General LGBTQIA issues thread

[koan]

The gay community is hating on each other.

The gay bar is one of the most judgemental environments to be in. Intolerance goes both ways. I see a lot of intolerance and insult slinging in both directions.

I'm bi and I'm getting sick of explaining to you why I'm not a lazy intolerant idiot. Imagine how straight people feel when they get the same response.

[koan]

Here you go: A website by an ex-tranny who wants to enlighten the world about the wrongness of SRS.

He wrote a book too. If I read that I'll be extra enlightened.

Here's what he thinks of the Massachusetts Transgender Rights and Hate Crimes Bill H502.

The dangers of telling people to go educate themselves and stop bothering you.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by koan

He wrote a book too.

Maybe he's trying to educate people.

ETA: holy god, that cover art is terrifying

[koan]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

Maybe he's trying to educate people.

ETA: holy god, that cover art is terrifying

What if he was the only one willing to take the time to educate people?

[Ari]

Originally Posted by koan

The dangers of telling people to go educate themselves and stop bothering you.

The dangers!

People don't live in a vacuum, there's a good chance they already have preconceived notions on a topic. The idea that they will some how be corrupted by the information out there without your guiding hand is bullshit because it's already happened. By taking the effort to put a term into google there's a good chance they are taking a step in the right direction because it shows willingness to learn more. Willingness is the key. I've given information to people who clearly didn't want to hear it, and I doubt they did. If I spent my time personally talking to everyone, especially those that don't really want to learn, I will have wasted my time and done very little for "the cause" in comparison to short intense bursts of information to those that want to learn.

It's not your job to save them all... and if you think it is, you will fail!

[koan]

We should have empathy and compassion for people who don't understand as well.

If they've taken the time to ask a question, to me, that's a bonus point. If you're too busy or aggravated to educate someone who asks a question you should just tell them that instead of blaming them for your aggravation.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by koan

What if he was the only one willing to take the time to educate people?

Then he would still be kind of crazy? That's a weird counterfactual, like that he would be the only person voicing an opinion in public, but it wouldn't make him automatically right or persuasive by default.

Originally Posted by koan

If they've taken the time to ask a question, to me, that's a bonus point.

That rather depends on the question.

It's never even occurred to me that I owe anybody any kind of explanation, nor has the idea that anybody is entitled to an explanation from me. I don't even know what I would explain.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by koan

If they've taken the time to ask a question, to me, that's a bonus point.

Then clearly you haven't been asked that many questions.

Originally Posted by koan

If you're too busy or aggravated to educate someone who asks a question you should just tell them that instead of blaming them for your aggravation.

Who is blaming who for aggravation? I missed that.

[koan]

Paper Genders approaches its topic—the medical treatment for
gender identity issues—with a fresh perspective, combining well-researched
facts with personal stories of struggle.

Paper Genders exposes and debunks the promises of gender
change surgery and shines a light on the suicides and dissatisfaction
that the advocates would prefer to keep hidden.

Written by an ex transsexual.

That's some high quality misinformation right there. Maybe the person making the stupid statement or asking the stupid question has read something like that.

[livius drusus]

Why are you so defensive? You posted something that you yourself admitted was based on ignorance and people gave you props for being honest and for exploring this area of yourself that you were uncomfortable with. You've had questions answered and issued explored. Even the people who don't think it's the duty of the non-privileged to explain themselves on demand to the satisfaction of the privileged have taken the trouble to explain why they feel that way.

So why the need to Google up as much "misinformation" on the subject as you can find? Because some trans people don't want to drop everything and lay out their guts to you or anyone else whose curiosity seems to come with a hearty dose of hostility and very thin attempts at self-education? You're getting aggro after a couple of posts, feeling put upon and misunderstood and accused of something nobody has accused you of. Don't you think the people who have been the targets of endless abuse and intrusions of their privacy are entitled to be at least as over it as you are?

So leave them be and look for your information elsewhere. If you want to read about trans people against SRS then do it. If you want to read about trans people for SRS then then do that. If you want to read a diary of a transitioning trans then do that. It's all available to you. If it's information that you genuinely seek rather than polemics or reinforcement of your current position or assurances that you are a good, tolerant, nice person, there is no reason for you to have a chip on your shoulder about any of it.

