About that “T” in GLBT…
Very rarely do I find myself in agreement with John Aravosis from Salon, yet this column here is one of the times that I mostly do:
In simpler times we were all gay. But then the word “gay” started to mean “gay men” more than women, so we switched to the more inclusive “gay and lesbian.” Bisexuals, who were only part-time gays, insisted that we add them too, so we did (not without some protest), and by the early 1990s we were the lesbian, gay and bisexual, or LGB community. Sometime in the late ’90s, a few gay rights groups and activists started using a new acronym, LGBT — adding T for transgender/transsexual. And that’s when today’s trouble started. […]
I have a sense that over the past decade the trans revolution was imposed on the gay community from outside, or at least above, and thus it never stuck with a large number of gays who weren’t running national organizations, weren’t activists, or weren’t living in liberal gay enclaves like San Francisco and New York. Sure, many of the rest of us accepted de facto that transgendered people were members of the community, but only because our leaders kept telling us it was so. A lot of gays have been scratching their heads for 10 years trying to figure out what they have in common with transsexuals, or at the very least why transgendered people qualify as our siblings rather than our cousins. […]
I support transgendered rights. But I’m not naive. If there are still lingering questions in the gay community about gender identity 10 years after our leaders embraced the T — and there are — then imagine how conflicted straight members of Congress are when asked to pass a civil rights bill for a woman who used to be a man. We’re not talking right and wrong here, we’re talking political reality. Our own community is still grappling with this issue. Yet we expect members of Congress, who took 30 years to embrace a gay ENDA, to welcome the T’s into the bill in only five months.
I’m probably going to anger some people by posting this, but like Michael at Gay Orbit I have great difficulty understanding “how a man who wants to cut off his penis, have a vagina installed, take hormones, and become a woman, has anything in common with someone who simply exhibits same-sex attraction”. Now I am definitely a layman here, but normally when someone is so alienated from their own body and has the desire to inflict harm or remove parts this is considered to be pathological. Yet for some reason, those who seek to change their gender are seen by many as not engaging in self-mutilation but instead this is the proper treatment for what is termed “gender identity disorder” (GID). Why? The outward or physical appearance of a person can be altered, but down to their DNA they remain the gender they were born with. I know in speaking with other gay men, once you bypass the fear many have of being viewed as bigots, that I am not alone in this. The obvious retort of course would be something along the lines about how same-sex attraction could be considered to be pathological and indeed once was. I suppose it’s possible since as the old joke goes, if I were crazy how would I really know I was? Yet there seems to be far more in support of homosexuality not being pathological than there is for GID.
Regardless of the merits or lack thereof concerning ENDA I see little reason why movement forward for homosexuals should be stymied by something that only a few seem to find reason for. Aravosis himself supports “transgendered rights” and perhaps there is some basis for them yet if even many homosexuals fail to see the connection, how indeed are straight Congressmen or others supposed to see it? If one deals purely in realpolitik, it seems that if any advancement for gays is going to happen the issue of transgenderism is something that is not going to help. The Left has always used the cry of “educating” folks about some issue and in their minds everything falls magically into place. Those who don’t of course are just dismissed as being dolts that are stymied by inherent bigotry or self-loathing. Perhaps, perhaps not. Yet these “dolts” also hold an overwhelming amount of the votes needed for “transgendered rights” and don’t take kindly to being dismissed so easily. Instead of the angry reaction from some quarters I’m seeing online, perhaps these folks should focus their efforts on “educating” because as it stands right now I just don’t get it and neither do many others.
103 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
*** have great difficulty understanding “how a man who wants to cut off his penis, have a vagina installed, take hormones, and become a woman, has anything in common with someone who simply exhibits same-sex attraction”.***
You’re not the only one. To me, being gay is not some choice I made. It is what it is. Going through surgery to become the opposite sex of what one was born as, is a choice. A long process, from what I understand, is required to be able to have this surgery. Why? To make sure the person fully knows what he/she is getting him/herself into. Then, they make a CHOICE to either stay as is, or change.
There are ZERO similarities between gay people and transsexuals. Ok, no, that’s not true. If someone who is a transsexual, and gay, then his/her being gay is what’s similar. Nothing else. We have been force-fed another victim-driven agenda. “T’s” are victims of their own vanity.
Comment by LesbianNeoCon — October 9, 2007 @ 7:01 pm - October 9, 2007
The Left is very fond of “education”, so much so that when they get the whip-hand on a nation they’re quick to open “re-education camps” to make sure everyone gets the message and toes-the-line properly.
I use “G/L” as my own short-hand, and the bisexuals get a free-ride. The rest of the GLBTQUVXYZ… alphabet-soup is just PC-gibberish.
Comment by Ted B. (Charging Rhino) — October 9, 2007 @ 7:04 pm - October 9, 2007
I’m being very cynical. In order to be a special interest group - you need all the trappings, victimhood, a vocal ‘leadership’. Many groups find that it helps to join forces. Usually those who want to join the established group will get benefits while offering nothing to the larger group. Case in point, Transgenders, they are nothing on their own, but fold them in with GLB, and suddenly, they have a voice.
Now the real cynical part. The Democratic party is made up of many victim groups, and sometimes one has to shaft one group in favor of another - because it is all about the votes. So in non election years one must court the GLBT, because they have money. Come election years, one must court the Black and Hispanics because they have the votes. But as we all know, the Blacks and Hispanics don’t really like the GLBT, many of them are much more aligned with hard line social conservatives on such issues.
Along comes a seemingly innocuous issue, Enda, but if the Dems actually go through with passing this law - they alienate all those blacks and hispanics, and we are in a middle of of an election cycle. So the law must not pass, so rather than finally prove to all those Rich Gays that their contributions will now bear fruit. The Dems pull out the T card, and manage to convince the Gay power structure (HRC, whomever) that it must be all or nothing. And for some unknown reason the Gay Leadership doesn’t say: wait a minute, passing this law will benefit 90% of our constituency, no they say all or nothing, the minority of Transgenders - if they aren’t in it, no deal. They get to feel good about themselves, we are so good and pure, even though once again, perfect is the enemy of good.
And the Dems? They let out a great sigh of relief, the Blacks and the Hispanics are still in their back pocket, and the money will probably still flow from those shafted gays.
Lesson to be learned, if Enda can get killed so easily, there is no chance in hell for Gay marriage. And the Republicans had nothing what so ever to do with this.
Comment by Leah — October 9, 2007 @ 7:36 pm - October 9, 2007
Just an idea…perhaps….
Including the T, a group generally accepted to be suffering from a disorder (GID), by association tends to bolsters the idea that homosexuality is not simply a lifestyle choice.
That, and when you want power for a special interest group, the more the merrier.
If I’m completely off base, please pardon the intrusion.
Comment by iamnot — October 9, 2007 @ 7:55 pm - October 9, 2007
Being transgendered may not be the *same* as being gay, but lots of transgendered people *are* gay…and depending on who you ask, it’s a different set of people.
Before you tell me transsexuals aren’t gay, you have to tell me when they’re “being gay”; is a post-op transsexual gay when they’re attracted to someone of their birth sex? Or only when it’s someone of their current sex?
The funny thing is, when HRC first started shopping for support for ENDA, the transsexuals were the first ones they threw to the wolves. (”Don’t worry, we’ll be back for you later after we take care of the *normal* queers”)
And they couldn’t get it passed then either.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 8:19 pm - October 9, 2007
Oh, and by the way, male-to-female reassignment surgery isn’t “cutting off the penis”…that’s just an ignorant thing to say.
And while undergoing surgery is in some sense a choice, *being* transsexual is no more a choice than being gay is. There is some emerging scientific evidence that the neurological differences found in transsexuals are related to (but of course not identical with) the neurological differences found in homosexuals.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 8:28 pm - October 9, 2007
Which makes no sense whatsoever to me. If I were sexually attracted to females, why would I surgically alter myself to ‘female’ (even though I really wouldn’t be a female)? How is this not pathological? If I wanted to remove a body part it certainly would be. If I truly believed I was Napoleon people would say I’m nuts. I’m not trying to be “insensitive” here but I am laying out exactly what I and quite a number of others think about this.
They remain the gender they were born with regardless of what they alter on their outward appearance. How can a ‘female’ transgender truly be a lesbian when down to their DNA they remain a male? No, they are a mutilated male with a female appearance.
Probably because purists quickly learn that compromise is the name of the game and no group in our entire history that had a grievance got everything they wanted exactly as they wanted it. If you don’t want to be pragmatic and demand and all-or-nothing attitude, history has shown that in the short term (which can last for many years) you get exactly that: nothing. So are you saying that DADT should remain in place until transgenders are included? To hell with the gays and lesbians who want to serve in the meantime? Not me. Quit being lazy and do the hard work to convince enough people that your cause is worthy of support.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 8:42 pm - October 9, 2007
@John–
Sorry that the idea of a homosexual TS doesn’t make sense to you. Rest assured there’s millions of straight people to whom being gay doesn’t make sense either.
