Are we in the middle of a transgender renaissance? Of course not—a renaissance would require an original time when transgender men and women were treated with normalcy. But maybe we’re heading down the path toward the first era where MTF and FTM folks won’t be treated as outsiders, but just another demographic group children grow up with. Trailblazing the efforts are folks like The Real World: Brooklyn‘s Katelynn, who shows how a transgender person encounters the safe relationship and day-to-day drama as anyone else, as well as ABC’s Ugly Betty and Dirty Sexy Money inclusion of MTFs as regular folks (though the characters on both shows have since left the screen). And then there’s women like Patricia Araujo (real name Patricia Oliveira), the MTF model who just closed Rio’s Fashion Week.
Patricia Araujo received a standing ovation after parading along the runway for the Complexo B brand late Friday to end the weeklong event in a city that delights in shocking the prudish with each year’s Carnival celebration.
Complexo B designer Beto Neves said he invited Araujo to amaze the public.
“In fashion, the cool thing is to surprise,” he told the O Dia newspaper.
Globo Television’s web site called the 25-year-old Araujo “the star” of the show’s final day and model Isabeli Fontana told O Dia that Araujo “is the greatest”.
Tall and slim, the dark-haired Araujo entered the catwalk wearing a long fur coat and quickly unveiled a short black-and-white dress to the applause of the hundreds of guests at the event.
“I love to be mobbed by the press,” she told O Dia afterward. “I’ve always dreamed of being famous.” [AP]
Now if only we could get the Associated Press’ photo caption writers to learn the difference between “transgender” and “transvestite”:
Smokey Martini
“Now if only we could get the Associated Press’ photo caption writers to learn the difference between “transgender†and “transvestite—
Indeed. Only recently – and after much Euro-American influence – have ‘transgénero’ (transgender) and ‘transsexual’ (transexual) been introduced to the Spanish / Portuguese language — and only then within queer activist circles. But the fact remains: there is still much work to be done to categorically distinguish ‘gender,’ ‘sex,’ and ‘sexuality.’
Just for the record, though: layfolk in Latin-American countries tend to refer to all genderqueer folk (be they drag performers, transvestites, transgender, or transsexual) as ‘transvestites.’ Which, I might add, is a term typically reserved for drag performers who dress for show.
Transwomen who pass as women, for the most part, are referred to as women. Transwomen who do not, on the other hand, are referred to as ‘maricones’ or ‘putos’ (both meaning ‘faggots’). This, of course, reflects the flawed belief that gay men are always effeminate — indeed, that they desire to be women — leaving very little (if any) conceptual space for masculine gay men, effeminate straight men, masculine straight women, or butch lesbians.
tavdy79
@Smokey Martini:
“Genderqueer” describes those trans people whose gender identity is other than fully male or female. By definition, transwomen and transmen are not genderqueer – their gender identities are exclusively female and male respectively, so they fit into the conventional female/male gender-binary. To describe a transwoman or transman as genderqueer brings their gender identity into doubt – which is actually quite hurtful.
Darth Paul
@Smokey Martini: That applies to many more countries beyond latin American ones. There’s little distinction (if any) in SE Asia between a 3rd gender (hijra) person and a gay man or transvestite; and in many African countries, any sort of queerness is viewed as (evil) gender displacement.
Also, this Araujo is gorgeous.
Smokey Martini
@tavdy79:
I do realize that genderqueer puts into question the gender identity of transfolk – so it was definitely a misnomer on my part. But for the sake of my description, I was in desperate need of a term to identify the widest possible gamut of individuals who have in some way have taken on another set of gender conventions. Of course, I apologize to anyone who may have found that term offensive.
@Darth Paul: @Darth Paul:
And, Darth: this is true, too. Although I felt the need to point out the Latin-American example since I have witnessed the trans/homophobia first-hand. That’s the example I know best.
Alex
I’m not sure whether this was intended or not… Using “transgender” as a noun sounds off. Kind of like using “gay” as a noun (as in, “a gay” or “the gays”).
