, it only means you're misusing the word.

 

[Lightknight]

Being trans is not a temporary problem. You can be thrown in jail for being trans in about half of the world. Here in the United States at least a quarter of the population doesn't think it should be legal to be trans. These assholes will not go away in any of our lifetimes and will continue to make life hell for anybody trans during this time.

Trans panic is still a legal defense in 49 US states.

Trans panic? That's weird as hell. It sounds like the defense would be like :"There I was on a bus when some dude in a dress walked in so I just started panicking and punching". Is it still a successful defense in any modern cases?

Police are less likely to investigate the deaths of trans people or violence against trans people, assuming we even feel comfortable enough going to the police in the first place.

I have always been interested about this statistic. I would be fascinated to know if this is more a correlation with transgendered people being far more likely to be living on the streets and all that entails or if even accounting for the increase in homelessness and potentially criminal lifestyles if there is still a bias against pursuing murder investigations remaining.

Not that transgendered people are more likely to be bad people by any means. They are just far more likely to have their support systems taken from them and have to make ends meet in other ways. They are also far more likely to be abused which itself carries with it a markedly higher prevalence of crime and drug use that is the same with non-trans people who were also abused.

If that's the case, I don't know who that would help but it would be nice to know the world isn't quite as anti-trans as we generally think.

 

[MrFalconfly]

snip

Well, it's good to see your point of view.

I can only say that I disagree on who's at fault. Also I don't appreciate having my point reduced to a strawman ("Being trans is not a temporary problem. You can be thrown in jail for being trans in about half of the world."). I never said "being trans is a temporary problem". I never said anything along those lines either. I said emotional problems (I feel sad, I feel attacked, I feel ...) are temporary.

Have a nice day.

 

[Something Amyss]

No, I won't. People who commit suicide aren't suffering anymore. Their families are and always will.

Assuming they even give a fuck.

Several of my friends have had their families try and injure or kill them.

And telling people to consider such people might very well do more harm than good.

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

Being trans is not a temporary problem. You can be thrown in jail for being trans in about half of the world. Here in the United States at least a quarter of the population doesn't think it should be legal to be trans. These assholes will not go away in any of our lifetimes and will continue to make life hell for anybody trans during this time.

Trans panic is still a legal defense in 49 US states.

Trans panic? That's weird as hell. It sounds like the defense would be like :"There I was on a bus when some dude in a dress walked in so I just started panicking and punching". Is it still a successful defense in any modern cases?

Yes, especially in reducing sentences. The defense is basically "the person was so freaked out by the trans person that they were not in their right mind." It most commonly ends up with unprovoked assault being turned into aggravated assault, or homicide reduced to manslaughter, that sort of thing. It is sometimes successful, sometimes not. We typically only ever hear about homicides involving the defense, but it was deployed in a homicide case as recently as last December, when a marine who had brought a trans woman to a motel room choked and beat the woman into unconsciousness and then shoved her face in a toilet until she drowned. His defense revolved around the idea that he was defending his honor.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

He has a point though.

We're talking about people who's in a mental state where they're considering permanent (that is irreversible) solutions for temporary problems (problems which some times can be solved by having a chat with a friend).

Being trans is not a temporary problem. You can be thrown in jail for being trans in about half of the world. Here in the United States at least a quarter of the population doesn't think it should be legal to be trans. These assholes will not go away in any of our lifetimes and will continue to make life hell for anybody trans during this time.

But I admit that I generally look down at people who commit suicide, because generally it's a selfish act, and as previously mentioned, it's an irreversible pseudo-solution to a temporary problem.

Lets stop pretending that suicide doesn't stop the problem. If you're not around anymore your misery won't continue. Suicide works. Its short-sighted for anybody who isn't suffering a terminal condition in which their death is painful and inevitible but it still does its job. It ends the misery.

As for being selfish, well, we need to be selfish to survive life and sometimes we've earned that selfishness. Like I mentioned before, I don't necessarily see the friends and family of those who commit suicide as victims. Sometimes they're the reason for the suicide and sometimes they deserve that pain, they've earned it by their own actions. Selfish actions, I should add. It isn't selflessness from friends and family that upsets people to the brink of suicide. Maybe their family wanted the suicidal person in the closet because the person being out would be inconvenient to them and they value their convenience more than the person's happiness. Maybe they simply ignored the suicidal person when they were visibly upset in favour of continuing to watch their TV show or finish their phone call, which can apply to practically anybody. Selfishness from people around them tends to be what drives LGBTQ people to the brink of suicide. When people mourn over the suicide of an LGBTQ person in their life they're usually thinking of and/or feeling how the suicide hurt them personally, not how miserable the suicidal person must have been for months, years, even decades to get to that point and how they personally contributed to that.