Re: ENDA: I’m perfectly willing to be pragmatic…and in fact these days I’m probably more likely to be discriminated against in the workplace for being gay than for being transsexual.
DADT in the military is stupid, and I’m opposed to it. ENDA I’m not so sure about…and if I have to prove I’m being discriminated against because of my sexuality rather than my gender identity, it’s not doing me a lot of good…it’s about like hate crime laws, where you not only have to prove you *were* assaulted but also *why* you were assaulted.
All that said…the reality is that definitions of homo- and hetero- sexuality are inevitably entwined in definitions of gender. And if you think gender is and easy, fixed, unambiguous, genetic, easily-definable, binary thing, you’ve become a victim of your own oversimplification.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:00 pm - October 9, 2007
Oh no, we’re becoming…a New Deal alphabet bureaucracy.
Comment by Crow — October 9, 2007 @ 9:05 pm - October 9, 2007
@Crow–
Musn’t let yourself be put off by a few TLAs and FLAs. (Three-Letter and Four-Letter Acronyms, repecitvely).
My ex- was a pharmaceutical chemist, and then a nurse practitioner. I’m a software engineer, and a radio ham, and we both were pilots. When we went for a ride in the car, every license plate on the road had at least one second meaning…
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:10 pm - October 9, 2007
It is a crude but effective description which while not being technically accurate, it is good enough to get the point across.
Undoubtedly. The same could be said for just about any pathology or psychosis. How is transgenderism not either of these?
Sounds like more research is needed before one can link the two together.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 9:12 pm - October 9, 2007
I have some gay-supportive friends who balk at transgenderism because they view the MTF’s as being “fake women” who are a parody of the real thing. Given that they are not genetically female in this case and never will be regardless of the surgery or hormonal treatment, their position is understandable.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 9:14 pm - October 9, 2007
“It is a crude but effective description which while not being technically accurate, it is good enough to get the point across.”
Ah…so it doesn’t matter if what you say is truthful as long as it’s effective propaganda?
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:16 pm - October 9, 2007
“Money And Politics Often Drives Science”…
Found via Dr. Helen, Steven K. Erickson of Crime And Consequences recounts the awful history of repressed memories:The recent issue of Scientific American Mind has an article by prominent psychologists Scott O. Lilienfeld and Kelly Lambert on the histo…
Trackback by Ed Driscoll.com — October 9, 2007 @ 9:18 pm - October 9, 2007
Genetic gender is only a small part of the picture. In your model, what is the gender of a person who is genetically mosaic, having more than one genotype, with XX-XY pairs that don’t match? How about a person with Androgen insensitivity syndrome?
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:19 pm - October 9, 2007
I’m a moderator for a lesbian group that’s serves as online bulletin board and does not allow casual chat. We had a big fight because we do not accept transgendered women into the group. The best argument for acceptance was they are discriminated against too and thus we should not discriminate against them. Huh? A lesbian group by it’s very nature is discriminatory. I counter the trans-issue with - how about people who seems themselves as amputees? They do not feel whole until they have an amputation. Should we allow doctors to cut off healthy limbs from individuals?
Comment by Sandy — October 9, 2007 @ 9:20 pm - October 9, 2007
Undoubtedly, yet many can at least understand a same-sex attraction regardless of whether they believe it to be moral or not. Do you think transgenderism makes a lick of sense to them? Not in the slightest.
Biologically it IS easy and fixed. You are the gender you are born with regardless of how you may think inside your head. The question is whether one having a persistent feeling, belief or whatever that they should be the opposite gender of their birth is ‘normal’ or something that is not.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 9:22 pm - October 9, 2007
No, because it isn’t propaganda at all. I understand that the penis is used in surgically creating the ‘vagina’. Saying that the penis is cut off while not technically correct does get the gist across in layman’s terms.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 9:25 pm - October 9, 2007
Extreme rarities that Mother Nature enjoys throwing at us to make us all go grey.
Yet such is not the case will all or even most transsexuals.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 9:27 pm - October 9, 2007
Interesting bit of waffle dancing there. This sounds a bit like the ex-gay ministry literature.
My parents do not understand or “get” my nephew being homosexual, but they are totally supportive of him.
He also has a “choice.” He could choose to live celibate or with a woman for the rest of his life. To be alone, desperate, and a victim. But he chooses not to. He would rather live a life where he can love and enjoy companionship in the way that fits him.
A person born with a cleft palate is making a choice to have it repaired, and a person choosing to have a failing heart transplanted is making a choice.
You may ask, hopefully, what do these three have in common? They are all conditions of birth or physiology where we make a choice not to change our core being, but, rather, to refuse to allow physiological norms and limitations to dictate how we face life.
For a transsexual to choose surgery is the same thing…it is not a choice to change the core, but to refuse to allow physiological norms and limitations to dictate how we face life. Transgender people are not choosing who we ARE any more than you are. Our choice is victory over circumstance, or the death of living empty desperate lives or checking out early.
A few quick points:
In national studies, homosexual people have indicated that one of, if not the, the primary reasons they face discrimination s their GENDER EXPRESSION.
1) DNA does not clearly define gender
2) Genetics do not clearly define gender
3) When our chief opponents think homosexual man they see a man in a dress, or a person who is effeminate, and use that image to define ALL homosexual men
4) When they see a LESBIAN, they see a radial feminist
5) They would use the newer ENDA to fire both because of their non-normative gender expression, and would win in most courts because the ENDA debate SPECIFICALLY eliminated gender expression…that is how courts decide cases of first impression–AND Title VII would be nullified in most cases involving homosexuals and Lesbians based on the same arguments
6) Back to DNA for a moment, there are some research studies that have shown strong correlations on certain genetic factors that are common to both,BOTH, homosexuality and transgenderism,
7) Not ALL people who are transgender are transsexual, MANY choose not to have surgery.
9) Once any form of ENDA passes, there will not be a rematch. EVER. Because it is to hard and because there will not be enough support for it.
Finally, AS TO CHOICE, suicide is also a choice, and too many transgender people take their own lives because they are not afforded an opportunity to live a normal life. Thirty years ago this was a sad truth in the homosexual world also.
BTW, it is interesting to hear the arguments use the last thirty years as a reference. THIRTY FIVE years ago, it was transgender people who created the movement that is today your exclusive little club.
I do apologize for using the term homosexual, as I know that it is seen as derogatory, but wanted to stir up a bit of the frustration I feel when people tell me that being transsexual is a choice. I did not spend 40+ years of my life desperately and miserably, trying to be a man to keep suffering through the choice argument from someone who has faced he same thing and should know better. My choice, and many of you reading faced the same moment, came when I realized I would end up dead if I did not choose to be myself instead of being who those who were not in my shoes told me I should be.
Comment by Erin — October 9, 2007 @ 9:28 pm - October 9, 2007
If you want to see a “parody of a woman”, check out some of your local drag queens sometime. I doubt you really know much about what most transsexuals are like, because I think it’s very likely that most of the transsexuals you know haven’t told you that they *are* transsexual. Especially given your apparent attitude towards transsexuality.
And if you want to hold forth on this topic, you should probably read up on what both transgenderism and transsexuality are– they’re not the same thing.
As to more research on neurological differences in homosexuals and transsexuals being needed, I agree; unfortunately current research methods require post-mortem dissection and microscopic of the brain, so it’s slow work.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:29 pm - October 9, 2007
If you’re unshakably convinced that genotypes are the absolute determinant of gender, then your request for education on the subject is disingenuous.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:31 pm - October 9, 2007
Why do lesbians get top billing?
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 9, 2007 @ 9:35 pm - October 9, 2007
All of these arguments sound like re-runs of James Dobson radio broadcasts
Comment by Erin — October 9, 2007 @ 9:36 pm - October 9, 2007
Genetic gender is only constant, fixed and binary if its expression is completely deterministic, and I can assure you it isn’t. There are all kinds of developmental and environmental factors that can interfere with it. And even the genetic gender can be polymorphic; dismissing edge cases as “rare” doesn’t make them go away.
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy…”
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:37 pm - October 9, 2007
“Why do lesbians get top billing?”
Because if it was alphabetical the bi’s would come first.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:38 pm - October 9, 2007
“Why do lesbians get top billing?”
Aha, now the truth is made know…you are afraid to live in a world were males are not dominant, an where women have equal rights.
If ignorance is bliss, you don’t need drugs, do you.
Comment by Erin — October 9, 2007 @ 9:40 pm - October 9, 2007
“Saying that the penis is cut off while not technically correct does get the gist across in layman’s terms”
Only if “the gist” is making sure everybody is as squicked by the idea of reassignment surgery as you are. You can uncross your legs, it’s not going to happen to you.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 9:46 pm - October 9, 2007
TGC, as to #20, it’s because lesbians are hotter than gay guys.