Of course, “the gays” is often used in mockingly humorous tone, so maybe that was the intent…
Glenn I
First contact narratives of the Americas and the South Pacific frequently mention men dressed as women or very mannish-looking women (Europeans were almost always appalled). Transgendered persons were (& in some quiet cases still are) considered a normal valuable integral part of society. It’s just not true that “transgender men and women were [never] treated with normalcy.”
gina
As to the use of ‘transvestite’, I suspect it’s a mistranslation of the term ‘travesti’ which is what many Brazilians call anyone who’s a transwoman. Travesti isn’t the same as transvestite, because it refers to people who live in the female role 24/7. For myself, I detest the term “transgender” which lumps transwomen together with crossdressers and drag queens (who, no matter how they sometimes dress, are first and foremost men). If one can’t refer to us as women, then I would the term ‘transwoman’ which, for me, is vastly preferable to transgender. As to the captions for the picture, I think it’s odd they call Patricia Araujo by her legal name (Patricia Olivera) in the second caption! Patricia is quite famous in Brazil and (unfortunately?) has been well known in the sex industry for a long time. As to how ubiquitous transpeople are in the media, I note Dirty Sexy Money is cancelled (after killing Carmelita off!) and Rebecca Romijn is no longer on Ugly Betty. Sadly, we are still used for shock value/humor/publicity rather than any real acknowledgment of our womenhood.
Monica Roberts
Why can’t white gay men understand the difference between the two??
SIGH
OK for the last time
TRANSVESTITE : changes clothes for a man’s attention
TRANSGENDER: is to get publlicity
Battybattybats
@Gina You’d be surprised how many crossdressers at least are not ‘first and foremost men’. A significant number are much closer to genderqueer and feel that they are both or neither or between male and female to varying degrees.
Yes there are plenty who emphasise they are just men who like dressing in womens clothes, but a significant portion of these are struggling strongly with self-acceptance issues and their views on that change the more they come to accept themselves.
gina
Battybattybats, while I can appreciate there are some crossdressers who are, in some vague way, genderqueer, from what I’ve seen, that’s a distinct minority. And one thing I would say is that crossdressers don’t really live as women in the world. They don’t work as women, they don’t relate to the world as women (except in very narrow environments like clubs, conventions and group meetings and socials). And most importantly, they retreat back into the world of men whenever they deem it financially, professionally or interpersonally necessary. I agree with you that some crossdressers have gender issues to some degree or other, but they overwhelmingly live in the world and shell of men. Yes, that is first and foremost a man. I don’t view them as being somehow lesser than transwomen, just fundamentally different. Lumping the two groups together into a ‘transgender’ umbrella might be useful for short-term political purposes but does nothing to delineate the unique needs, identities and problems faced by each group and institutionalizes a lot of miscategorization by cisgender media and hate groups.
Battybattybats
@Gina, perhaps I’m meeting way more genderqueer CDs than you? certainly they aren’t a small minority on some of the forums where they can be 1/3rd+ of CDs and as for locally, well that’s 100% thus far.
As for living in the world, that seems to be changing as more are slowly coming out. Those that do retreat regularly do it seemingly invariably out of fear. Fear for their survival, (physical, economic and family-relationships/social sure, but with the shockingly high suicide rate that all becomes physical by the end of the day).
They are mostly deep in the closet. The movement to get more to come out is far behind other groups.
But as for how they relate to the world… they do so as crossdressers, not as men or as women because their experiences often combine some of both and are missing some of both!
As for Transgender.. there are lots of groups with shared issues under that term or the ‘Sex And Gender Diverse’ one recently used at the Australian Human Rights Commission as many issues are also shared with Intersex too. Each group has a unique combination of needs. Each shares at least one with another group.
The human right to protection form permanant alteration to maximise later choice when ability to consent is reached that should protect Intersex kids from active intervention of surgical mutilation before they are old enough to consent also makes wrong the denial of hormone blockers to TS teens as by the inaction of insisting on unpaused puberty it too causes permanant changes that may be harmful and reduces the free choice when the child is old enough to give informed consent.