[koan]

Originally Posted by koan

Special Note to Those Thinking About a Sex Change,
by Danielle Berry
[Compiled from a number of emails I sent in response to requests for input from those considering their own change.]
Don't do it! That's my advice. This is the most awful, most expensive, most painful, most disruptive thing you could ever do. Don't do it unless there is no other alternative. You may think your life is tough but unless it's a choice between suicide and a sex-change it will only get worse. And the costs keep coming. You lose control over most aspects of your life, become a second class citizen and all so you can wear women's clothes and feel cuter than you do now. Don't do it is all I've got to say.

That's advice I wish someone had given me. I had the sex change, I "pass" fine, my career is good but you can't imagine the number of times I've wished I could go back and see if there was another way. Despite following the rules and being as honest as I could with the medical folks at each stage, nobody stopped me and said "Are you honest to God absolutely sure this is the ONLY path for you?!" To the contrary, the voices were all cheerfully supportive of my decision. I was fortunate that the web didn't exist then - there are too damn many cheerleaders ready to reassure themselves of their own decision by parading their "successful" surgeries and encouraging others.

I can speak the transgender party line that I was a female trapped in a male body and I remember feeling this way since I was 4. But, it's never that easy if you look at it sincerely and without preconception. There's little question that a mid-life crisis, a divorce and a cancer scare were involved in at least the timing of my sex-change decision. To be completely honest at this point (3 yrs post-op) is not easy, however, I'm not sure I would do it again. I'm now concerned that much of what I took as a gender dysfunction might have been nothing more than a neurotic sexual obsession. I was a cross-dresser for all of my sexual life and had always fantasized going fem as an ultimate turn-on. Ironically, when I began hormone treatment my libido went away. However, I mistook that relief from sexual obsession for validation of my gender change. Then in the final bit of irony, after surgery my new genitals were non-orgasmic (like 80% of my TG sisters).

So, needless to say, my life as a woman is not an ultimate turn-on. And what did it all cost? Over $30,000 and the loss of most of my relationships to family and friends. And the costs don't end. Every relationship I make now and in the future has to come to terms with the sex-change. And I'm not the only one who suffers. I hate the impact this will have on my kids and their future.

Anyway, I'm making it sound awful and it's not. There are some perks but the important things like being comfortable with myself and having a true love in my life don't seem like they were contingent on the change. Being my "real self" could have included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made sense. I didn't know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the life I've stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I jumped off the precipice. I miss my easy access to my kids (unlike many TS's I didn't completely lose access to them though), I miss my family and old friends (I know they "shouldn't" have abandoned me but lots of folks aren't as open minded as they "should" be ... I still miss them) and finally, I hate the disconnect with my past (there's just no way to integrate the two unrelated lives). There's any number of ways to express your gender and sexuality and the only one I tried was the big one. I'll never know if I could have found a compromise that might have worked a lot better than the "one size fits all" sex-change. Please, check it out yourself before you do likewise."

- Danielle Berry -
bolded emphasis added

Nobody "liked" this.
I consider this good information. Important information.

It pretty much echoes the general stance of my starting opinion about transsexuals and my opinion about whether or not angrily telling people to educate themselves online is a good idea. I have since learned that some people have a genuine disorder but it's also true that some only think they have that disorder. Cheerleading someone to physically alter their body isn't a good thing. Cheerleading them after they've done it is a good thing.

You can't expect cis people to understand something even a lot of trans people don't seem to understand. It's a medical disorder that some people mistakenly think they have. For each person who makes that mistake, the people who know them can reasonably think they know something about transsexualism when all they actually know is something about mistaken transsexualism.

It's only a duty to educate people if you want them to be educated. If you don't care whether or not people are educated then it is not your problem.

[koan]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

Why are you so defensive? You posted something that you yourself admitted was based on ignorance and people gave you props for being honest and for exploring this area of yourself that you were uncomfortable with. You've had questions answered and issued explored. Even the people who don't think it's the duty of the non-privileged to explain themselves on demand to the satisfaction of the privileged have taken the trouble to explain why they feel that way.

