Gender bending

[shaun.lawson]

What is very frustrating from the transgender community is the feeling that they just expect you to know everything automatically. I remember having 2 very different chats with 2 lassies who are heavily involved in the LGBT community. One was delighted that I was asking questions about trans people and was happy to discuss everything about it. The other lassie basically belittled me for asking 'challenging' questions. For a lot of people, even younger people they haven't had any interactions or been around transgender so it's completely new to a lot of people. I think it's great their community is gaining a voice and it's becoming more accepted, I think they just need to tone it back a bit in regards to people asking questions. I'm not saying folk have the right to just go up to a trans and ask her if she has a dick or whatever, but it just feels like there's a lot of hositility from online bloggers etc about it.

Agree with this. That's very insightful.

And maybe it's my turn to be a bit controversial. Because reading this thread, I find myself agreeing with Dank on huge numbers of things - based not on empirical evidence (so take it with a pinch of salt by all means), just on my own experiences.

1. I think it's very very clear that Chelsea/Bradley Manning was in an extremely unstable mental state when leaking the documents and afterwards. That's one of many things which makes her case so tragic.

2. My transgender sister had a shitload of problems growing up, bullied my sister to the point of hospitalising her, had this weird darkness about (as he was then) him, then fell into the worst depression I've ever seen in anyone when he was 20. His eyes were dead; he rejected counselling, yet seriously considered electric shock therapy; massive amounts of lithium ultimately stabilised him.

Then he turned Communist for about a decade and became a political activist: one night in 2003, the first shot on Channel 4 News was of him being carted away by the police from an Iraq war protest in front of Parliament. He had the police watching him and regarding him as a potential subversive. He walked away from our family for an entire decade. Then the news that he wanted gender transformative surgery came totally out of the blue - from nowhere.

She (as she is now) says she had these feelings as a child. I can buy that to some extent, but not 100%: ditto her asexuality. What I think she's constantly tried to do is 'fill' this gaping hole in her consciousness/being with different solutions - but she's never got to the root of her problems, because she's too scared of doing so and has basically buried her entire childhood. Her identity crisis makes perfect sense to me in the context of my family - her sex change doesn't make perfect sense (though it does make *some* sense: I don't want to downplay this or patronise her).

In turn, this leads me to:

3. Science says - everyone says - that sexuality is nature, not nurture. I think it's both. I come, as is well known on here, from a highly unconventional family at best; a dysfunctional, fucked up one at worst. A family in which I had zero positive male role models whatsoever; and in which both my sisters were given a horrible time by our then brother and our Dad.

My pansexual sister does not believe she'd be pansexual if it wasn't for her upbringing. From my point of view, I find it close to impossible to believe that of four siblings, only one was 'born' straight - and I'm no-one's idea of a 'normal' straight man in any case.

My conclusion? I think sexuality comes from a huge variety of things. Not only nature, but environment, experience, and sometimes, trauma too. And I strongly suspect the same applies with transgender people: I think there's invariably psychological reasons behind more or less all of it.

But say any of this to someone gay, lesbian or transgender, and you'd get a slap. As we're all different, all individuals, rightly so too.

[Mozzer]

http://www.dailywire.com/news/5683/3-fac...en-shapiro

Mozzer

[Herman Boyce]

I've long since decided that if someone wants to publicly express how they feel about something like this, they're probably being genuine and speaking truthfully about it.

If I was to speak out about how I feel about something specifically personal and emotional to me, I'd be pretty pissed off if someone told me otherwise, because no matter what you think, you can't know how someone else actually feels.

I don't see how you could really question that someone in a male or female's body could identify as a different sex. At the end of the day it just comes down to parts of the body; the only difference here is that the parts of the body that cause the debate are generally accepted as determining whether someone is a man or a woman.

If your born with 9 fingers, no one would question your claim that you are and feel like a man. So I don't see how if you're born with a cock anyone can say you aren't or don't feel like a woman.

Then again, on the minuscule chance Manning is willing to have his genitals lobbed off and go through what appears to be the extremely emotionally challenging process of hormone therapeutic etc. just so he can go to a woman's jail, he can crack on as far as I'm concerned.

[Walter Sobchak]

I would say, though, that I have on occasion met people in the LGBT campaigning community, who one might get the impression are only to keen to help convince their latest project that their feelings of being effeminate, and homosexual, are really because they are trans. Certainly made me ask the question of the 'supporter' as to their intentions but at the end of the day the person making the decision has decided to trust that person and to discuss very intimate or personal things with them and to trust them.

[PHOODLE-OUt]

Paedophile equality next?

[Mozzer]

Agree with this. That's very insightful.

And maybe it's my turn to be a bit controversial. Because reading this thread, I find myself agreeing with Dank on huge numbers of things - based not on empirical evidence (so take it with a pinch of salt by all means), just on my own experiences.

1. I think it's very very clear that Chelsea/Bradley Manning was in an extremely unstable mental state when leaking the documents and afterwards. That's one of many things which makes her case so tragic.

2. My transgender sister had a shitload of problems growing up, bullied my sister to the point of hospitalising her, had this weird darkness about (as he was then) him, then fell into the worst depression I've ever seen in anyone when he was 20. His eyes were dead; he rejected counselling, yet seriously considered electric shock therapy; massive amounts of lithium ultimately stabilised him.

Then he turned Communist for about a decade and became a political activist: one night in 2003, the first shot on Channel 4 News was of him being carted away by the police from an Iraq war protest in front of Parliament. He had the police watching him and regarding him as a potential subversive. He walked away from our family for an entire decade. Then the news that he wanted gender transformative surgery came totally out of the blue - from nowhere.

She (as she is now) says she had these feelings as a child. I can buy that to some extent, but not 100%: ditto her asexuality. What I think she's constantly tried to do is 'fill' this gaping hole in her consciousness/being with different solutions - but she's never got to the root of her problems, because she's too scared of doing so and has basically buried her entire childhood. Her identity crisis makes perfect sense to me in the context of my family - her sex change doesn't make perfect sense (though it does make *some* sense: I don't want to downplay this or patronise her).

In turn, this leads me to:

3. Science says - everyone says - that sexuality is nature, not nurture. I think it's both. I come, as is well known on here, from a highly unconventional family at best; a dysfunctional, fucked up one at worst. A family in which I had zero positive male role models whatsoever; and in which both my sisters were given a horrible time by our then brother and our Dad.

My pansexual sister does not believe she'd be pansexual if it wasn't for her upbringing. From my point of view, I find it close to impossible to believe that of four siblings, only one was 'born' straight - and I'm no-one's idea of a 'normal' straight man in any case.

My conclusion? I think sexuality comes from a huge variety of things. Not only nature, but environment, experience, and sometimes, trauma too. And I strongly suspect the same applies with transgender people: I think there's invariably psychological reasons behind more or less all of it.

But say any of this to someone gay, lesbian or transgender, and you'd get a slap. As we're all different, all individuals, rightly so too.

Very interesting Shaun.

The kind of thing that really deserves to be discussed in person and in detail.

Mozzer

[Bill Cosby]

It's just the natural progression.

[Mr A]

Genetically I am of common birth. I have always felt that my blood was blue, though.

Plz address me as Your Lordship from now on plz.