In my experience however, people who commit suicide forget about their friends (that is, their true friends, not the pricks who make their life hell and are mislabelled friends).

Some of us don't have real friends or family. I certainly didn't for a stretch that lasted years. There are people who think they're real friends and family to us but really aren't. Tons of times I see people who think they're friends of the person and that they did the right think but they never exercised basic empathy. People don't see how it is from the perspective of the suicidal person. They don't think about how their suicidal "friend" or "family" saw them in those suicidal moments. If they're disregarding the feelings of their alleged friends and family its probably because those friends and family are part of the problem in the first place. I've seen a lot of my friends attempt or even complete suicide over the years and every time the friends and family who mistreated them always go "I don't understand why they did this. Why couldn't come to me?" and every time I respond bluntly "because you're the problem, because you were too busy thinking about how they effected you to think about how you effected them." Maybe once in a blue moon one of them wises up to the fact that they're what drove them to that point in the first place. Thats rare, though. People are constantly thinking about how they feel because of the suicide or suicide attempt rather than how the suicidal person felt. Its a dearth of empathy, a bastion of selfishness.

Innocent people who would've like nothing more than to help them, being left feeling "why didn't I see this? Why didn't I stop this? I'm at fault, it's my fault that they're dead".

And it is their fault. Partially, anyways. I don't hold them against them as long as they weren't needlessly selfish or callous towards the suicidal party. You have to be selfish in life, you have to worry about yourself, you cannot throw yourself on the spear for everybody. Thats okay. I don't blame people or get angry at them for being reasonably selfish. I get upset at them for viewing themselves as the victims. They're not. The victim is the person laying on a slab in the morgue. They don't get to be selfish about the suicide, they don't get to say "this hurts me" when the suicide was the result of their collective prior selfishness.

That's a gross oversimplification. What about people with paranoid schizophrenia hearing voices in their head and suspecting the world is made of robots plotting against them? Did that person just happen to run into a group of evil scheming robots or are they sick? Having emotional responses to what happens in your life is normal and acceptable. Murder is not.

No, its not an oversimplification. Nobody chooses to be suicidal, to be in a state of mind where suicide seems to be the best option. Murder is a choice, a selfish choice made avoid or less emotional or physical pain. Murder is an act which victimizes another person. Suicide is a method of coping with one's own personal victimization. You have to be victimized to be at the point that you're suicidal.

I don't think saying that someone who is rationalizing suicide is mentally ill is a particularly controversial stance.

Great, now tell that to my relative who is dying due to incredibly painful and terminal bone cancer as we speak. Go tell her she's mentally ill for not overcoming her suffering and not wanting to ease her pain and that she should go onto her last, incredibly painful breath.

I'm pretty sure modern medicine and the law is clear about that as well.

Not necessarily. Suicide is becoming legalized under certain circumstances. Even if they're not they still can't do more than hold you for a few days. If your pain is unrelenting that hold period won't change anything.

There's no "well maybe that the only way out for him/her."

Sometimes it is the only way out.

There was a young girl in Central America who was held for almost thirty years as a sex slave. She had, IIRC, over a dozen pregnancies and was raped daily, usually by more than one person. She underwent this for almost as old as you are now. If she was given the choice at any point during that time to end her own life to ease her suffering would you really deny her that relief from almost three decades of unrelenting agony, physical and emotional, because she has a little bit of whatever life she could scrounge for her left at the end of it?

Believe me, I want to be on your side on this issue (and trans people in general) as I'm pretty socially liberal on most things. I just want that one piece of the conversation on trans or gay people to not be given as much credence. And if it is a part of the conversation, then it be treated more seriously and not act as though it's always "everyone else's" fault that it happens or that's a logical move for a discriminated trans person to make.

