kodokan

As are many people who take their cultural cues about gender and other norms from a conduit for creating imaginary lifestyle problems, then selling products to 'solve' them.

Like I said - I think that the very notion of 'the women's point of view' and 'the men's point of view' and how each gender is supposed to think and act, goes a long way towards explaining why some people believe that they are in the 'wrong' body.

kodokan

I imagine there are. It depresses me as much as the notion that there are people who wouldn't vote for Obama because he is black.

johnwoo

Well I've been told not to express my opinions and argumentative as a new member, to be more conformist to the forum norms, so I've probably said too much already.

sir_eccles

For some (though not all) I believe there are genetic factors. Extra y chromosomes etc. There is now an opinion that there are more than just two sexes. Intersex being some spectrum in between.

dc koop

First Amendment always applies since this section of the forum is for expats living in the US

themadpooper

I firmly believe these transgender issues are a mental illness, same with homosexuality. I accept how that sounds (yeah, I'm clearly a massive homophobe yadda yadda yadda) but it clearly is. Funny how post modern society suddenly deems sex with people of the same gender perfectly normal, deems those who wish to change genders as perfectly normal, but adults who are sexually attracted to kids, that's wrong and pretty much the worst crime you can commit should you act on it

yellowroom

because the former issues involve consenting adults, the latter issue involves people who cannot consent because of their age and physiology, their lack of understanding/concept of what happens in a sexual relationship, the inability for it to be reciprocal based on an equal understanding and the imbalance of power in such a "relationship". Society acts to protect the weaker and vulnerable members.

But otherwise, yeah, really relevant to compare transgender issues and homosexuality with paedophilia.

Beaverstate

Iv'e heard that argument that no one chooses to be a pedophile either. Prepare for a firestorm. It all comes down to what makes sense in evolution and nature, if it doesn't help the species....

RGH80

Trans woman here, so I'll chime in.

I've been using women's toilets since I was a teenager and I'll continue to do so, irrespective of the law in whichever jurisdiction I'm in at the time. Nobody has noticed before and nobody will notice now. It's just funny how the right-wing pearl clutching think of the children demographic have just realised we exist. The irony for them is by legislating 'no men in women's toilets', they're actually legislating for men in women's toilets. I suspect most trans men are offering them the courtesy of ignoring their law, but I'm sure some will happily educate them on the consequences of their legislation.

Plus, the UK government reissued my birth certificate to say that I was female at birth, so I'm not sure I'd even breach the NC law anyway.

It does make life even more difficult for those in early transition though.

Physically, the person takes medication to stop the body producing or reacting to testosterone, meaning any effects of this are reduced to zero. Oestrogen then comes in causing the body to feminise, including natural breast growth, and weight distribution to cause natural 'curves'. Surgery to change the pitch of the voice, give any of the natural processes a 'boost' (like facial feminisation or breast augmentation) are optional, as is genital surgery.

Does this turn XY chromosomes into XX? No. But chromosomes have never matched to sex or gender in society, because we don't DNA test people to decide which box they should be shoved into. Quite a few people might be surprised to find that their chromosome pairs don't match their sex, such as woman with androgen insensitivity syndrome who'll likely be XY. Plus there's XXX, XXY, XYY etc. Also, there's a new field of science called epigenetics, which investigates whether our DNA changes according to our environment, such as taking hormones.

Yes, transgender children do exist, because it's a condition that you're born with. It's simply that society has changed to the point that people can come out sooner. I came out in the 2000s at age 14. If I was born ten years later, I would've done it around age 5.

The DSM agrees that it's a mental illness, although mostly to help facilitate medical treatment. People don't really 'change gender' as such. It's not like a man spends his time quite happily in the male gender role and then one day suddenly decides he should've been female. Having to comply with the wrong gender roles is hell. More, it's changing your life to reflect the gender you always were.

I think it's more like nobody chooses what they're attracted to, but they do choose whether or not they act on those feelings. I'd wager there's a chunk of people with sexual attraction to children, and who are absolutely disgusted with themselves and would never act on it in a million years. Yet, there's nowhere for them to get help.

yellowroom

Just for the record, as a cis woman it wouldn't bother me in the slightest using the same bathroom or changing facilities as RGH80 or any other trans woman, regardless of how far they were in the transition stage. I don't get my sexual jollies from/in those environments and I've never met a woman who has either. We just do what we need to do.

I assume it's the same in the male facilities, although I can't help wonder given the amount of pearl clutching (love that phrase) going on.

Leslie

Because sometimes society gets it wrong. Because society is an ass. Ancient societies (Native Americans come to mind) recognized more than two genders. These societies were not weird or perverted but rather stoic and accepting of nature.

There are probably thousands of genders/sexual orientations. Some being genetic and chromosomal others being a higher order brain function. Some babies are born with ambiguous genitalia. Regardless of the "cause" these are natural states of being. Doctors know this. Scientists know this.

I blame religion for the suppression of this information which has led to fear and loathing of those who are different. Religion has also given us (or at least justified) slavery, patriarchy, misogyny, and many other miserable mandates that have ruined the lives of innocent people for millennium. Why modern society still lets these barbarians rule our lives is a mystery to me.

kodokan

I'm irritated by the way the debate has been framed around 'protecting the women, the poor little delicates'. It's in the same aggravating category as the fathers joking about threatening their daughters' boyfriends with shotguns, that we had on the other thread.

I've spent more than 3 decades studying half a dozen different martial arts and the last time a man tried to assault me (in a pub in the UK, in my teens), I broke his nose - the notion that I need elderly white men thousands of miles away to use a magic piece of paper to protect my virtue from a (totally imaginary) threat to further their political aims, is ludicrous and infantalizing.

I deeply resent being my mere existence being used as a pawn in their attention-seeking games. I'm normally very live-and-let-live and insensitive to (what I often consider to be imagined) slights and people's fussing about trigger words, but since I've moved here it's like the Republican Party is DETERMINED to make me into an ardent feminist.

Leslie

Yup. Those that claim to want to "protect" my virtue would also force me to give birth to a rapist's baby. They would gladly send us back to the 1600s where, if we step out of line, they can just burn us as a witch.

Leslie

There is a wide spectrum. Many people fall in this spectrum --- many more than we will know in our lifetimes. They have been terrorized by society and are forced to live their entire lives denying their own true nature.

yellowroom

bugger, I'm out of karma again, so have a