GBLT sounds too much like a deli sandwitch to me.
Maggie, I’d heard the terms ‘addadictomy’ and ‘lopitoffofme’ years before I’d given the existance of same a thought. It’s calling me fat or arturo clueless, “mean, but accurate”
I do personally know one cross dresser who suffers from GID. He’s married and has kids, none of whom know about his fetishes. Though I’ve tried to get him to talk to his wife more, even offered to mediate.
We’ve had debates on if therapy or the surgery would be the best solution for him, with me advocating the former, and him wishing for the later.
Sad thing is, dressed and shaved he makes a pretty fair woman.
Comment by The Livewire — October 9, 2007 @ 9:55 pm - October 9, 2007
Um…they ARE parodies of women and to my knowledge nobody is asking for anything like ENDA for them. Of course that may not be true on the left coast…
To my knowledge I know as many as most Americans do: none. I never said otherwise.
Probably, yet it is difficult to find truly unbiased material on the subject.
Uh…no. You misunderstood what I wrote and have the onus wrong. Just like gays and lesbians for ourselves, transgenders have the difficult burden of making their own convincing case.
I never said “only” but the predominate factor above all others? You betcha.
Which leads one to lean on the “nurture” side, borrowing this from the argument over homosexuality.
Nope, but it is illogical to use them for the entire group thereby dismissing other factors since these rarities do not apply to them.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 9:55 pm - October 9, 2007
That gets to the heart of this: is this a “fetish” as you call it, or something that is who this person is and therefore should be treated by “gender reassignment”? There is a mental disorder that some have about removing body parts. Should this be likewise encouraged or is GID a special category? That’s where the argument from transgender rights is breaking down because if you think a gay man is having difficulty following all of this, try Middle America.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 9:59 pm - October 9, 2007
Well I do feel it’s not something that should be addressed by a ‘lopitoffofme’ for the same reason someone with body symetry disorder shouldn’t have an arm lopped off. *shrug* but I’m stubborn like that
Comment by The Livewire — October 9, 2007 @ 10:04 pm - October 9, 2007
“Lopitoffofme”? Well that’s a first.
Comment by John — October 9, 2007 @ 10:06 pm - October 9, 2007
“To my knowledge I know as many as most Americans do: none. I never said otherwise.”
Well, that’s part of the problem. Chances are you actually do know more TSs than you think you do…they’re just not out to you. And no wonder, given your expressed attitudes.
By “developmental” factors I didn’t mean “nurture “, I meant fetal development; the fetal hormonal environment can have a lot of factors in it. For example, just think about that “specific birth defect” they keep mentioning in the Propecia ads when cautioning women against handling the tablets. There are great big piles of environmental estrogens laying about too.
Edge cases demonstrate where your biological determinism thesis falls down, but you dismiss them as “illogical” because “they don’t apply to everybody”. Of course they don’t, that’s why they’re edge cases.
If you want everybody to make their own case for their own ENDA, I assume you’re proposing separate ENDAs for lesbian and gay men?
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 10:09 pm - October 9, 2007
“That gets to the heart of this: is this a “fetish””?
Dunno…is being turned on by men a fetish?
I think The Livewire calls his friend a fetishist because he’s trying to convince the friend that the friend isn’t transsexual. Sounds to me like the friend is less than convinced.
Ever had somebody try to talk you out of being gay?
“Don’t be gay, Sparky.” –South Park
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 10:13 pm - October 9, 2007
@The Livewire:
Your advocating for therapy for your friend is a very good idea. But you should also prepare yourself for the possibility that the outcome of the therapy may be a referral for surgery.
No reputable surgeon will consider performing reassignment surgery without the client having been though psychotherapy first.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 10:16 pm - October 9, 2007
Well I do look at it as a fetish, in the same sense that my own sadism is a fetish. So technically I see it as a psychological disorder.
Comment by The Livewire — October 9, 2007 @ 10:20 pm - October 9, 2007
#31. Oh I know that. But I am hoping that whatever route he takes, his family will support him.
Comment by The Livewire — October 9, 2007 @ 10:21 pm - October 9, 2007
#32 If your friend really is transsexual, it’s not “just a fetish like my sadism”…unless your sadism troubles you continuously, and rises to a sadistic personality disorder. DSM calls sexual sadism a paraphilia, and thus a fetish. Fetishistic transvestism is a paraphila too.
Transsexuality *isn’t* a paraphilia…and if your friend really is talking about reassignment surgery, therapy is very much in order to sort it all out.
As for family support for a transsexual adult, that’d be nice, but is extremely rare.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 10:37 pm - October 9, 2007
The next time someone’s tempted to say “Most Americans don’t know any transsexuals”, they might want to consider the evidence presented in
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/Reports/Prevalence%20of%20Transsexualism.pdf
“The most-cited estimates of the prevalence of transsexualism are based on counts of gender reassignments
in European clinics many years ago. Observing that reassignments have been in a start-up transient , we
extend those results by recalculating prevalence from the accumulating incidence data, taking into account
birth, reassignment and death rates and then, based on age-distributions of reassignment data, we
determine the inherent number of persons who at some point in life will undergo reassignment. From this
reanalysis of those early reports, we determine lower-bounds on the prevalence of the underlying condition
of transsexualism to be between 1:1000 and 1:2000, using those reports own data. We then present more
recent incidence data and alternative methods for estimating the prevalence of transsexualism, all of which
indicate that the lower bound on the prevalence of transsexualism is at least 1:500, and possibly higher.”
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 9, 2007 @ 10:59 pm - October 9, 2007
Anybody else bored? I think Futurama is on.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 10, 2007 @ 12:05 am - October 10, 2007
#33
“Dude, don’t care.” - South Park
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 10, 2007 @ 12:06 am - October 10, 2007
@38
You seem to be conflating American and European.
Comment by DoDoGuRu — October 10, 2007 @ 7:06 am - October 10, 2007
Related: Lesbian Sues Restaurant After Being Mistaken For a Man. (Something that will never happen to John Edwards.)
Comment by V the K — October 10, 2007 @ 10:35 am - October 10, 2007
I, too, have trouble with the ¨T¨. Tthe idea of being a woman trapped in a man´s body or vice versa, having anything in common with gays and lesbians is as ludicrous as former Senator Lincoln Chafee being a Democrat trapped in a Republican body.
Comment by Roberto — October 10, 2007 @ 11:18 am - October 10, 2007
The issues are related in that they provoke fear from people who don’t understand and haven’t bothered to. I can’t say I full understand why someone born a man wants to be a woman or vice versa. But I accept that such a phenomenon exists. There also seems to be an idea in mainstream society that these surgeries can be done on a whim. They aren’t. Someone else pointed this out already but they have to get a psychiatrist to sign off and have to live in the new gender for quite some time. It’s a long process, an expensive one (and not one covered by insurance), and I’m sure a very emotionally painful process.
I can’t imagine that anyone would put themsevles through this if it weren’t virtually impossible for them to live a lie any more. That’s the part I do understand and that all gay people should understand. Why did we come out? Because living a lie was too exhausting and too miserable and coming out and being who we were and facing the consequences of other people’s homophobia was better than living the lie.
We have that in common. I understand why people think it’s a separate issue. It is. But it involves sexuality and discrimination.
I don’t think we should give up ENDA over their non-inclusion. We fought to hard to get to the point where we might actually get full equality under the law. Civil rights did not involve getting everyone equal at one time. What if women had had to wait to vote until the Voting Rights Act? Would that have been fair to women to have to wait 40 years until non-whites in the south were allowed to vote as well?
Comment by Houndentenor — October 10, 2007 @ 11:47 am - October 10, 2007
I don’t get the “T” either. But can anyone tell me why there is a “B”?!?!?
Why the hell are bisexuals included?
Its these folks who are often caught outside, in parks or in bathrooms. And its those guys that the straight community fears. They and their closeted, secret actions are what hurts the gay community…Often they are the husbands, boyfriends you see on the news.
And why are they part of the gay community anyway? They are not gay. They are “whatever”
I don’t get that at all and I wish it could change…
Comment by gil — October 10, 2007 @ 11:53 am - October 10, 2007
#44- discrimination exists. The fact that the ¨T´s¨are discriminated doesn´t automatically qualify them for inclusion. Before Stonewall the black community had already began their movemnet for civil rights. After Stonewall, the black community did not say ¨let´s include the gays in our struggle, its all about discrimination.¨ As often as the self appointed gay leadership attempted to link our struggle as being the same, many black leaders rejected the notion, theirs being obvious for skin pigmentation and our is supposedly not so obvious.