You want to be on our side but you're not and it would help to listen to be people who know and deal with this specific brand of suicidal feelings rather than insisting that the solution another brand applies equally here. People on our side don't say "your feelings are invalid" like you're doing now. They don't say "think of how much suicide woudl upset all the people your life" like you did previously. Thats not how people in the community try to address suicidal feelings. Do you know how LGBTQ folks try to address suicidal feelings among the community? Its simple really.It Gets Better. [http://www.itgetsbetter.org/] It isn't "It Gets Perfect". It isn't "It Gets Better Immediately". It isn't "Assholes Stop Trying To Ruin Your Life". Is it enough for everybody? No, sadly its not. Some people are simply too far gone to help. For the rest though, its helpful. It isn't condescending to anybody for feeling that way. It doesn't shame them for feeling that way. It doesn't tell them that things really aren't that bad. It acknowledges the truth that things are terrible and that they have every right to feel that way because the people saying it have been at that point in their life. Because the program is honest and empathetic it actually succeeds in saving lives because it understands the pain of the people who are suicidal and shares that pain along with hope for the future by being an example that the message is true. It shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel rather than simplying insisting that there is while saying a bunch of others things that only makes them feel worse.

I mentioned terminal illness in a previous post, but I guess you didn't see it. At least consider that suicide is a really really bad idea in 99.99999% of cases and if a person is thinking it's a good idea, then that person is most likely wrong. I know it's hard to admit when you're wrong. I spent years repeating "I want to die, I want to die, I want to die" like a mantra. Every day was abject misery. I thought of all sort of ways to get out of it. Now I have a sense of survivor's guilt, like I got away with something and I don't deserve the life I have now. Every moment seems so precious now. I was simply wrong and I could have missed all of this. I've known a few people who killed themselves over the years and I think they were wrong, too. I may overstepping my bounds to say that suicidal trans people might also be wrong about that, but I still feel that way.

 

[Lightknight]

Being trans is not a temporary problem. You can be thrown in jail for being trans in about half of the world. Here in the United States at least a quarter of the population doesn't think it should be legal to be trans. These assholes will not go away in any of our lifetimes and will continue to make life hell for anybody trans during this time.

Trans panic is still a legal defense in 49 US states.

Trans panic? That's weird as hell. It sounds like the defense would be like :"There I was on a bus when some dude in a dress walked in so I just started panicking and punching". Is it still a successful defense in any modern cases?

Yes, especially in reducing sentences. The defense is basically "the person was so freaked out by the trans person that they were not in their right mind." It most commonly ends up with unprovoked assault being turned into aggravated assault, or homicide reduced to manslaughter, that sort of thing. It is sometimes successful, sometimes not. We typically only ever hear about homicides involving the defense, but it was deployed in a homicide case as recently as last December, when a marine who had brought a trans woman to a motel room choked and beat the woman into unconsciousness and then shoved her face in a toilet until she drowned. His defense revolved around the idea that he was defending his honor.

That's horrifying. Thanks for the information.

I suppose this is most commonly used as a crime of passion then where a person felt misled by an individual they were engaging in intimate relations with?

Can't really see how it could be used as an argument for curb stomping a random passerby but society hasn't really been impressing me lately...

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

Being trans is not a temporary problem. You can be thrown in jail for being trans in about half of the world. Here in the United States at least a quarter of the population doesn't think it should be legal to be trans. These assholes will not go away in any of our lifetimes and will continue to make life hell for anybody trans during this time.

Trans panic is still a legal defense in 49 US states.

Trans panic? That's weird as hell. It sounds like the defense would be like :"There I was on a bus when some dude in a dress walked in so I just started panicking and punching". Is it still a successful defense in any modern cases?

Yes, especially in reducing sentences. The defense is basically "the person was so freaked out by the trans person that they were not in their right mind." It most commonly ends up with unprovoked assault being turned into aggravated assault, or homicide reduced to manslaughter, that sort of thing. It is sometimes successful, sometimes not. We typically only ever hear about homicides involving the defense, but it was deployed in a homicide case as recently as last December, when a marine who had brought a trans woman to a motel room choked and beat the woman into unconsciousness and then shoved her face in a toilet until she drowned. His defense revolved around the idea that he was defending his honor.

That's horrifying. Thanks for the information.

I suppose this is most commonly used as a crime of passion then where a person felt misled by an individual they were engaging in intimate relations with?

Can't really see how it could be used as an argument for curb stomping a random passerby but society hasn't really been impressing me lately...

We most commonly hear about it in the case of intimate relationships, yes, but it happens elsewhere too. A variation (gay panic) was used quit a few years ago (95 I think?) where someone discovered that their coworker was gay and that they thought he was attractive. The man murdered his gay coworker, stating that he was driven to it because the thought of his coworker being attracted to him was so humiliating and distressing that he could not control himself. In this particular case the defense failed. But not because gay panic is a ridiculous reason to kill someone but because since the defendant waited more than 3 days to murder his coworker that indicated that it wasn't a panic motivated crime.