So why the need to Google up as much "misinformation" on the subject as you can find? Because some trans people don't want to drop everything and lay out their guts to you or anyone else whose curiosity seems to come with a hearty dose of hostility and very thin attempts at self-education? You're getting aggro after a couple of posts, feeling put upon and misunderstood and accused of something nobody has accused you of. Don't you think the people who have been the targets of endless abuse and intrusions of their privacy are entitled to be at least as over it as you are?

So leave them be and look for your information elsewhere. If you want to read about trans people against SMS then do it. If you want to read about trans people for SMS then then do that. If you want to read a diary of a transitioning trans then do that. It's all available to you. If it's information that you genuinely seek rather than polemics or reinforcement of your current position or assurances that you are a good, tolerant, nice person, there is no reason for you to have a chip on your shoulder about any of it.

Sorry to disturb you all.

[LadyShea]

koan, you are getting a bit more defensive than I can understand. You seem to have an issue at personal stake here, but I can't see it. If you are making an argument, I am equally unable to determine any position you are arguing for.

If you merely want to express your opinions and have others respond with their own....I am unsure why you seem to be upset.

[Kael]

Originally Posted by koan

Sorry to disturb you all.

You were doing just fine, even when you were pushing back. Then after ES posted some "rude" pink internet memes, you got all hackles-up and started addressing arguments no one here made, like the idea that every trans person should undergo SRS as soon as possible, and that such procedures are universally good and necessary and thinking otherwise makes you a bigot. In fact, several people including myself said the exact opposite. I get that you kinda wanted to argue about this in the first place, but really.

[livius drusus]

Yeah that. I'm sorry if I just added to your general dudgeon, but nobody here was going after you the way you were acting like they were. Just discuss things if you want to. If you don't, then don't.

[BrotherMan]

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by koan

Nobody "liked" this.
I consider this good information. Important information.

It pretty much echoes the general stance of my starting opinion about transsexuals and my opinion about whether or not angrily telling people to educate themselves online is a good idea. I have since learned that some people have a genuine disorder but it's also true that some only think they have that disorder. Cheerleading someone to physically alter their body isn't a good thing. Cheerleading them after they've done it is a good thing.

You can't expect cis people to understand something even a lot of trans people don't seem to understand. It's a medical disorder that some people mistakenly think they have. For each person who makes that mistake, the people who know them can reasonably think they know something about transsexualism when all they actually know is something about mistaken transsexualism.

It's only a duty to educate people if you want them to be educated. If you don't care whether or not people are educated then it is not your problem.

This is one person's experience and therefore valid information, yes, but it can't possibly illuminate the entire issue for everyone.

Though she seems to regret not being orgasmic, and regrets the alienation from family and friends (foreseeable or known possible consequences I would assume) I see no regret or disconnect for being a woman. I see no "I am a man trapped in a surgically created woman's body!". She isn't living or dressing as a man, correct? She isn't trying to stop being a woman. I see a desire to be a fully functional woman, I see a desire for others to see her as a woman and not a trans-woman, maybe. I see someone who wishes she had been born a woman because radical body modification is painful, expensive, and difficult. I don't see someone who "thought they had a disorder but didn't, nor do I see someone who was mistaken about being transsexual.

If I may go further to try to find a frame of reference from which to empathize. Lots of people have mid-life crises, divorces, and cancer scare and/or devastating illnesses, injuries, losses etc. but never, ever consider SRS as a response to those life stressors. It doesn't occur to Cis people.

That indicates, to me, that this person was indeed transgendered all along. SRS is not the answer for everyone, I don't even think it's the answer for most, thought stats seem hard to come by.

Also at the link A WARNING FOR THOSE CONSIDERING MtF SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY (SRS)

Regrets and adjustment difficulties seem to occur especially frequently in the cases of older intense crossdressers and sexual fetishists whose drive to transition is based primarily on male sexual feelings and habits. These individuals will gradually lose their male libidinous responses to their new female body as time passes after the removal of their testicles during SRS. This loss of libidinous rewards, combined with accumulating practical, social and emotional difficulties in postoperative life, can lead to serious long-term adjustment difficulties for those who've "made a mistake". (This effect is quite different from the experiencing of a heightened female libido and improvements in lovemaking capability that occur in many other postoperative TS cases).

