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Lucienne -> RE: A legend returns ... (2/19/2010 10:26:50 AM)
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ORIGINAL: NihilusZero
This is a stark difference to every other instance of LGBT discrimination. The issue is that people should be able to comfortably and openly be who they are, without bigotry. Transgendered people are "[X gender] that used to be [Y gender]". There should be no shame in that. If there is shame, though, to have to admit having been born one gender and then deciding you wished to be another, it is wrought from the individual him/herself.
People are certainly free to be deceptive to whomever they wish for however long they wish, but dressing it up in the armor of protection based on sexual minority persecution is not an applicable process in these sort of cases.
This strikes me as a rather harsh and reductive take on the transgendered experience. Frequently you are dealing with individuals who feel that the sex organs they were born with are deceptive as to the nature of their identity. For a MTF, the deception is pretending to be a man, not living as a woman. That's the internal truth.
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Although, I do suppose that choosing to refrain from mentioning it in a public profile is just a matter of taste if the person is openly honest whenever a potential suitor is speaking with them. In that respect, I guess it's just another personal thing that needn't be initially brought out in the open, although it would still confuse me since I would hope the person could wear that part of themselves with pride...but, you do make a good point that there are perhaps enough twats out there that it makes it far too uncomfortable in the harassment realm to have to openly state it.
Perhaps? You might benefit from a course of self-study of violence against transgendered people. Yeah... there really are enough twats to make it more than uncomfortable to openly state "I was born with man-parts, but now I'm a woman!"
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Aren't we just passively condoning the bigotry from the folks who would demean transgendered people if the answer is to allow the deception in order to avoid the consequences?
I disagree that an individual born with man-parts is necessarily deceptive for presenting as a woman. And the part about allowing deception in order to avoid consequence... that would be an easier argument to swallow if the consequences were nothing more than polite rejection by desired romantic partners. Going with the rough definition of "gender" as a social construct and "sex" as referencing the reproductive organs you were born with, I'd say that social relations do not require disclosure of one's sex at birth. Generally speaking, we should all feel free to identify as whatever gender we want in public without fear of any serious "consequence." There is no duty to disclose what type of sex organs one was born with to friends, acquaintances, co-workers, etc. Failure to disclose to those people is not a deception. And when the consequences of disclosure are frequently discrimination and bigotry, I think a certain degree of reticence with that information is eminently reasonable.
How one deals with disclosure when dealing with a person you'd like to see have intimate contact with your naughty bits... that's a trickier subject. I would say that prudence would dictate disclosing sooner rather than later.
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As for alice... put me in the group of people who don't understand or agree with the harping on her gender. Her profile says "Female." I have no interest in seeing her naked or going anywhere near here dainty bits. So the exact nature of her anatomy today, or 20 years ago, is of no consequence to me. I don't care how many people she calls fat, ugly, or old, she offers plenty of words to criticize without having to assault her gender identity. I wish people would reconsider doing so, because it's a rather ugly thing to do. And it's lazy. Plenty of other things to criticize her for before you get to that.
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