Also differences are not so distinct. People who’ve considered themselves transsexuals or crossdressers have learned they are Intersex. People who thought they were crossdressers as they gain self-acceptance sometimes learn they are transsexuals passing out of strong denial.
As for cisgender media, they need to be educated on a host of issues. Hate-groups, well they still misscharacterise everyone of us as pedophiles anyway. Trying to get everyone to distinguish all the subsets of TG won’t do much for the first or anything for the latter.
But as many issues are shared across TG anyway and they are all fundamental human rights shared or not then everyone working together helps everyone.
gina
Battybattybats, let’s say we agree to disagree. There is commonality between all oppressed people, and those people can always join together to each other’s benefit. Agreed. But that doesn’t mean they have to be lumped together and group definitions blurred, and that’s what’s happening to people who were identified as transsexual. We, our identities and often issues are being subsumed by other groups and remolded to fit their needs. That’s not okay and, ultimately, hurtful to us explaining ourselves to the world which was already a complicated enough task before the “umbrella.” Just my opinion: saying crossdressers are Intersex is, in my mind, appropriative, and exactly the kind of thinking I was talking about (and while I understand the concept, I have some mixed feelings about transsexuals defining themselves as Intersex as well). The vast majority of crossdressers I’ve ever met or experienced on the Internet identify their fundamental gender as ‘a man’. Perhaps a man with a deep need/desire for feminine gender expression in their lives, but a man. Your experience might vary. It’s one thing to talk about how ‘feminine’ one is while over the Internet or in narrow settings and it’s quite another thing to live completely as a woman in the world. Let’s acknowledge the uniqueness of both situations, that there are no binaries in either, but they are, at core, distinct. Patricia Araujo is a transwoman, not a transvestite. She lives in the world 24/7 as a woman (although one might argue making ‘shemale’ porn is part of the transgender spectrum and not that of ciswomen’s). But I’m more than happy when people define their own personal situation, just not as happy when others try to group me into something that’s inappropriate to my life. I can imagine we might share those feelings.
SA-ET
GINA:
“For myself, I detest the term “transgender”…”
Not half as much as I do.
Battybattybats
Let me clarify. I did not mean that all crossdressers are intersex. That is certainly possible that crossdressing may have an intersex-like causation such as is starting to appear in studies of transsexuals but such a possibility is very much not proven as no-ones done the requiste studies on crossdressers though the studies on transsexuals is getting more certain whether or not the term Intersex should apply and whether it’s the case for all or only some transsexuals is another matter.
But I have met people who discovered that they were Intersex by the general definition of the term after having considered themselves as crossdressers or transsexuals. So you see what I mean now? Crossdresser who discovers they were born Intersex with that fact hidden from them as they grew up without any appropriation or change of definition of the term Intersex.
And hence reality blurs plenty of definitions with intersections and with variations. Our ‘taxonomy’ doesn’t create our variations, our variations creates our taxonomy and where there is conflict between the two we must adapt the definitions to fit the variations of people not try and adapt the peoplt to fit the definitions which is what inflexible adherance to old definitions too often does.
“Let’s acknowledge the uniqueness of both situations, that there are no binaries in either, but they are, at core, distinct.”
I agree there are no binaries in either but I’m yet to see a distinction, a clear boundary, as I meet too many who fit into the blurry edges between.
The situation with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia is similar, defining one against the other is often an excercise in hair-splitting of which has the most severity of which symptom. Made worse when i learned of my cousins Mitochondrial Myopathy with it’s near-identical symptoms to mine, just a couple worse, a couple less. And with more than one cause likely combined into each of the definitions it’s a rat-king tangle that only years of research will unravel.
“But I’m more than happy when people define their own personal situation, just not as happy when others try to group me into something that’s inappropriate to my life. I can imagine we might share those feelings.”