It's possible that as the surgery has become more accessible, affordable, and accepted more people are undergoing it for the wrong reasons. The therapists, used to being supportive of all who seek it, need to find a way to "catch up" and identify those considering surgery for, what appears to be, erotic reasons.

Additionally, Danielle underwent surgery in 1992. Do you think it possible that progress has been made and support/counseling improved in the last 20 years?

[Ensign Steve]

Just so I'm clear, it was not my intention to be rude or insulting by posting those macros. It was an attempt to show that one specific complaint or argument is so played out and common in every minority community that it has been repeatedly reduced to a bite-sized macro. Admittedly I am ham-fisted and not nice when I deliver my little message, but I doubt that's what pisses people off as much as being called out. I find if I'm reading a tumblr like that and I try to actually hear people's voices and frustrations about their lived experiences, they read a lot less rude if I don't internalize each one as an attack on me personally.

My intention was not to insult but to illuminate.

[LadyShea]

I doubt that's what pisses people off as much as being called out. I find if I'm reading a tumblr like that and I try to actually hear people's voices and frustrations about their lived experiences, they read a lot less rude if I don't internalize each one as an attack on me personally.

I find that if I feel something like that is an attack on me personally, I need to examine something about myself. Check my privilege, maybe, or look more closely at my biases to see what they are based on. If I feel insulted by some kind of combined experiences of others, then it hit too close to home and I need to understand that about myself, not about them.

[Qingdai]

The only experience I have with sex change surgery is that if you go to another country (Thailand is the case in point) you may not have to do much, if any, counseling. Of course the one coworker I had who did that, was just done with therapy for years and ready. She was quite happy afterwards.
Most of the people I work with are pre-op and fairly young. Even with the support the clinic I work at gives them, which includes counseling and group meetings, they don't have an easy time of it. It is neither easy nor fast.

[Ymir's blood]

From what I've read on various blogs, some people have issues with medical professionals applying litmus tests to see if someone qualifies as well as making people jump through hoops. The perception is that the medical community attempts to treat the issue as if one size fit all instead of working with the individual in question.

I really find the nature of gender to be quite baffling. Prior to my encounter with the idea of non-binary gender and gender-as-performance, it never really seemed to fit me. Afterward, it made even less sense, asocial as I am. However, my attitude is that I don't need to understand and in questions of identity and bodily autonomy, to accept that it is solely the right of the individual to make those choices for themself.

[Gonzo]

I was hanging out with a friend of mine once, at her aunt and uncle's house because she wanted me to meet her nephews. I happened to be wearing all black that day (leather trench coat, with my gay Green Lantern shirt on, and my nails painted) and it was obvious to me her uncle didn't think I was much of a keeper. I was sitting at the bar in the kitchen with her and quietly smoked a cigarette while uncle slammed a beer and tried to get the four kids under control, when the 10 year old came into the kitchen (who is sort of like Leonardo DiCaprio from What's Eating Gilbert Grape? who introduces himself by saying "I could go at anytime" with a big smile on his face). So the kid says, "I can't drink soda 'cause I have a heart murmur". So I say, "You have a heart murmur? That's rough. ". And he rolls his eyes and responds with, "Pfff. You bet." like I was the most ungrateful guy to have ever lived while my friend quietly shushed me to shut up about it. So a few minutes later the kids are playing around with the dogs in the living room and uncle makes a snide remark about 'putting the black dog down', when suddenly the little kid shouted out, "No! The black one loves us!". And my heart grew two sizes that day.

[lisarea]

Even if it were the case that people were getting SRS unnecessarily, though, it still wouldn't be appropriate for people to be challenging other people casually. If that really were a problem, it would be one that should be addressed in a professional setting and not in the form of inquisitions by sundry laypeople. That's disrespectful.

Just treat people respectfully unless you have a very good reason not to. Respect their choices, refer to them the way they ask you to (within reason, of course), and respect their privacy and their time. People don't owe you an explanation or justification for existing and living their lives, as long as they're not hurting you.

[Crumb]

refer to them the way they ask you to

From now on please call me Grand High Chancellor Crumb, or His Majesty.

[Ensign Steve]

You got it, his maj!