God got her wrong...

[Gob]

This place can be so fucking disheartening.

We're trying our best.

[Gob]

From a different person;

I was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. I started my medical transition at the age of 29. During those years, I underwent a multitude of gender-affirming surgeries, which included a rhinoplasty, a chin, jaw and brow-bone shave along with multiple breast augmentations.

"Gender AFFIRMING?" Surely if you need to make those changes, your gender was already affirmed?

[Bicycle Bill]

Normal isn’t even a setting on a washing machine anymore (maybe on some models).

There is no normal, there are 7 billion+ experiences of human existence.

So if there is no 'normal', then there can be no 'abnormal', either.  Racists are no longer 'abnormal'.  Homophobes are no longer 'abnormal'.  The practices of the Taliban are no longer 'abnormal'.  Psychopathic killers are no longer 'abnormal'.  Neither are Trump supporters, or black gang-bangers, or pyromaniacs, or anti-vaxxers, or people like Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein — even your singularly-focused rants and diatribes are not 'abnormal'.  Each and every one of these people are part of those "7 billion+ experiences" and are therefore 'normal' behavior — at least for them.

Now, would you like to take a couple of minutes to re-assess your position on 'normality' as it applies to society as a whole, and why there are norms?   I'll wait.

-"BB"-

[Scooter]

"Gender AFFIRMING?" Surely if you need to make those changes, your gender was already affirmed?

"Gender affirming" is used to describe such surgeries because they are bringing the body in line with the gender the person already knows themself to be. As opposed to older terms like "sex change" or "gender reassignment" which suggest that it is the surgery itself that is changing the person's gender.

[Scooter]

So if there is no 'normal', then there can be no 'abnormal', either.  Racists are no longer 'abnormal'.  Homophobes are no longer 'abnormal'.  The practices of the Taliban are no longer 'abnormal'.  Psychopathic killers are no longer 'abnormal'.  Neither are Trump supporters, or black gang-bangers, or pyromaniacs, or anti-vaxxers, or people like Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein — even your singularly-focused rants and diatribes are not 'abnormal'.  Each and every one of these people are part of those "7 billion+ experiences" and are therefore 'normal' behavior — at least for them.

Saying there is no "normal" i.e. there is no commonality that defines all, or even most, of human experience, is not the same thing as saying that there is no good and evil, or that there are no behaviours that cause harm. But bravo for the sideways attempt to equate trans people to sexual predators and other assorted criminals.

[Big RR]

I agree Scooter; there is a very judgmental tone in that use of the word "normal"; abnormal is merely a deviation from the norm, or mean behavior of other statistic. So heavy and light people are "abnormal" as are tall and short people. But there is no commonality with a trans person or a sexual predator, or a mass murderer, or a person who sets fire; sure, the deviate from the norm, but they also harm others--something the trans person does not do by choosing to live as (s)he feels compelled to. We don't prohibit behavior because it deviates from the norm, we prohibit it because harms other people.

[Gob]

"Gender affirming" is used to describe such surgeries because they are bringing the body in line with the gender the person already thinks themself to be.

FTFY.

[datsunaholic]

So if there is no 'normal', then there can be no 'abnormal', either.  Racists are no longer 'abnormal'.  Homophobes are no longer 'abnormal'.  The practices of the Taliban are no longer 'abnormal'.  Psychopathic killers are no longer 'abnormal'.  Neither are Trump supporters, or black gang-bangers, or pyromaniacs, or anti-vaxxers, or people like Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein — even your singularly-focused rants and diatribes are not 'abnormal'.  Each and every one of these people are part of those "7 billion+ experiences" and are therefore 'normal' behavior — at least for them.

Big difference. Everything you listed above are learned behaviors. Learned behaviors intended to harm or at least marginalize people "different" than them. Much like your own transphobia, they can also be unlearned. Of course, if you prefer to maintain your hatred for other humans simply because they don't fit your definitition of normal, that's on you.

[Scooter]

"Gender affirming" is used to describe such surgeries because they are bringing the body in line with the gender the person already thinks themself to be.

FTFY.

So we're back to denying trans people their identity. Got it, just so we're clear that it is impossible to have any discussion about this in good faith, so there's no point wasting time in future.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I agree Scooter; there is a very judgmental tone in that use of the word "normal"; abnormal is merely a deviation from the norm, or mean behavior of other statistic. So heavy and light people are "abnormal" as are tall and short people. But there is no commonality with a trans person or a sexual predator, or a mass murderer, or a person who sets fire; sure, the deviate from the norm, but they also harm others--something the trans person does not do by choosing to live as (s)he feels compelled to. We don't prohibit behavior because it deviates from the norm, we prohibit it because harms other people.

I don't recall any discussion here about "prohibiting" behavior. Just as long as you agree that men choosing to become women and women choosing to become men is abnormal - by your definition above. Merely a deviation from the norm. The vast majority of men and women remain men and women without cutting and adding bits to change that. (Augment perhaps!). What's so difficult about admitting that a fact is a fact?

Scooter wrote something cogent earlier - such statistical outliers shouldn't bother anyone.

[Gob]

So we're back to denying trans people their identity. Got it, just so we're clear that it is impossible to have any discussion about this in good faith, so there's no point wasting time in future.

I'm not denying anyone anything. How can it be anything other than them "thinking" they were born into the wrong gender? Also, has no trans person ever transitioned back to their birth sex? If so, what changed? Umm... their thinking.

