hudebnik: (rant)
hudebnik ([personal profile] hudebnik) wrote2016-05-21 07:56 am
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A liberal's discomfort with trans-gender

Unlike some people bothered by the trans-gendered, I wasn't raised in a "Mad Men" world, and I don't pine for it. I was raised in the feminist backlash against a "Mad Men" world: we watched "All In the Family" after dinner, and I nearly memorized the album "Free To Be You And Me". I was brought up to believe that your physical sex should have no bearing on your choice of toys, occupations, social and economic roles, clothing, etc.

Which leaves me puzzled when I hear of people who decide they "should have been born male" or "should have been born female". Why should it matter, for any purpose other than excretion and sex? (Two activities in which, combined, I expect to spend perhaps 1% of my life, leaving 99% for activities that have nothing to do with the shape of my sex organs.)

I took Home Economics in junior high school, because I liked cooking and wanted to do it better, and because I didn't know much about sewing but thought a competent person should. I knew I would be teased for it -- I already got a lot of abuse, and accusations of being "gay", for the twin crimes of being small and smart -- but I thought it was the right and brave thing to do. If I were in junior high school today and made the same choice for the same reasons, would I be diagnosed with gender dysphoria and advised to consider hormone treatment or even surgery? If, furthermore, I were exploring my teen-aged sexuality and found some attraction to other boys, would that seal the diagnosis? I certainly hope not!

When trans people win the battle to change their sex and be accepted in society as their new sex, it tells me we lost the war: your physical sex does determine your role in society after all. The trans movement seem to me to be working very hard to escape from prison... so they can check themselves into a different prison, when I would have preferred to raze both prisons to the ground.

To use a different metaphor, gender reassignment strikes me as a hardware solution to a software problem. I have a spreadsheet program and need a Web browser, so instead of installing a Web browser, I change the CPU to one which interprets the instructions of a spreadsheet program as those of a web browser. It just seems terribly inelegant and inefficient.

Mind you, I'll fight vociferously for your right to declare yourself male or female, and be treated as such; see here and here. But I'm deeply disappointed at your need to do so.

Comments, particularly from transgendered people and their loved ones, are welcome: I don't understand the motivations, and I really want to.

[identity profile] la-peregrina.livejournal.com 2016-05-22 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
My new stepson is transgender, and I knew this person since the last almost two years before the transition from Kate to Eamon. Which happened within a year of Brian's passing.

I can only say that Eamon is happier as Eamon than Kate ever was. The most amazing thing in all of this to me is that the woman Eamon knew even as Kate married Eamon in October of 2014. If that is not love, I don't know what is.

I can't begin to imagine the mental and emotional calisthenics that my husband's conservative parents had to undergo to accept the situation, but they've done so with equanimity and grace. I was at that wedding, eight months before mine, and at subsequent family gatherings since, so I've witnessed this equanimity first hand.

It seems a lot of trouble to go through physically to change outward appearances so drastically, and I know genetics can never be changed, but Eamon and Audrey are happy. The younger sister got an older brother, and their parents got a son, though the mother would die of cancer not long after. Everyone is still devoted to each other as they ever were.

I don't want to imagine how my family would handle a similar situation. Let's just say that it will indeed be an interesting day when certain people meet for the first time.
Edited 2016-05-22 03:42 (UTC)