Gil, when I studied psychology, bisexulaity was defined as someone who hadn´t concretized his/her psycho-sexual image. A male given the choice of going to bed with an ugly woman or a handsome guy will select the handsome guy. The emergence of the ¨B¨ as it was explained to me is that it is a creation of Hollywood. With the acceptance of gays in the late 70´s Hollywood had scripted a number of shows with gays characters in the early 80.s but with the negative news of AIDS the gay characters were changed to bi´s in order to make them more acceptable to the viewing public. I won´t swear the validity of the explanation but it seems plausible.
Comment by Roberto — October 10, 2007 @ 1:57 pm - October 10, 2007
discrimination exists.
But don’t you have to want to be discriminated against in the first place?
And yes, before you get in a tizzy, I have been denied service in a restaraunt because of what I was wearing. I got over it a few minutes down the road.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 10, 2007 @ 3:25 pm - October 10, 2007
#48: No, the blacks certainly didn’t opt for gay inclusion, there’s a boatload of homophobia in the Black community. So there’s ample precedent to tell transsexuals to go get their own cause and stop squicking the normals.
So, let’s see…so far we’ve slagged the trannies and the bisexuals, both of whom have failed the comprehensibility test, and thereforre must be adjudged pathological. Is there anybody else we “just don’t understand” who should be excluded too? Gotta love “identity politics”; maybe this is a clearest indication to date that ENDA itself is as conceptually flawed as “hate crime laws” are.
It all just reminds me of the days back when I used to actually read Doonesbury. When Ginny’s bf Clyde finds out that Ginny has a co-worker in congressional staff lawyer Andy, who was gay (he later dies of AIDS).
Clyde: “So I hear you’re gay.”
Andy: “Yeah…I hear you’re black.”
Clyde: “Yeah, man, but that’s normal.”
Andy: “Didn’t used to be.”
Comment by MaggieLeber — October 10, 2007 @ 4:57 pm - October 10, 2007
“But don’t you have to want to be discriminated against in the first place?”
…..Um…..
Roberto
What you say sounds right to me. I have always guessed that bisexuality is a myth that overly sexual people made up to cover for the fact that they have experimented. They want to settle down with a woman but they sure like to screw around with a guy.
Go to your local gay bar, and look around, I am sure you will see a bunch of guys trying to cover up the wedding bands.
Uhg.
Comment by gil — October 10, 2007 @ 5:05 pm - October 10, 2007
Thanks SO much for this piece. My friends/partner have inflicted guilt on me for my inability to include the “T” in my acceptance. I cannot and will not.
Comment by Pam — October 10, 2007 @ 5:20 pm - October 10, 2007
#50 The gay and lesbian community has NOTHING in common with transexuals. They to us what earmarks are to legislation. As an independent group they can better present their legislative needs and work for social acceptance and understanding rather than riding on the coattails of the G/L community. The sex change is a long process. I knew several who were in the process of change and when I worked as a bank teller they knew to come to my window to cash their checks becasue I did´n´t give them static about a masculine ID while they were, to all intents and purposes, a woman.
Comment by Roberto — October 10, 2007 @ 5:53 pm - October 10, 2007
Yep. My brother in fact still believes that being gay is a choice. Yet you are comparing apples and oranges because I have never said nor do I believe that transgenderism is a choice or something that one can be talked in or out of. Obtaining so-called “gender reassignment” is a choice though. Yet even after the surgery, the person in question remains the gender they were born with regardless of what their outward appearance may look like. Again, I can truly believe that I am Napoleon, dress up in a period uniform like he wore and even effect an outrageous French accent (or perhaps Corsican) that would put John Cleese to shame, yet in the end I still would not be Napoleon. How is transgenderism any different than this? Why is the person who believes they are someone else considered to have a mental problem EXCEPT when it comes to gender? That’s what trans have to address and that is what I and most others do not understand.
Comment by John — October 10, 2007 @ 6:15 pm - October 10, 2007
As do I. Yet accepting that phenomena exists does not translate into according legal status to them on a whim.
It involves a helluva lot more than just sexuality and that’s where this gets bogged down. If you think Middle America balked at “Heather Has Two Mommies” wait until you explain that a man having surgery to become a ‘woman’ is actually a lesbian. Good luck with that one.
Comment by John — October 10, 2007 @ 6:19 pm - October 10, 2007
Why not? If someone can be attracted to the same or opposite sex, it stands to reason that there are some who like both.
Comment by John — October 10, 2007 @ 6:46 pm - October 10, 2007
“Aha, now the truth is made know…you are afraid to live in a world were males are not dominant, an where women have equal rights.”
Erin: Wouldn’t putting “Ladies First” be old-fashioned and patronizing. Reminds me of the fifties.
We’re so PC now we run around in circles.
Comment by BrianP — October 10, 2007 @ 7:46 pm - October 10, 2007
Glad someone had the courage to bring up this issue. I’ve never understood where gay solidarity with the T came from. 2 points:
1. Haven’t there always been gay people? Transgender is a recent phenomenon dependent on technology. Perhaps, this does not take away from the argument that transgenders deserve rights, but it strikes me that this supports the argument that they are a different group of people than gays.
2. Self-mutilation is a sign of psychopathology. A sex change is self-mutilation. I thought one of the main arguments posed by some against equal rights for gays was that they would be unable to provide a healthy home environment for children. How can people who self-mutilate provide a stable home environment?
Comment by Bob — October 10, 2007 @ 8:13 pm - October 10, 2007
#58:
There have always been transgendered people. Only relatively recently has decently effective surgical reassignment been available. gender identity is not the same thing as sexual orientation, but theer is considerable overlap, although transsexual folks are *much* more likely to be closeted about their gender status than about their sexual orientation.
Perhaps you should consider letting people decide for themselves what constitutes “mutilation” of their bodies, lest you suddenly find someone has decided for you that your tattoos, your piercings, or your appendectomy are inerrant symptoms of pathology.
In fact, the screening during therapy for what’s called “psychiatric co-morbidiity”: other psychological issues presenting as or conflated with gender dysphoria is quite stringent.
By the way, my children are now 19 and 23, and they’re doing just fine, thanks.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 10, 2007 @ 10:18 pm - October 10, 2007
C’mon John…I’m one hell a lot closer to being female than you are to being Napoleon. Furthermore, I can present documented, competent medical and psychological opinion certifying that I’m both female and not crazy, documentation that was accepted by the state of my birth and residence and several Federal departments. It’s good enough for me.
Why is it so important to you to insist that genes be the only determinant of gender? It’s just plain not true.
As for #55, I guess we’ll all just have to restrict ourselves to states of being that are easily explainable to your concept of Middle America. (At least that’s apparently an easier standard to meet than things that are both explainable and palatable to you personally.)
If, as you originallly insisted (and I concur), that sexual orientation and gender identity are such separate issues , why then do you find it so utterly unimaginable that a male-to-female transsexual might be lesbian in orientation? (Can you really be thinking “Gee, all women want a penis, so if you want to be with a woman you must want to have one.”?)
It is true that that orientation and gender are related at least to the extent that sexual orientation is usually lableled with words referenced to the gender of the person being described: “homosexual” and “heterosexual” (rather than. say, “androphyllic” and “gynophillic”, which mean the same thing no matter who you apply them to)
A friend of mine once said “Gender identity isn’t about who you go to bed with, it’s about who you go to bed as.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 10, 2007 @ 10:45 pm - October 10, 2007
#58: There have always been transgendered people too… it’s only recently (if starting in the 1960s is “recently”) that techniques for surgical and hormonal reassignment has been developed and widely understood. There are no clear indications of the historical incidence of transsexuality any more than there are reliable numbers for the incidence of homoseuality in times when it was criminalized. And transsexuals are *still* much less out than homosexuals are. Claiming that transsexuality is a new phenomenon just because its only recently become widely known in the culture is kind of silly.
I here there aren’t any homosexuals in Iran, too…
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 10, 2007 @ 10:55 pm - October 10, 2007
I disagree.
The basic question here is do you choose to feel masculine or feminine? The answer is simply no. Particularly amongst gay men and woman, there is a serious dichotomy in terms of gender identity. Some of us fit well within our own gender and some of us look like the opposite gender. Is that choice? If you say yes, then it becomes substantially easier to advocate that sexuality is choice. Yet, to believe that gender identity disorder is pure vanity, you must say yes.
I have no problem seeing the clear correlation between the two. To not see it, you have to argue against the idea that some men are born effeminate and some woman are born masculine. Is that your position? That gender identity is not hardwired? That gender identity is learned behavior? That would in turn likely make sexuality learned behavior as well. Like the product of an over domineering mother or absent father.