A 2019 poster presentation examined the records of 3398 patients who attended a UK gender identity clinic between August 2016 and August 2017. Davies and colleagues searched for assessment reports with keywords related to regret or detransition. They identified 16 individuals (0.47%) who expressed regret or had detransitioned.

[Scooter]

Ah yes, the old "there have been some minute number of people who have 'expressed regret', therefore the gender identity of trans people can be discounted as a figment of their imagination."

And not for nothing, but "regret" can be caused by a lot of things, including the negative reactions of others. Someone might "regret" some of the consequences of their decisions, without believing that they should have decided differently.

[Joe Guy]

I guess the problem is that some people were born with the brain of one sex and the body of another sex. That must be confusing, to say the least.

[Guinevere]

I wonder if any of you deniers knew anyone who struggled with gender identity and dysphoria your attitude would change. I doubt it, but one can hope.

I also note that the best hospitals in the US (which are some of the best in the world), including the Massachusetts General Hospital, now add the distinction between “gender assigned at birth” and your gender identity, plus your pronouns, on their intake forms (my general practice is part of MGH, so I’ve answered those questions). The National Academy of Medicine also recommends asking these questions as a part of best medical practices. Peer reviewed paper, here: https://www.nap.edu/read/13128/chapter/1

[Econoline]

If I were ever to meet the person in the photo in the opening post, I would try to treat them the same no matter what sort of clothes, makeup, underwear, or hair they were wearing and I would never be so rude as to ask them about their genitalia. In speaking with them, the pronoun I would use is "you". I'm not sure why anyone would expect me to approve or disapprove of what they think of themself; as a hetero cis male I don't find them sexually attractive at all, but why would they or anyone else care about that, and why would *I* care if anyone else did care?

Does that make me a bigot, or just an old fart? Whatever...I can deal with it.





ETA: still waiting for someone to enlighten me regarding my earlier question: what—exactly, specifically—does someone like Diana Johnson mean by the term "living as a female"?

[Gob]

Ah yes, the old "there have been some minute number of people who have 'expressed regret', therefore the gender identity of trans people can be discounted as a figment of their imagination."

Can you point out where anyone claimed that?

And not for nothing, but "regret" can be caused by a lot of things, including the negative reactions of others. Someone might "regret" some of the consequences of their decisions, without believing that they should have decided differently.

Another thing no one has denied .

[ex-khobar Andy]

There are some languages that have no gender! Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, and many other languages don’t categorize any nouns as feminine or masculine and use the same word for he or she in regards to humans.

(From https://www.memrise.com/blog/what-if-yo ... guage-isnt.)

Would seem to be a change worth making to the English language. There are plenty of words and idioms we all use nowadays which would have been greeted with 'Huh?' 20 years ago. I don't like them/they because those words already have a meaning and when I am writing I usually use s/he if I need a gender neutral pronoun. Lack of gender pronouns does not seem to have held back the Finns, Hungarians or Estonians any more than the lack of gendered nouns (la porte or le fenetre; or Freund and Freundin; or das Mädchen [neutral noun meaning the girl]) has hindered Anglophones.

[BoSoxGal]

When I was in college back in the early 90s, University of Maine flagship campus, I had a work study job at the bursar’s office for a couple of summers and one school year. The office was all women in various roles, from the counter clerks who took student and department payments to the ladies who ran the student ID department, to the ladies in the back offices who reconciled accounts and Perkins loans and such. They were all nice gals, some college educated some not, most were family oriented - married with kids.

The big boss whose office was across the hall was a man. But the second summer I worked there he began transitioning to female by living as - dressing, hairstyle, etc. The women in the office LOST THEIR MINDS. He wasn’t doing anything to harm them - after an outcry over the very suggestion she might use the ladies bathroom, she voluntarily offered to use a single use bathroom on another floor of the building. But just the fact that she existed was an affront to all their old school mostly Catholic values and it was all they talked about that summer, and the talk was incessantly ugly and negative.

Meanwhile I befriended one of the younger staff, babysat for her a few times and ultimately got invited to a get together at her house where our trans woman boss was in attendance. Turns out she was dating another of the female staff members - yes trans women sometimes are still interested in women - and I had the opportunity to get to know her as just another person in the world with the full range of foibles we all have. A very nice person, by the way.

I’ve never forgotten that experience, and how I lost respect and affection for the nasty Nellies who could not live and let live and gained affection for a person very different from me but no less worthy of compassion and care. I’m sure my very early exposure to the LGBTQ spectrum by having openly gay uncles I adored and a transvestite uncle I adored didn’t hurt.

I would like to think some of the obsessively transphobic posters here would change their minds if they had the opportunity to know a trans person as an individual, but I suspect there are just a lot of negative nasty Nellies here who aren’t capable of growing their Grinch sized hearts. And it’s too bad that this kind of ugliness and racist ugliness now makes up so much of what gets posted here. This board has really devolved since Jim passed away.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I've known very few gay individuals who were open about their sexuality to me: which probably means I've known loads of gay people and it just didn't come up in conversation about politics or literature or music or football or whatever - why should it? By the same token I have known no trans people - which probably means that I've known lots but it never came up. Why would it?

Which sort of makes the point. I've never known anyone of whom I thought - he/she/they is an affront to me and my values or he/she/they is not worthy of happiness or he/she/they should not be allowed to say what he/she/they thinks or he/she/they should not be allowed to have and bring up children.

I do think that the issue of transgendered women (i.e., women who were once men) in sport is a complex one and there is no simple answer. Especially with the structure of sport as it is: there are possibly only 50 or so female tennis players who make a decent living at their sport.

[Econoline]