In wandering around the Internet I found an editorial criticizing the clothing company J Crew. I like some of their clothes, but the ad is really pretty cool, shown here. It shows a parent loving their child and letting them express themself as they know they are. How cool is that?
And of course, the right wing, conservative folks picked this up to write the typical crap about gender "confused" kids and promoting transgender children. Well, as the comment (below column) noted, transgender kids, if given a loving home and supportive parents, aren't confused, and kids are kids. If you let them explore, they're fine and they'll be fine.
This ad helps both parents, noting to be there for them and let them just be kids, and kids, to explore and express themselves. After all it's just polish and pink is just another color, one many men as well as women like. Look at all the men's pink golf shirts of past years' styles. And many amateur and professional athletes wear pink as symbols of support for women's causes, like breast cancer.
In short, to all the uptight (and tight ass) conservatives who want to define sex and gender for all of us, get a life. It's just a boy, just polish and just a color. Go express your anger at freedom and liberty for all somewhere else than at the toes of a boy who's mother loves and supports him.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
A really Bad Argument
One argument, as defined by the OED, is "a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong", is being the devil's advocate to put forth a position which is bad to begin with and then gets worse the longer the writer, or speaker, continues to propose it. Really? And here?
Or rather with transpeople. Roland Hulme wrote a piece, found here, which suggests transpeople, at the end of their transistion should not be able to get their birth certificates changed to reflect their innate gender from their birth sex.
He used the recent law suit in New York City brought to remove the necessity for surgery, the standard in 48 states (Ohio and Tennesse excludes that right) for transwomen to get their birth certificates changed from male to female. The laws in most states allow transmen to get the change without surgery as it's medically risky and too expensive.
The problem there is many, maybe almost all, transpeople oppose this lawsuit. The petitioners' case has merit as some transpeople can't get surgery for medical or financial reasons (the latter is the common rule for most transpeople as it's not covered by the majority of health insurance plans). But the case includes a transman who can get a judge's order for the change, something a transwoman can't get, necessitating surgery.
The reason they oppose the lawsuit is that it removes the dividing line between the in-transistion and post-transistion women, and some men (exception for them in most states) being surgery (sex/gender change surgery) and creates an indeterminate and indisguishable area defining sex and gender under the law.
This opens the door for early transistioners to get the change to be legally female while being mostly male, and it allows crossdressers and others who dress as women for personal or professonal reasons to find someone who'll agree to cerify their transistion when they're not in transistion or have any goals or plans to transistion.
And as we know, it opens the door to the proverbial media hype that even most transwomen oppose, the "men in dresses in women's bathrooms" idea or the disguse of the ultrafeminine dressup model idea. Neither of which are how transwomen want to be seen. They want to be, live and get on with their lives as women, real, ordinary women.
Transwomen, in-transistion but especially post-transistion, want to be women, and not seen or feared as crossdressers, transvestites or anything the media tries portray them for hype and ratings. And they want to be legally defined and identified as women. That's the law. Something Mr. Hulme doesn't understand.
Oh yeah, he's playing devil's advocate all right. But does he really, as he suggested, believe birth certificates are absolute documents and not fluid? We know can change your name, correct mistakes for parents and other information to get an updated or amended birth certificate. And we know intersexed people can get their sex marker changed from mistakes at birth (assigning the wrong sex) or after surgery to correct it.
I had three birth certificates issued for me for two name changes in two weeks. Is he suggesting my first one was absolute? And if I decide to change my name from what my parents decided three times, he would deny me that right? And all the transwomen and transmen the right to be who they are physically and mentally and not just defined by their genes?
The devil's advocate got his argument lost in his own details, which is mostly his own ignorance of the facts and his own inhumanity for others.
Or rather with transpeople. Roland Hulme wrote a piece, found here, which suggests transpeople, at the end of their transistion should not be able to get their birth certificates changed to reflect their innate gender from their birth sex.
He used the recent law suit in New York City brought to remove the necessity for surgery, the standard in 48 states (Ohio and Tennesse excludes that right) for transwomen to get their birth certificates changed from male to female. The laws in most states allow transmen to get the change without surgery as it's medically risky and too expensive.