Generally I agree, but then I used to rail against the term ‘goth’, which is what most goths did in those days as none of us were similar to belong to a group, we were a group because we independantly happened to be similar. But eventually we claimed the term for our own, we concentrated on being publicly ourselves so that the negative and often false stereotypes fell away and now, in my experience at least, we have substantial acceptance for ourselves as individuals unrelated to group-stereotypes. So I quite happily call myself Goth. And as the Emos are going through what we Goths did before if somone calls me Emo while I may eventually clarify that I am Goth I’ll stand up for Emos first.
Like when people missidentified my race and were racist towards me, I correct the racism first, the mistake second, as opposing the bigotry is far more important that missidentifying me. I’d rather suffer for being wrongly thought to belong to a less accepted group than be complicit in the infliction of suffering on others by merely trying to avoid being targeted.
gina
Batty… sorry but I don’t feel the difference between crossdressers and transsexuals is hairsplitting in the least, it’s actually a rather profound difference—that of one’s core gender. Don’t buy that analogy. Nor do I accept your ‘goth/emo’ analogy. 1) Goth/Emo are lifestyle choice and I find that rather trivializes what we’re talking about; 2) I don’t consider all terms evolutionary. “Transgender” is a devolution in the larger public’s understand of who members of the “gender umbrella” are. There was a pretty clear, evolving understanding of who transsexuals were until people in the Lesbian/Gay movements decided they could only deal with people with supposedly unorthodox gender identities/expression as a lumped-together group. Batty, that’s not evolution, that’s yet another case of an outside power structure mislabeling a marginalized group. I believe if you look at virtually any liberation movement, an important step in that movement has been the group’s insistence that their group be given respect and demanding clarity of identity and issues by the culture in power. Using the term ‘transgender’ or mixing up crossdressers and transpeople adds no clarify and smears key differences between the two. Genderqueers, third sex or gender fluid people certainly have their own issues within the larger culture, but they aren’t helped by tacking them onto other groups. A spectrum can be acknowledged without oversimplifying by stating “oh, they all have gender issues, therefore they’re basically somehow the same.” That’s a gross mischaracterization.
Battybattybats
1, as I mentioned for years Goths rejected any name. Because it wasn’t for most of them a lifestyle choice or fashion or group one joined. It was merely large numbers of people who coincidentally liked similar things and behaved in similar ways. You can find Goth equivalents throughout much of history long before Walpole’s The Castle Otranto let alone the bands of the Bat Cave club.
But irrespective of that it remains relevant and not trivialising as the result for Diane Schroer shows the whether choice is or is not involved rights apply equally. Race may not be a choice but religion is, both are protected classes because the human rights are the same regardless of choice or innate born difference!
Also it is a useful tool to test ones moral reasoning to apply the same principles in cases of greater and lesser importance for concistancy, hence the application of the Trolley Dilemma to non life-or-death decisions.
And there have been hate crimes including murder against Goths and Emos. So while differences exist comparisons are not trivial nor Goth and Emo issues unimportant.
2, all words evolve. It’s a linguistic fact. Sorry but it is.
Your issue, that peoples stereotypes are wrong and bad is valid, your argument for dealing with that by complaining about associations is less logical.
Exposure to diversity is important. Most people can tell the difference between a person of white Irish culture and a white greek one. Why? Because they are exposed to a variety of white people esp, in the media.
There is a big difference between a person of Korean Asian culture and a Mongolian one but many people who have not met people of those groups or watched diverse representations may not know that and just consider all Asians alike.
Railing against being labeled as Asian is not so useful for these people, trying to demonstrate diversity amongst asian cultures and individuals withn those cultures and get greater public representation of diversity as well as to oppose generalised thinking accross the board however is much more effective.
So while I do agree with you about the need to fight stereotypes and broad generalisation I think internecine squabbling over definitions is largely a waste of time that could be better put to use promoting the diversity of each individual.
Because any definition and judgement of a person by grouping is logically invalid when each individual will be very different from others and plenty will be atypical. It’s sloppy thinking.