But it’s not. Gender identity is not merely a product of one’s genitalia. For what can be said of hermaphrodites? As individuals born with both male AND female genitalia, one would expect them to be confused about their gender identity. Yet, medical studies have shown that not to be the case. Even a hermaphrodite has an innate sense of gender, despite an outward appearance of both genders. However, since a baby can not articulate which gender he/she feels like, hermaphrodites have often been assigned to the wrong gender. Thus, If one can be born with both male and female genitalia, yet still distinctly feel like one gender, isn’t it possible that one’s outward gender might misalign with one’s innate sense of gender? Hermaphrodites are proof positive that gender identity is, in fact, innate.
Therefore, if I had to wager money, I’d bet that the physiology behind homosexuality and gender identity are very closely intertwined. Outwardly, it might seem like a major difference, a lesbian who simply feels like wearing work boots and flannel shirts and a transgendered woman who actually feels like a man. But biologically it’s probably in the same section of the shopping mall. They are both gender identity issues.
All that said, being transgendered is a lose/lose situation. For it simply is not practical to change genders. It would be easier if a doctor could just flip a switch and rewire the individual to the proper gender identity. But since that can’t happen currently, we must show compassion.
Which brings us to the situation with ENDA. I have great compassion for those who are transgendered. It’s a very difficult life. I fully support the rights of transgendered individuals and they should not be discriminated against. However, the fact that acceptance for transgendered individuals is not today at the same level as acceptance for homosexuals is not reason to deprive employment protection to gays and lesbians. You don’t help no one, simply because you can’t help everyone.
Rep. Frank and Speaker Pelosi are correct in their current position that the bills must be separated for practical political purposes. I look forward to Congress passing ENDA and sending it to the desk of the President.
Comment by Chase — October 11, 2007 @ 12:48 am - October 11, 2007
There’s the carpet munchers.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 11, 2007 @ 2:05 am - October 11, 2007
That’s how I was raised. And yes, I hold the door for folks, expecially women, as well.
Hell, for $300/hr. I’d tell you what you wanted to hear too.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 11, 2007 @ 2:14 am - October 11, 2007
I read something on another blog that also raies troublesome issues about removing gender identity from the ENDA bill.
Often the most vulnerable members of our community in terms of being discriminated against are one’s that don’t conform to standard gender stereotypes and are easily identifiable as gay, such as an effeminate man or a masculine woman. Could gender nonconformity, in the absence of concrete knowledge that an individual is gay, be used by an employer as a loophole in an ENDA without gender identity protection?
Will the phrase “actual or perceived sexual orientation” be enough? I’m thinking it should be, but you never know how something might get interpreted in court.
Comment by Chase — October 11, 2007 @ 4:02 am - October 11, 2007
#63: Maybe…but sadly your opinion may not actually be worth $300 an hour. It just might have something to do with having no credentials, expertise, experience or standing on the topic. Certainly the aformentioned state and federal agencies would like have been unimpressed with “somebody posting on Gay Patriot as ‘That Gay Conservative’ said…”. Go figure.
I doubt you’re getting that much for posting your opinons here. Nor did I pay anywhere near $300/hr for the time I spent in therapy. The surgical work was expensive, but not surprisingly so. This is not something you want done by the lowest bidder, and I think the technical quality of the results was impressive. As Kate Bornstein (not someone I agree with all the time, but reliable for the occasional bon mot) once said on Geraldo many years ago, “both the plumbing and the electricity work fine”.
Comment by MaggieLeber — October 11, 2007 @ 10:10 am - October 11, 2007
# 56 -
Being gay is not just about sex.
As you say, bi sexuality is ONLY about sex.
Therefore its a fetish and they should not be part of the Gay community.
Comment by gil — October 11, 2007 @ 11:20 am - October 11, 2007
#60- can you name a transgendered person before Christine Jorgensen?
She was a WWII who is generally credited with being a pioneer in sex change. This challenges your statement:
There has always been transgendered people too.
There have always been gays and lesbians from the beginning of timr because we were born gay or lesbian. From Egypt to Greece to Rome ancient history has documented our existence. Homosexual behavior has been observed in some domestic animals as well. I don´t know if anybody studied the sexual behavior of animals in the wild. It is highly possible that there might be gay lions and tigers.
Attempting to link transgendered people within a historical context before 1950 is fallacious. Hermaphrodites don´t count.
Comment by Roberto — October 11, 2007 @ 11:23 am - October 11, 2007
Often the most vulnerable members of our community in terms of being discriminated against are one’s that don’t conform to standard gender stereotypes and are easily identifiable as gay, such as an effeminate man or a masculine woman.
Interesting observation from Chase.
My twist on it….In addition, gay conservatives don’t conform to standard GLBT political stereotypes and are also some of the most discriminated against within our community, but not within society as a whole.
Discuss….
Comment by GayPatriot — October 11, 2007 @ 1:15 pm - October 11, 2007
#68 - The canonical obvious answer might well be Charles d’Eon de Beaumont. King Henry III of France crosdressed frequently, and was addressed as “her majesty” at those times. Queen Christina of Sweden after abdicating dressed as a man and renamed herself Count Dohna. Abbe Francois Timoleon de Choisy attended Papal inaugural ball in female dress. George Sand, Franklin Thompson (born Sarah Emma Edmonds), Lili Elbe, Micheal Dillon, Roberta Cowell, etc, etc, etc.
I guess we can’t all be Oscar Wilde. (And when you can be murdered for being who you are, it’s often not smart to be uncloseted, much less famous.) This holding that “there were no trannies before Christine” is either delusional, or willfully ignorant. As I said, I hear there are no homosexuals in Iran, too…
Oh, if you’re going to quote me, try to not inject grammatical errors; I’m usually able to make subject and object agree in number, kthx.
Comment by MaggieLeber — October 11, 2007 @ 1:52 pm - October 11, 2007
Ignorant? You are confusing TRANSVESTITES with transexuals. They´re two different aminals!! That is either confusion or ignorance.
Comment by Roberto — October 11, 2007 @ 2:56 pm - October 11, 2007
Are you saying we need a Dating Non-Discrimination Act to ensure that conservative gays can find dates?
Comment by Chase — October 11, 2007 @ 4:14 pm - October 11, 2007
It is highly possible that there might be gay lions and tigers.
We all know there are gay bears. Oh my.
Comment by HardHobbit — October 11, 2007 @ 6:24 pm - October 11, 2007
Wow, pretty potent arguements.
I’ve a friend who said that she gets more hostile reactions from lesbians about her bisexuality than straights. I wonder at times if it’s because they see her as more of a threat to their sexual idenity than a ‘pure’ straight women. Personally I don’t see why the Bacon in the GBLT would be excluded.
Maggie, we’re going to disagree on the entire surgery thing. I do feel it’s mutulation as well. Taking a perfectly healthy human body and rendering it ‘non-functional’ in an attempt to harmonize the mind.
It’s also my understanding for a significant number (no studies on hand to cite) that ‘buyers remorse’ sets in.
Oh, one other tihng. 1 in 10? You do realize that to clinical psychologists, Kinsey Bashing is an Olympic sport?
Comment by The Livewire — October 11, 2007 @ 9:26 pm - October 11, 2007
. I wonder at times if it’s because they see her as more of a threat to their sexual idenity than a ‘pure’ straight women.
I think it’s because straights dig girl on girl action.
“Oh yeah! Scissor me baby!!“
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 12, 2007 @ 12:07 am - October 12, 2007
The connection is simple…all the G’s L’s, B’s and T’s want to claim victim status on par with any other minority.
Comment by Hunter — October 12, 2007 @ 3:43 pm - October 12, 2007
TGC, I’ve a friend who’s straighter than an arrow who would disagree with you. At the same time, my mostly-ex felt every woman was bi. some just deny it.
As to “dig girl on girl action” I can’t speak for women, but to use my standard quote. “The ultimate male fantasy of ‘girl on girl’ loses a lot of it’s attraction when your mom is gay.”
Comment by The Livewire — October 12, 2007 @ 6:54 pm - October 12, 2007
To: The Livewire (and all),
Concerning the ‘buyers remorse’ you cite … I have noticed three groups. One is those who regret undergoing the transition because they feel they are not really the social gender they initially thought they were. For example, a male who identifies as a woman who transitions to female, only to later realized they really identified as a man, just maybe not as masculine as the social norm. This group probably didn’t really examine it thoroughly.
The other groups identify with their target gender, and have typically acceptance and expectation issues. They may not have realized the costs of transition. By this I mean willing to accept loss of friends, family, income and cannot accept this. The others are those who thought the transition process, with its hormones and surgery options, would allow them to seamlessly blend in with the gender they believe they are. A good example of this is a biological male who may be tall and bulky, who thinks they will come through looking like Sigourney Weaver, only to be more on the Janet Reno side.
All remorse can’t be lumped together.
Note: I am using male and female to represent biological genders (the stuff you were born with) and man and woman as social genders (how you present and relate yourself). This is important because I think there are some parallels among the different strains in the GLBT community.