Another thing is that trans people often don't report hate crimes against them for fear of further victimization. A while back, I think 3 months or so ago, there was a thread in which we were discussing hate crime statistics and especially the problem of low reporting. If a trans person reports a hate crime in the United States they are about as likely to be subject to further abuse by police than to have the crime actually checked out. I think the statistic was about 50% of people who reported a crime reported a negative experience, with about 75% of bad cases involving things along the lines of verbal harassment and physical intimidation designed to make the trans person drop reporting the crime, and the remaining 25% are much worse. Things like sexual or physical violence, wrongful arrests, that sort of thing.

And even if the police are cooperative it doesn't mean anything is going to get worked out. So many trans people just wont report being attacked. I probably wouldn't. Unless there is a body these things rarely go to trial.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

If words still have a meaning they are still brothers - no human being can change their gender regardless of their inclination or the way they dress or behave.

The concept here is that they are not changing their gender but rather were born as a gender that did not match their physical sex. Any work they do on their outer appearance is then to just come more in line with their internal gender. Can they turn their X into a Y or their Y into an X? No, but that's not the point. The point is to look in the mirror and not feel like you're in the wrong body.

We have all kinds of disorders and strange medical conditions in the world, is it so strange to imagine that there could be a condition like that? Hell, we have a condition where you get born with the genitalia of both sexes.

As for the linguistic argument of gendered nouns having meaning, it was only somewhat recently that we've begun to distinguish between the male gender (internal) and the male sex (external). Language is just catching up. If it helps you any, they are called gendered pronouns and not sex pronouns which now does mean reference to one's gender identity.

That would be true if you could find something measurable in the body or brain that objectively define your definition of gender - I might be wrong but I don't think such a thing exists, as behavior/sexual preferences cover such a wide range that any attempt of classification would be largely subjective. Facebook's ridiculous Gender Multilist is a prime example of this.

Lots of neuorological studies have found that transgender tend women have similar brain structires to cisgender women, visa-versa for trans men. Also there is digit length where a trans person tends to have the same ratio of finger length between the ring and index finger as the gender they identify as. Then there's presentation, since you don't see the genitals of everyone you meet you can't know what they're packing, you also generally don't have access to the information gender they were assigned at birth, nor do most people know their genetic states. Also transgenderism has basically has nothing to do sexuality, and just as little to do with behavior out side gender presentation.

Finally Facebook only has 3 gender options, "Male", "Female", and "Custom" the last one doesn't even exclude the first two, it just allows you to have more specific gender information. That's not ridiculous by any stretch. Especially considering Facebook isn't any official governmental service. What is being is inclusive, something you should think of being, because right now you're not being inclusive.

I will keep using gender-based (that is, sex-based) pronouns because I'd rather use wording that describes an objective situation over one that is based on subjective and ailing choices.

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.

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.

Of course he can dress as he want and even change his name - I just hope he won't choose to reach the point of mutilating himself simply because he dislikes the body he was born with.

Mutilating? Are you talking about Sexual Reassignment Surgery?[footnote]Also known as SRS, Gender Reassignment Surgery, GRS, Gender Confirmation Surgery, Cross-Gender Genital Reconstructive Surgery, and etc...[/footnote] 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.

If words still have a meaning they are still brothers - no human being can change their gender regardless of their inclination or the way they dress or behave.

Also don't use the linguistic argument to support transphobic ideas.

What..?

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.

 

[Something Amyss]

And even if the police are cooperative it doesn't mean anything is going to get worked out. So many trans people just wont report being attacked. I probably wouldn't.

I haven't. In fact, I ended up surprising one of my close friends recently when he stumbled on some of my posts. He had no idea.

Unless there is a body these things rarely go to trial.

Even then, not necessarily. There have been a ton of stories where trans people have died and not been investigated. One need only look at the list of names rifled off on Trans Day of Remembrance. Hell, you can look at the "black trans lives matter" material, too. Last month reminded me that, for all the shit I have on my plate, being white is still a pretty solid privilege.

Finally Facebook only has 3 gender options, "Male", "Female", and "Custom" the last one doesn't even exclude the first two, it just allows you to have more specific gender information. That's not ridiculous by any stretch. Especially considering Facebook isn't any official governmental service. What is being is inclusive, something you should think of being, because right now you're not being inclusive.