Just cause someone’s a Goth doesn’t mean they will be just like me. They may like slipknot and cradle of filth to my dead can dance, they may think jonny the homicidal mainiac was better than invader zim, they may prefer anne rice to bram stoker and sheriden le fanu. And more importantly they may not share all manner of traits and views that make me me. Chances are they too will be pacifist, above average IQ, compassionate and sensitive just as many studies show… but there are plenty of Goths who are not any of those too. So group-judgement of individuals is illogical, irrational and often harmful.
So then surely expressing diversity is a good idea?
Oh and as for that period in many civil rights movements when the ‘clarification of identity’ bit comes in…. thats usually the point where one part of a movement chucks another under the bus for their own benefit. The kid with glasses tripping the fat kid with glasses so the bulies will consider him one of them. Its a worse wrong than the initial oppression because most oppressors are ignorant while the bus chucking is knowingly sacrificing others more different for ones own gain. It’s purely selfish.
gina
No, the proper ‘Asian’ analogy, would be Korean people repeatedly being called Chinese and then having someone who wasn’t even Asian telling them to suck it up and not be so sensitive. I find your goth analogy offensive. The vast, vast majority of people I knew who identified that way back in the 80s (I was involved in 70s punk) no longer look nor identify anything like goths. My gender issues are lifelong, not a choice and can’t be removed like mascara and hair dye. Stop appropriating persecution that isn’t there to try and make your point. Comparing the two is just silly and insulting to transpeople. There a world of difference between being transsexual and someone who’s experimenting with gender expression. My suspicion would be you don’t even personally know people who have actually fully transitioned (correct me if I’m wrong) and you’re sounding rather dilettantish. I wish you well on your personal journey, but kindly stop making ignorant judgments about how transsexual people do or should identify themselves.
Battybattybats
Gina, had you tried to suggest someone Tibetan being called Chinese you would have had something remotely like your perspective in this yes? You actually need to be complaining about something that is at least some way an umbrella term for your counter-analogy to function.
But Transgender being used as an umbrella term will be an umbrella term not a single label. And defined as it currently is in that manner which is congruent with the many potential meanings of combining Trans and Gender thusly involving both gender identity as well as gender expression seperatly and in combination it becomes a very broad umbrella indeed which logically is going to include many more diverse people even than you are considering in your criticisms!
Now I do not say you must identify yourself as Transgender. Plenty of people do not identify with terms that still apply to them. I do not identify as a disabled person as a reflection of my identity but I am disabled and the term reflects my state, not who I am.
And there is Goth expression and Goth identity 🙂 There was is and always will be some who flit shallowly through the culture for a time. And there are those for whom it is a semi-regular thing. And then there are those for whom it was part of who they are long before the term got applied. I know people who were Goths from early childhood. I’ve met Goth Great Grandmothers who grew up on the Penny Dreadfuls and Gothic Novels of a previous century. Before I’d heard a single track by the cure I’d had someone at school try to attack me with a sharpened piece of wood because they, not I, they, thought I was a vampire. And thats a school with uniforms BTW so no, I wore nothing gothic in any way.
Now I’m not saying that Goth is the same as being Transsexual. Of course there is profound difference. Both do suffer from hate-crimes. The need of Transsexuals to get proper medical treatment however is obvious to anyone who knows one (and actually yes Gina, I’ve known one for about 17 years now) but then the profound distress suffered by many non-transsexual Transgender people when they are unable to express the vital part of themselves that they do through crossdressing etc is also real and substantial. There are also plenty of suicides amongst the closeted CD community just as there are amongst the TS community when they are unable to get their rightful medical treatment. And when denial is a big part of the problem there are frequently TSs amidst the CD community. Sure on the forums the TSs refer to GID while the CDs tend to use other terms to express the suffering they go through, but the similarities are profound just the degree of and duration of change needed to salve that suffering differs and often enough there are people who fit between the neat definitions of each.
Which logically does suggest an interelatinship of some kind whether causation or corrolation making a broad umbrella term logical even if for many it is not desirable.