A person is born with a set of equipment and told to act in a certain norm because that is what they are supposed to do (If you have a penis, your a boy and should act like a boy not a girl). Those that are transsexual don’t make that connection because their social mechanisms say different than the expectations of their bodies. Is a person who is gay doing what is expected of them based on their plumbing ? Except for intimate relationships, most readers here probably identify well with the expectations of their biological gender. So why is the person who is transgendered wrong in meeting societal expectations while a person who is gay doing just dandy ?
The two have an interconnection. Not congruent, but a common thread.
Comment by Wendy — October 12, 2007 @ 9:19 pm - October 12, 2007
Its not just about the transexuals, its also about how you express your gender. What about the lesbian who doesnt like to pretty herself up just because she is a woman, and doesnt put on earings and make up just to meet a dress code. This is why I support the original genuine article for ENDA.
and also protecting transexuals in anti discrimination laws, helps lead to keeping them employed so they do not become sex workers or on government aid because no one wants to hire them.
Comment by Matt — October 13, 2007 @ 12:55 am - October 13, 2007
#74
Livewire: My body works perfectly well, whatever are you talking about “non-functional”? (I was already gratefully and voluntarily sterile long before my reassignment surgery, two kids was quite enough thanks….so don’t even *go* there).
“…an act or physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of the (human) body…”
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 13, 2007 @ 8:20 pm - October 13, 2007
#74 Livewire: Regardless of what you may “feel”, mutilation is glossed as “an act or physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of the (human) body”. My body functions just fine, thanks, and I vastly prefer this appearance, so you’re way off base on that. (I was already electively and gratefully sterile long before that, so don’t go there–two kids is plenty thanks).
As for “buyer’s remorse”, I know about exactly two cases of that; both of whom engaged in fraud to short-circuit the established standards of care. I know *boatloads* more post-op people who are happy with their surgical results.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 13, 2007 @ 8:34 pm - October 13, 2007
#74 Livewire: My body functions just fine after the surgery, thanks, so your “feeling” that it’s mutilated is mistaken. “An act or physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of the (human) body” simply doesn’t apply.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 13, 2007 @ 9:16 pm - October 13, 2007
I agree with all the points that Maggie Leber made, with one exception (more on that later). First, I think there is good reason to include transgendered along with gay, lesbian, and bisexual. There has been a long, historical tradition that anyone being born male must ultimately be attracted to women and also otherwise assume the other normal expectations of a male identity. Similarly for anyone born female. When either of those expectations don’t happen, the person must either be closeted in that respect and grow up unhappy, or face discrimination, etc. For gay persons, things have improved greatly, as many (but unfortunately, not all) gay and lesbians can be openly gay and not face discrimination. Transgendered persons are still well behind in this regard.
Of course, this does not mean that the issues of gender identity and sexual orientation are the same. In fact, most of us would agree that when a man is gay, it is ignorant to also assume that the person also wants to assume a female identity. I also understand how anyone, gay or straight, can not understand what a transgendered person goes through and wonder why on earth would they want to go through sex reassignment. But then again, there are straight people who still don’t understand why people are gay. So what? Why should people’s ignorance be the reason for discrimination and second class citizenship?
John, I agree with you that sexual orientation is not a choice. But a person who is born a boy but identifies as a female is not a choice either. Sure, going through the surgery is a choice. Just like the gay male who decides to act on his sexuality and choose to have sex and relationships with men instead of women is a choice. The difference is that changing one’s gender is a lot more involved.
Is it pathological or harmful to remove or change parts? Not necessarily. For example, if I was born with an extra finger on one hand, I may want to have it surgically removed. Also, consider the following hypothetical situation. Suppose a woman is born a girl, and everything is fine and dandy. She grows up, as a straight woman or a lesbian, and is happy with her gender identity and whatnot. But then either suddenly, or gradually, she grows a penis and otherwise becomes more physiologically a male. Would it be pathological if she wants to be restored to the body that she had before? Does it really make a difference if her genetic code or DNA said that this was supposed to happen to her?
Wendy makes a good point that gender reassignment is not always smooth, unfortunately. But isn’t that the case for those who are gay, but lived the straight life before acting on their sexual orientation? For that reason, psychotherapy is crucial for those wishing to undergo sexual reassignment. And of course, the hope is they seek out someone who is competent to make sure the person understands the full ramifications of their decision, so one of the three scenarios Wendy describes doesn’t happen.
I have met three persons who are transgendered. Two of them have said that they are finally happy in their lives. I’m not sure about the third person, because she essentially stabbed friends, who had been completely supportive, in the back over a stupid misunderstanding, so it’s not clear to me how happy she is, although I wish her the best.
This is where I disagree with Maggie. First, I do understand those in the LGBT community who, as a matter of principle, believe that all should be included in ENDA. However, if the goal is to have non-discrimination for all as soon as possible, then passing ENDA, even without the “T” at this point is the way to go. I agree it isn’t fair. But many states, including New Jersey, went this route. First there were non-discrimination laws regarding sexual orientation. But now there are also non-discrimination laws regarding gender identity. If these had to be joined together initially, then I believe we still wouldn’t have any non-discrimination laws for sexual orientation and gender identity to this day in New Jersey.
Comment by Pat — October 14, 2007 @ 8:27 am - October 14, 2007
I question the veracity of this claim, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll accept your premise for the moment but fail to see how this is in any way means that legal protections should be given for men to dress as women in the workplace, use bathrooms or gyms assigned to their desired genders, etc.
I don’t think so because just like you have the right to hold your own opinions and share them with the world, so do I. When you raise it to a matter of legal status than you invite public comment and criticism. The “average Joe” is the person you need to convince if you want these things, not just myself or others who are GLB.
Comment by John — October 14, 2007 @ 1:00 pm - October 14, 2007
Why? Because you insist you are? You may feel that you are, might even have the surgery to appear as female but you are not at all a female and neither am I Napoleon (though the hat’s he wore are cool).
Good for you. If this was only about you or those of like mind that would be one thing, yet it’s not. You are attempting to convince others and have supportive legislation passed to boot. Are you seriously trying to engage in a logical fallacy of appealing to authority? I am not impressed that pressure can be brought to bear upon public officials to change documents or opinions given by professionals. Opinions by themselves are meaningless since each one of us have them and are not science. One would think something far more substantial and empirical could be provided.
Never said it was. It is the dominate factor but not the only one.
Okay, you might convince me as well. Yet in the meantime I am not willing for GLB’s to wait around and put everything on hold for a group that we have little or nothing in common with.
Comment by Average Gay Joe — October 14, 2007 @ 1:09 pm - October 14, 2007
Damn. Yet another profession I should have gone into for the compensation perks…
Comment by Average Gay Joe — October 14, 2007 @ 1:34 pm - October 14, 2007
Trust me, if an employer wants to get rid of an employee for whatever reason they will find a way. ENDA is useful is tamping down the most overt discrimination and perhaps starting the long haul to bringing about change, but by itself it is meaningless as are all such laws.
Comment by Average Gay Joe — October 14, 2007 @ 1:36 pm - October 14, 2007
I say no such thing. I’m not bisexual so I cannot draw from personal experience on this, but it stands to reason that it is about more than just sex for them. Bi’s in some ways are fortunate in that their odds of finding a soul mate are far better than mine.
Comment by Average Gay Joe — October 14, 2007 @ 1:41 pm - October 14, 2007
Thank you, John for validating my comment #68 that prior to 1951 there weren´t any transgendered people until the WWII, army vet,became Christine Jorgensen. Maggie tried to substantiate her assertion by naming famous transvestites in #70.
Comment by Roberto — October 15, 2007 @ 10:45 am - October 15, 2007
Nice to see we can post again. A little catch-up here:
#84: I offered historical examples only to refute the delegitimizing claim that transsexuality is some new fad whose demand was created by the possibility of reassignment.
#85: Well, I can insist I am female for at least as long as you can insist I’m not. Here’s you’re not actually offering arguments, you’re just making unsupported assertions and then “begging the question” (in the original petitio principii) sense. My point was that Napoleon is an individual, there’s only one of him, by definition.–claiming that “John can’t be Napoleon” is equivalent to “Maggie can’t be female” is a straw man. There’s more than one woman, I know this from personal experience.
And it’s not at all about “wearing the hats”.
I’m indeed trying to “convince others”, mostly because you and a few other folks here have elected to use this platform to slag and spread misinformation about transexuals.
As for passing legislation, I’m not sure ENDA in any form is really either a good idea or part of the proper role of government. What I definitely do not support is an ENDA that makes *only* sexual orientation a protected class. So I largely agree with #87.
And there’s interesting writing in blogspace questioning whether an orientation-only ENDA can actually even be effective without at least addressing what gender identity *is*…recall my original comment that the *word* homosexuality can’t even have a clear meaning until we agree on what gender is. And at least you and I do not.
