Transgender Rights

[Andrew]

OK, we have a Gay Rights thread happening - how about Trans Rights?

Are you comfortable with trans people? Would you be OK sharing a locker room with a trans person who was born the "opposite" gender from you? Do you think that people should be be protected based on their gender identity as well as their sexual orientation?

Check out NCTE (national center for transgender equality)

IT'S NOT EQUALITY WITHOUT THE T.

[Sinnymun]

I don't know any transgendered people, and as far as I can see, I don't and wouldn't have any problem with them. But it's something I just don't understand. I think it's mostly because I've never thought of gender as 'girl pieces' v 'boy pieces' or 'feminine' v 'masculine' but rather in chromosomal terms. All the surgery and hormone therapy in the world isn't going to change the fact that girls are XX and boys are XY.
So I just look at it as a 'live and let live' thing. I don't get it, but if it makes them happy and doesn't really hurt anyone else... why not?

[halwisethebrave]

it's about feeling like you were born with the wrong body. thinking and feeling like a boy, yet you were born a girl and vice versa. feeling like you're lost in your own body. transitioning is an act of trying to fix that incongruity.

[Sinnymun]

Huh. If you say so. I can see how that would be uncomfortable, but like I said, to me gender isn't something that you 'think and feel' you are. You're DNA says girl? You ARE a girl. DNA says boy? You ARE a boy. Obviously, if you don't like it, you make steps to live differently, but it doesn't change what the DNA says. I mean... I don't have the DNA for the designs I wanted on my skin, so I got tattoos. I don't have the DNA for the hair I like, I dye it. I have no problem with it, like I said.
Maybe I'm having a hard time making a difference in my mind between Transvestites and Transgender/sexuals. It's just dressing up, because way down deep, those chromosomes don't lie. (I know there are people with chromosomal abnormalities, they are outside of my rules.)

Heheh... I just thought of Too Wong Foo... "A transexual is a woman who feels trapped in a mans body and gets a little operation to fix it. A transvestite is a man who likes to wear dresses. But a Drag Queen darling, is a gay man with far too much fashion for either sex." I totally massacred that quote... it's been so long since I've seen that movie.
*makes note to find Too Wong Foo again*

[Frizz K. West]

You're confusing sex and gender. Sex is between your legs, all the physical aspects of being a man or a woman, and it's determined by DNA. Gender is in your head, and there are many factors that determine it, to degrees that we can't yet figure out. Like, how much do your parents effect your gender? Your peers? The culture you're raised with? Your DNA? Usually, the sex and the gender match up. Occasionally, for reasons unknown, they don't, causing a horrible feeling that usually starts in early childhood.

[Sinnymun]

Alright, I'll accept that. But then their official sex is still the one they were born with, and it should be the one listed on driver's licences, IDs, etc. Even if I dye my hair, my ID and DL all still say blonde.

[Frizz K. West]

I realize that this was almost a year ago now, but I thought of this comment recently and it really started to bug me. Your hair color isn't a part of your core identity. People don't address you with different titles based on your hair color. You never feel the urge to remove all of your hair because it's the wrong color. You're never called sick or disturbed for wanting to change your hair color. There's no such thing as hair color dysphoria, that sickening feeling that's there every day that your hair color is wrong, it's disgusting, it's weighing you down and crushing you. It's nowhere near comparable.

Wouldn't you feel awful if people constantly addressed you as "Mr. Sinnymun," insisted that you have male on all your I.D.'s even though, when you show them to someone, the best reaction you can expect is a look of shock, if you're never really acknowledged as female because of those documents?

[Midnight Radio]

To Wong Foo is one of my all time favorite movies.

"What about the two of you, leaving Poor Ms. Vita alone at the hands of a possibly dead sheriff Dullard?!!!"