This one's always been puzzling to me anyway. It's an additional option you don't have to use that doesn't affect you in any way, shape or form. And yet, you'd think that it was some massive rollout of gender enforcement that stigmatised anyone who didn't pick option 3.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

And even if the police are cooperative it doesn't mean anything is going to get worked out. So many trans people just wont report being attacked. I probably wouldn't. Unless there is a body these things rarely go to trial.

To expand on this I was harassed for years by a person, who eventually attempted to rape me, even after that event I couldn't get a restraining order on them, or a investigation of the attempted rape. I've never had a truly bad experience with the police either... But that failure on the law's part told me I'm not going to get help in those situations.

I mentioned terminal illness in a previous post, but I guess you didn't see it. At least consider that suicide is a really really bad idea in 99.99999% of cases and if a person is thinking it's a good idea, then that person is most likely wrong. I know it's hard to admit when you're wrong. I spent years repeating "I want to die, I want to die, I want to die" like a mantra. Every day was abject misery. I thought of all sort of ways to get out of it. Now I have a sense of survivor's guilt, like I got away with something and I don't deserve the life I have now. Every moment seems so precious now. I was simply wrong and I could have missed all of this. I've known a few people who killed themselves over the years and I think they were wrong, too. I may overstepping my bounds to say that suicidal trans people might also be wrong about that, but I still feel that way.

Well to put it simply, it's not about it being the "correct" answer, it's about the situation that causes the feelings. When you're denied your true self by your friends and family, when you have no options, ability, or tools to seek the help you need. The picture starts to look pretty bleak. Then a lot of families will have their trans children shipped off to conversion "therapy" camps, where said offspring gets abused and demoralized for not being "normal". Generally by saying said children, even if they're adults at that point, are an abomination against god and the like. Mix that with families who just throw their trans relatives out, disown them, homelessness and poverty numbers in the trans community... Just so many factors that can make a person feel isolated, hated, and out of options.

I'm not saying they're in the right if they commit suicide, but I don't blame them for their actions either. It's a foolish, shortsighted, and ultimately wrong choice to make, but it's still the choice many do make. Rather than focus on the person who was driven to such an extreme reaction, I'm of the mind that we have to address the issues that lead to the reaction. We're not helping at all by condemning those who committed suicide, who are currently looking at it as an option. What would help is making available resources and protections for trans folk who are currently being driven to extreme measures.

Finally Facebook only has 3 gender options, "Male", "Female", and "Custom" the last one doesn't even exclude the first two, it just allows you to have more specific gender information. That's not ridiculous by any stretch. Especially considering Facebook isn't any official governmental service. What is being is inclusive, something you should think of being, because right now you're not being inclusive.

This one's always been puzzling to me anyway. It's an additional option you don't have to use that doesn't affect you in any way, shape or form. And yet, you'd think that it was some massive rollout of gender enforcement that stigmatised anyone who didn't pick option 3.

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...

A funny side note. I once changed my gender to "Nachos" because I was messing around with my FB profile when I was sick of the gender binary and hungry at the same time.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

And even if the police are cooperative it doesn't mean anything is going to get worked out. So many trans people just wont report being attacked. I probably wouldn't. Unless there is a body these things rarely go to trial.

To expand on this I was harassed for years by a person, who eventually attempted to rape me, even after that event I couldn't get a restraining order on them, or a investigation of the attempted rape. I've never had a truly bad experience with the police either... But that failure on the law's part told me I'm not going to get help in those situations.

A martial art that emphasizes simple, often improvised weaponry is a good place to start, like Escrima. Sure, you won't learn how to use a sword or a spear, or kick three pots in one jump. You will learn how to beat the life out of someone with a couple of sticks though (and use knives if you want to). I know that a lot of people, especially Americans favor guns, but they're overrated for most people, in most situations. They're great for murdering someone from ambush, and they feel big and heavy and impressive, but unless you're actually trained in the use of it to the point of keeping a calm head in a crisis, it's just a scary lottery with lethal consequences. Sticks are easy. Sticks are everywhere. Sticks can fuck you up. Sticks are also legal everywhere, and finally, if you need training anyway to be effective in a crisis, why not train with something you can use anywhere and anytime?

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.

Eh what I already know works well enough for self defense, which is why I avoided being raped, throwing someone whose attempting to grab you head first into pavement does that. The problem is I couldn't get any defense from the law. Killing the person in self defense wouldn't help anyways, because it's pretty easy to prejudice jurors into convicting innocent people, if said innocent people are social undesirables.