I had an long and interesting phonecon over the weekend with a close activist friend who’s been deeply involved in the current kurfluffle that included some stories about Barney Frank …I’d love to get a confirmation or a refutation on these.
First, that when Frank originally became active in politics in Boston, back when he was closeted, one thing that he gained early notoriety for was championing the closing of a local drag club…this was offered as evidence of his longstanding attitudes towards transgendered folks.
A second story was that when Tammy Baldwin was building her whip list of who would or would not support the original bill, her staffers also asked if Frank has polled support for the original bill, and nobody said they’d been contacted by him….suggesting that when he withdrew support for his own bill, it wasn’t because he’d found out it wouldn’t pass, but because inclusive language he didn’t like but had expected would be stripped in committee had somehow survived.
#88: Bi’s odds of finding a soul mate are not better than yours. However, their odds of finding a soul mate *they want to sleep with* are improved…c.f. the quote from “Ellen” about “there’s twice as many rides at Bi-Land”.
Comment by MaggieLeber — October 15, 2007 @ 12:31 pm - October 15, 2007
#89: So…you’re saying that none of the transgendered people long before Jorgensen could possibly have been transsexual and could only have been transvestites because they never got surgery that wasn’t developed until later.
That’s not very convincing logic.
Comment by MaggieLeber — October 15, 2007 @ 12:33 pm - October 15, 2007
Maggie, history doesn´t support your assertion. I will grant Lillie Elbe, who as a Danish male, had it done in 1931 and died shortly after her autobiagraphy had benn published in 1932. History still credits Christine Jorgensen as the first successful transsexual. It was Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld who coined the terms trasvestite and transsexual in the previous decade. Unless you are 200 years old and personally inspected the genitalia of those on your list I will go with history. I suspect they were transvestites.
No doubt there have been people who have suffered from a gender identity crisis but did not have the benefit of modern surgery. Some might have even attempted self mutilation with probably the same results as those ¨do it yourself¨ abortions. They died.
Comment by Roberto — October 15, 2007 @ 6:55 pm - October 15, 2007
Point of clarification, ¨previous decade¨ refers to prior to Lilli Elbe. Dr. Hrischfeld died in Paris after seeing a newsreel in a movie theatre of Nazis sacking his office; Dr. Hirschfeld was Jewish.
Comment by Roberto — October 15, 2007 @ 7:00 pm - October 15, 2007
Roberto, since you seem to be speaking on behalf of “history”, please tell “history” that being transsexual doesn’t necessarily mean getting reassignment surgery.
I notice now we’re suddenly talking about “sucessful” transsexuals. I was responding to a claim that there were no historically transsexuals at all, which is just silly.
Being transsexual doesn’t mean you’ve had surgical reassignment; many, many transsexuals might like to have surgical reassignment but can’t afford it, or aren’t good surgical candidates for medical reasons, or are simply terrified of a bad outcome (especially those who believe the ignorant propaganda of the”cutting it off”/”mutilation” crowd).
There’s also a significant number of female-to-male transsexuals who undergo hormonal reassignment (which is extremely effective for female-to-males, by the way) but decide to not attempt surgery, often because the surgical technologies for female-to-male surgery simply aren’t anywhere near so well-developed and successful…it’s just more difficult to do well.
So if you claim that the only “successful” transsexual is one that has has surgical reassignment and is happy with their outcome, well then obviously before the surgery, there couldn’t be success…by that definition.
Personally, back before there was reassignment surgery, I’d say a “successful” transsexual would be one who didn’t commit suicide out of depression and despair. In those days, there was no shortage of those…and we still have them today.
As for the occasional tragic attempts at self-reassignment, that’s just tragic folly; there’s *zero* chance of anything even vaguely like a good outcome, and a decent probability of death. Now *that* would qualify as mutilation, to my mind.
These operations are incredibly delicate and intricate even in the hands of a qualified, skilled surgeon.
So…if I have this right, your theory is: transsexuality suddenly sprung into existence when surgery became available, the only transgendered people before that were by definitions transvestites. Mine is that transsexuality has always existed has started coming out of the closet in our culture as it became known that help was available.
Comment by Maggie Leber — October 15, 2007 @ 8:54 pm - October 15, 2007
Maggie, you have it backwards. What you assert is theory. My pocket Webster is a little outdated; the word isn´t among the 57,000 entries. My Larousse Dictionary of of Modern Spanish defines transsexual as(traduccion mia) ¨Said of a person who has changed sex by surgical intervention.¨ By definition of the word those of us who maintain that transgendered is one who has had the surgical reassignment are on pretty solid ground.
Apart from financial considerations as an obstacle to completion you cite that others aren´t good surgical candidates for medical reasons.
This creates a gray area. Medical reason could be psychological reasons. They might actually be confused about their psycho-sexual image. As one who was not born in the U.S. and who is not currently living in the U.S. I am familiar with the latin or hispanic culture. Because of ¨machismo¨it is changing slowly but a few years back it was common for a young male who accepted his gayness to grow his hair, buy a dress, and a makeup kit. He believed that he had to compete with women to go to bed with a ¨straight¨man. The suggestion that he have sex with another gay was laughable. You would get responses like, ¨I am not a lesbian.¨ or ¨Honey, I want a man, I don´t want to make tortillas in bed.¨
Some people, for whatever reason, mislabel themselves. Case in point, bisexuals (see my comment #48). As I said latin culture is changing slowly. I access a site called MundoAnuncio, chico busca chicos, (boy looking for boys-despite the title it is not minors, better said young man loooking for young men) you will see an ad by ¨gay, not obvious looking for a gay, not obvious, for a . . .´ You will also see ¨bi guy looking for bi guys for oral and anal sex.¨ Are they really bi? Is it because they haven´t fully accepted their being gay? Or is it a convenience for avoiding being called derisively a ¨culero¨ or ¨maricon¨?
Comment by Roberto — October 16, 2007 @ 12:07 pm - October 16, 2007
Indeed. The problem here though is that you are attempting to shift the burden and are even using anecdotal evidence to support your arguments. Who says that I’m not Napoleon? You? Why I can even create a tale of secret societies worthy of Dan Brown in ’support’ of what I ‘believe’ to be true. To borrow somewhat from unorthodox theology, I may have been born as “John” but thanks to my tyrannical swagger and outrageous accent became fully Napoleon in later years. It’s a burden, but one I bear with snooty pride. Your attempt to dismiss this as “begging the question” is irrelevant since it matters not whether I am the only one who is Napoleon (as if the ‘Blessed’ Little Corporal could be so limited anyway). Is all of this absurd? Perhaps. Yet you demand I accept what you believe about yourself to be true on faith so it seems that turnabout is fairplay here.
While you deny the essence of who I am with of all of my cheese-eating surrender monkey glory? Tsk tsk, you have free speech to be sure to convince others of what you please but as long as you are adopting the Protestant mantra of “faith alone” as empirical support for your contention, I do believe I’ll pass.
Ideally ALL such classes would be eliminated and in this happy world all crimes would be punished equally. Now since we live in the real world, I’m not willing to wait around for a group that GLBs have little or nothing in common with.
Perhaps, it’s not really something I’ve given much thought to. I will say though that I have no problem believing that Bi’s are just as capable of falling in love and being mongamous as the rest of us are.
Comment by John — October 16, 2007 @ 5:29 pm - October 16, 2007
#96: There’s only one Napoleon I; he was born in 1769. If you are he, you are now nearly 240 years old, having faked your death in 1821.
Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. And while I have very little current Francophilia, and do not doubt that Nappy may have liked the occasional frommage, I doubt that “surrender monkey” is either a fitting description, or one he would apply to himself.
My own less-remarkable claim that I have discovered my brain (est. 1952) to be female-wired is based on the best evidence as to the wiring of my brain available without dissection: my own experience of it, especially comparing that experience before and after changing my serum hormone levels.
About as much evidence as your claim to being gay and not bi or straight, come to think of it…after all, it’s inside your head, and we have only your word for it. I’m actually willing to believe based on your own assertion that you are gay, even though you might *really* be bi or straight and just be fooling yourself. You’re safe…until we such a time as we find a gay gene, anyway. Then we’ll be able to design an empirical test to flush out the crazies and the phonies.
What matters about genes isn’t what’s encoded in them but how it’s expressed. It doesn’t matter what programs may be on your personal genetic “hard drive” if they’re not run. Genetics are *not* the sole determinant of development of sex characteristics… that expression is hormonally mediated. And sometimes shit happens. Somewhere between 1 in 500 times, or 1 in 10,000 times, depending on whose numbers you beleive.
Re ENDA, I gather you’re saying that *ideally* all protected classes under law would be eliminated, but you’re so anxious to have one of your own that you are willing to slam the door on any other sexual minority gaining the same advantage as you, if you think it might delay you getting yours.
After all, they’re just so *different* from you…why should they have equal protection?