I suggest you might find it good to try to avoid ad hommes if you can like the dilletantish quip, it can prejudice people to the rest of your argument which would be a disservice to you. Anyways…
As I said, you don’t have to identify as Transgender. The term logically though is congruent even if it turns out to be for a collection of superficially similar but causily unrelated groups that share each a portion of the same set of human rights issues which may or may not turn out to be the case.. probably after another few decades of neuroscience study.
But if your problem is people thinking your a drag queen when your a transsexual the existence of drag queens is not the problem as they have just as much right to exist as you, people believing there to be similarities between transsexuals and drag queens is not the problem as until science has finished studying the subject we cannot know for certain that there is or is not some connection. The crucial problem is general ignorance amongst the cis community about ordinary human diversity so they don’t know any better and a conformist anti-liberty and anti-diversity attitude that opposes people being harmlessly different or individually unique.
We don’t need any labels at all to both work on that last one. I don’t care if you dont identify as transgender personally or not, I don’t care if you think the term is erroneous or not beyond it being an interesting academic discussion. But you should start to look past the stereotypes about crossdressers et al to see more of the real people. Each one unique and with their own burden of pain and suffering. And we should all, every single one of us, be supporting of each others human rights issues!
If you want the world to be more accepting of you and more just towards you then you should also be so towards others. And what we need to do is to inform and educate the world about the variety of humanity.
In all facets, sexuality, sex, gender identity, gender expression and much more besides. The problem with all identity-politics is that it promotes further stereotypes, marginalises many who don’t fit closely enough to the stereotypes and wastes ludicrous amounts of time and resources better spent on more vital issues like fixing the gaps in antidiscrimination and hate-crime legislation for all neglected and targeted groups, protecting people from medical abuses like IS child mutilations and denial of TSs their hormones and surgeries and in promoting inclusiveness cooperation and diversity.
And how about the term S&GD Sex and Gender Diversity? It is much more inclusive of Intersex who share the same medical human rights issues but often from the other side of the same right. We need to work together with them so that neither harms the other in their attempts to bring about reforms for the next generations of our communities.
The human right for children to have choices made on their behalf that maximise their freedom of choice when old enough rather than what others think would be the choice they should and would make involves us all. It makes the unconsented genital surgeries on IS babies wrong. It makes denial of hormone blockers to TS kids that forces them into hurtful puberty wrong. It makes reparative therapy for all gender-non-conformist children wrong. It even makes the circumcision of infants wrong!
When the basic principle of all these is the same… there is one label we all share. Human.
gina
Batty, I think you need to get out of the cave. In general media, transgender is increasingly being used instead of transsexual. And, in the world I live in, people are repeatedly labeled transgender whether they wish to be so or not. This is imposing identity politics at its most repressive. And I can assure you the vast majority of Intersex people resent being lumped in with transgender or even GLBTIQ. So, are you going to be telling them they’re wasting their time being concerned about that? Do you honestly not find it curious that you, who are neither transsexual nor Intersex, are basically telling people who do fall into those groups their concerns aren’t legit or they’re wasting their time and energy? Sorry, but I find that arrogant. Crossdressers and Drag Queens overwhelmingly can take off their gender expressions and blend in. They overwhelmingly have entire parts of their lives (usually the majority part) where they are living as straight or gay men. They can reclaim cissexual privilege whenever they need to. Transsexual people can’t do that. I’m getting tired of this discussion, and I honestly think you should worry about yourself rather than concern yourself with groups to which you aren’t a member. Your ‘strategies’ do nothing to help me feel you have any understanding for my humanity
Battybattybats
Again you slip into ad hommes.
Surely you should be able to show errors in my arguments if they are invalid rather than try and say that it is invalid because it is I who says it. That’s a classical logical fallacy. Who an argument comes from has no logical or rational bearing to its truth or untruth. 2 + 2 = 4 and not 5 no matter who it is that says so. This is not a discussion about purely subjective experience where who the person is clearly matters (though as the non-transsexual involved in the crossdreer communities in the conversation surely you should be heeding my experiences and statements about crossdressers etc far more rather than the blanket statements you keep making).