Comment by MaggieLeber — October 18, 2007 @ 6:24 pm - October 18, 2007
Lord, how I hate it when either the left or the right bend medicine and science for a political purpose, particularly when the bedners know little about it.
There is a medical model and fairly well supported theory for male to female transsexuality; the brain neuroanatomically and neurophysiologically is female. It is by and large wholly unrelated to transvestism, which is a fetish, though some of the fetishists seek. transition as a final thrill. By and large, transition is a final, desparate act for people who attempted for years to forcibly reconcile mind and body through will or therapy. Of the true transsexuals, no one chooses it. It is the final remedy. The M to F’s are neuropsychologically women, and may may wekk be at least partly chromosomally women.
The left scooped up transsexual as part of LGBT and broadened them into a spectrul of “gender expression,” which medically they are not. The right marginalized them off into fetishists which medically they are not. Transsexuality ought to have been left in the realm of medicine and included in the ADA, but it was excluded precisely because the Queer Rights movement adpoted them and muddied distinctions by including trans-everything. And, medically, the trans-status of a transsexual ends when they are wheeled out of surgey as a matched body and brain.
I treat transsexual amongst other patients. No protections, few real allies, many using them one way or the other…the ultimate minority.
Comment by LesbianShrink — October 19, 2007 @ 3:20 pm - October 19, 2007
O yea of little faith. How can you limit the ‘Blessed’ Little Corporal so? You say this as if it is fact in one breath, than insist I take on faith that you are female in another, all while denying the ontological ‘reality’ of who I’ve ‘become’. Pity.
Indeed, which is precisely the point. You cannot rely upon truisms like this and than rely upon personal experience as being “remarkable evidence”. You’re leaping into logical fallacies by doing so.
Too true, perhaps I’m just nuts or psycho-sexually stunted. Of course if it’s the former, would I really know I was? Hehehe. Yet really, your argument here is a poor one since regardless of the morality or ‘normality’ of who or what I was attracted to that attraction is a fact just as the belief you hold to be female is.
Either that or the legislation so diluted by the addition of just about every class or status one can think of to be essentially meaningless. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad political strategy for conservative opponents to use should ENDA become law.
Comment by John — October 20, 2007 @ 7:12 pm - October 20, 2007
Than perhaps this is where you should focus on changing course so the less-enlightened among us can grasp the concept. Thus far what is being spread appears to require hip waders to go through and I cannot see Middle America wanting to take the trip.
Comment by John — October 20, 2007 @ 7:15 pm - October 20, 2007
I used to work for a large employer whose health insurance covered some of the transgender
procedures, so there were several TGs working there. One became my roommate for about a year.
Before I lived with a TG, I had no problems with sexual reassignment surgery. I assumed that the only thing involved were changing one’s name, buying some dresses and getting “the whack”. Takes a year, right? Nope, it can take years and cost tens, even hundreds of thousands after the therapy, hormonal treatments, breast implants, Adam’s Apple shaving, hand sculpting, hair removal, voice coaching, etc. are done.
Ironically, learning about all these efforts TGs must make didn’t lead me to respect TGs more, it convinced me that it’s self-mutilation. In the end, a man making all those efforts will still have a male DNA and won’t have the internal organs of a woman, and vice-versa.
Since TGs insist that “gender is between the ears, not between the legs”, why do they put so much effort and expense into changing themselves physically, including between the legs? Why not address what’s between the ears and learn to accept oneself? It’s what gays and lesbians have fought to do for decades. I agree, gays and lesbians have little commonality with TGs and as such I don’t see the point of their being in the same political efforts.
Comment by Average Jane — November 8, 2007 @ 3:37 pm - November 8, 2007
After reading a lot of the Cissexual (one who’s physical sex is aligned with their internal identity) comments on this site, the underlying hatred and remaining shards of ignorance about (specifically Transsexual) people remain, which is sad. Possibly the only way that anyone can truly understand the deep pain and agony of not being physically aligned with one’s true self, is to actually “walk in our shoes”.
You’ll find that one is born with the ever lingering knowledge that something is not “right’ about yourself, that you know you are one thing, but the people around you try to force you to be what they want you to be according to your appearance. You would not find anything wrong with the preference of girl’s toys and other trappings rather than the boy ones since you can remember. of course over the years you try to over compensate for your overwhelming “cross gender” feelings with indulging in extreme behavior, such as volunteering for elite units in the military (in the meantime, you look forward to dying in combat…) if your were born “male”, or participating in ultra-feminine behavior such as competing in nomorous beauty pagents if you were born “female” for example.
You expend untold amounts of energy to attempt to overcome your solid natrual gender identity, simply “because this is the the way the world wants you to be”.
Of course there comes the inevitable bouts with suicide, and self mutilation because you just want eliminate the wrong-feeling body or external organs. The outside body does not match what you know yourself to be within.
In certain cases such as mine, I was born with 1 ovary and a partial uterus, along with the male aspect that I had always hated, I was found chromosomally, to have a mosaic make-up of XXY. as well as a slight amount of female body shape. All of this was included with my natrual feminine movements and expression. You can imagine the harrassment and beatings I recieved at the hands of not just my childhood peers but also from my father, bent on “making me a man” including the forced sessions of unwanted testoesterone injections since age 7 -especially when being caught with his straight razor in the middle of initiating some self-corrective surgery to try to transform the unwanted male part to a female one. He broke part of my jaw after I came back home from the hospital.
I’ve never understood the violence perpetuated by men, even though I use to put on a false performance of doing so. I became a very good actor, although I refused to hang around males very much, prefering female company or being alone. I used to secretly “cross-dress” in order to feel more comfortable, and more like myself, as I ‘ve done since the age of 6. Cross-dressing was never a sexual “turn-on”.
The only reason I was not rejected for military service due to my conflicting and varient physical state, was because military enterance processing centers used X-rays at that time, before they finally instituted MRI machines.
It may surprise you to know that I have always identified as a female exclusively attracted to other females. The thought of being intimate with anyone as a “male” has always nauseated me, even as a teenager. Trans-Lesbian identity and presence is another area that the LGB community defintely needs education about.
Even after 26 years of denial of my true identity I still transitioned to be close to be the full women that I need to be.
I’m still the woman that I am, even the long attempt to drown the inner voice of my true self through immeasurable amounts of alcohol and drug use.
Even after suffering 26 years of humiliation, physical violence and denial of my basic human rights by people much like some of the ones on this site, I still survived to be the woman that I am.
Even after striving, working 3 times harder than male soldiers to become an “elite” special operations soldier trained, ready and very willing to die for this country during the War on Terror… I still claimed and acted on the very right that I earned, to be the woman that I am, despite the hurdles thrown up by ignorance and hate.
Having gone, and still going through the hormone regimine now at a very reduced amount, due to having completed my corrective Sex Reassignment Surgery- which is the single most wonderful period in my life other than the commitment ceremony to my female partner. it should be noted that I did not undergo SRS surgery to “sleep” with anyone, I had the surgery to physically be my true self. in fact, I’ve always had a low sex drive since adolescence (even then, I’ve never understood why males had such aggressive sex drives) and have been mainly a romantic type. For years I have pretended to be a male to satisfy everyone around me.
And yes, I look very female physically, thank you. And no, I am not a “drag queen”, I don’t do “drag” It is not a “masqerade”. I rarely put on makeup, and am more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, so that probably helps dispel the false image of Transwomen grocery shopping in evening gowns and tiaras.
I underwent 15 years of therapy, and not once was the label of “pathological personality” put forth.
I had the surgery because it was not a “choice” for me, it was either have my surgery or die… it was that simple. I was blessed with a compassionate therapist who was elightened enough to recognize my birth defect for what it was: a gender and sex misalignment at birth, and also having the final confirmation of the fact that I was not “a gay male in denial”.
When an individual is born with a physical deformity such as a cleft palate, they have every right to want to correct it, which is not viewed as “mutilation”. In light of this, it should be viewed that gender/sex misaligned individuals should not be punished for wanting to live a happier life after working to integrate their whole being, including their physical sex to their gender.
Even after reading tons of materials about Transpeople, and even having close friends who are Trans, or even living with a Transsexual, no one will ever truly know what we go through.
No amount of “reparative therapy” is going to force a change to what’s been hardwired within a Transsexual person’s brain at birth, evidence speaking to this fact has already been compiled for decades.
And to make the ignorant demand that a person remain what society thinks they should be, would be akin to telling that person to go ahead and just end their life.
Cat
Comment by Cat — February 7, 2008 @ 4:28 pm - February 7, 2008
I was with you, GayPatriot, until you started mouthing off about how transgender people are pathological and want to mutilate themselves and us gays are just so much better. No, we’re not. Transgender people deserve every right they need. Still, I totally agree that there is no relation between GID and homosexuality.
Comment by CitizenGeek — July 31, 2008 @ 4:07 pm - July 31, 2008