Of course people who fit the definition of Transgender are being called Transgender by people who accept that the word means what it says. Maybe you could however start propagating a label like Cisgender Transsexual? Because clearly some Transsexuals are fine with the label Transgender and others like yourself are not. So then, how about a seperate non-transgender yet not anti-transgender classification for those like yourself?
I’d support that! That way you can show you fit into a binary gender idnetity modality and are transsexual without having to dis on those who dont fit the binary! And rather than attacking transgender and trying to invalidate others use of a term that suits them all you’d have to do is promote the fact that there are both Transgender AND Cisgender transsexuals and eventually the public will comprehend that without wasteful internecine squabbling that can sabotage everyones fight for fairness equality and justice.
As for Crossdressers being able to blend in.. sure to a point. But not totally, not by any means. Besides those who find they need to be 24/7 there are plenty who suffer daily to ‘blend in’. It is not so easy as you think. It is often a task of pain and despair, one that leads too many to depression and suicide.
That transsexuals have not that option is true, but after transition many have the option of stealth which an out genderqueer or an out CD etc does not! Making the situation not nearly so neat as you portray. Not nearly as advantageous to CDs etc as you suggest.
Besides, it’s not a contest. The logical asnwer to the question: “Who’s rights and needs should be addressed, TS or CD or DQ/K or GQ or IS or Gay etc?” is “ALL of them!”.
As for my concerns, I speak not just for myself, that would be selfish. I speak also on the behalf of friends who are TS and IS who appreciate what i say and my greater ability than they in putting it into words. And not just for people i know, that would still be selfish. See ending inequality is everyones responsibility and i take my responsibility seriously.
See thats how universal equality is suppossed to work, and no-one may morally or ethically validly claim or excercise any benefit from being classed as equal so long as they do not support and help render those classed as unequal be classed as equal!
So I show my concern for all of humanity! Yours included!
jess
I HOPE YOU ALL REALIZE THAT WANTING TO BE ANOTHER SEX IS A DISORDER. ITS TREATABLE…. OH AND NO MATTER HOW YOU CHANGE YOUR APPEARENCE YOU KNOW DEEP DOWN INSIDE YOUR NOT A REAL WOMAN
STOP TAKING CREDIT FOR THAT WHEN YOU WILL NEVER KNOW THE EXPERIENCE THAT WOMEN GO THROUGH
Battybattybats
Hi Jess!
It’s treatable is it? Even if your correct just because something can be ‘treated’ does not make it a disorder.
After all religious belief such as Christianity is ‘treatable’ too! As is the desire for liberty!
So just cause something can be ‘treated’ that does not mean it is a disorder. Anything ethical, no matter how bizarre, cannot be considered valid to restrict peoples freedom of choice over. So your in an unwinable ethical quandry as any argument you bring against liberty and equality will refute your own claim to your own equality and liberty! Want to go back to being mens goods and chattel? Of course not. So don’t chop down the trunk of the tree of enlightenment human rights philosophy from which your own freedom and equality springs!
Though it is worth pointing out to you Jess that for many ‘sufferers’ of the ‘disorder’ you refer to the most effevtive treatment is to change their physical sex characteristics through surgery etc. And if you doubt that you have some science reading on genetic links and neurological variations due. Cause no matter your ideology scientific evidence trumps it. Thats a metaphysical fact your stuck with.. and willfull ignorance ignoring evidence rendering a persons every opinion on a subject invalid publicly embarassingly foolish.. that also is treatable, with knowledge.
As for your argument-from-experience, you don’t know what experiences people of cross-gender identity or mixed gender-identity go through either! And i can assure you that the experiences of the mixed gender people are frequntly very distinct from either typical male or typical female experiences all of which are culturally different and extremely varied anyway. So your own arguments are self-refuting! QED.
So Jess, you have some reading to do. On the Enlightenment, on philosophy, on science and biology.
So why not treat your ignorance by getting some knowledge?