The problem there is many, maybe almost all, transpeople oppose this lawsuit. The petitioners' case has merit as some transpeople can't get surgery for medical or financial reasons (the latter is the common rule for most transpeople as it's not covered by the majority of health insurance plans). But the case includes a transman who can get a judge's order for the change, something a transwoman can't get, necessitating surgery.
The reason they oppose the lawsuit is that it removes the dividing line between the in-transistion and post-transistion women, and some men (exception for them in most states) being surgery (sex/gender change surgery) and creates an indeterminate and indisguishable area defining sex and gender under the law.
This opens the door for early transistioners to get the change to be legally female while being mostly male, and it allows crossdressers and others who dress as women for personal or professonal reasons to find someone who'll agree to cerify their transistion when they're not in transistion or have any goals or plans to transistion.
And as we know, it opens the door to the proverbial media hype that even most transwomen oppose, the "men in dresses in women's bathrooms" idea or the disguse of the ultrafeminine dressup model idea. Neither of which are how transwomen want to be seen. They want to be, live and get on with their lives as women, real, ordinary women.
Transwomen, in-transistion but especially post-transistion, want to be women, and not seen or feared as crossdressers, transvestites or anything the media tries portray them for hype and ratings. And they want to be legally defined and identified as women. That's the law. Something Mr. Hulme doesn't understand.
Oh yeah, he's playing devil's advocate all right. But does he really, as he suggested, believe birth certificates are absolute documents and not fluid? We know can change your name, correct mistakes for parents and other information to get an updated or amended birth certificate. And we know intersexed people can get their sex marker changed from mistakes at birth (assigning the wrong sex) or after surgery to correct it.
I had three birth certificates issued for me for two name changes in two weeks. Is he suggesting my first one was absolute? And if I decide to change my name from what my parents decided three times, he would deny me that right? And all the transwomen and transmen the right to be who they are physically and mentally and not just defined by their genes?
The devil's advocate got his argument lost in his own details, which is mostly his own ignorance of the facts and his own inhumanity for others.
Crossdressers aren't trans
I ran across, visually of course, an editorial by Brian McNaught suggesting crossdressers should be in the LGBT definiton as transgender, see article. Well, in his opinion, but not in reality. Crossdressers, as he rightfully says, outnumber transwomen and transmen, those in transistion, and probably by an order of magnitude.
After all, while the entertainers, often called female illusionists or impersonators now, are mostly gay men who like pretending and getting attention as women, the vast majority of the rest are heterosexual men, often married with families. They're not gay and while many do go through facial hair removal to help, they don't go through any medical care to transistion. They don't want to transistion.
In short, they like their dicks and they like to play dressup. That's not transgender. It's not in the DSM-IVTR or will be in the DSM-V, although there are some suggestions to find something there for them to be medical and therefore protected as a condition. Yeah, right. weekdays they're ordinary men and weekends, pretend women. Gee, that's a psychological disorder?
Not according to psychiatrists and psychologists who call crossdressing a hobby at best and a fetish, transvestism, at worst. But when they don't need or want therapy, don't need medical professional help tor transistion, don't want surgeries to become women and don't want to change their birth certificate and records, they don't face discrimination just being who they are in life and work.
Mr. McNaught missed the point that in many fights for equality for LGB and then LGBT folks, crossdressers have been the problem, allowing opponents to use them as an example for all, the proverbial "men in dresses in the bathroom" argument. And after LGB people are protected, transpeople get shuffled aside as something later for fear of being identified with crossdressers.
This happened in Tacoma when it took three votes of the council and the failure of the third voter referendum to reverse the council's vote to add transpeople to anti-discrimination in housing, jobs and other activities of life. And even then the third time almost passed allowing discrimination when they used crossdressers as the poster child for transpeople.
This has also happened in organizations where crossdressers formed their own organization from LGBT organizations because they (CD'ers) outnumbered and dominated the political agenda of the organization before the transpeople jettisoned them to get some real progress. The CD'ers only wanted protections for them and wasn't interested in transpeople.
Any wonder why the LGB people hate the T (transpeople) and the transpeople hate crossdressers? I won't argue some crossdressers eventually transistion, but the percentage is small (<~2%) and those leave the crossdressing community for the transcommunity and eventually as men and women.
In the end, crossdressers aren't anything like bisexual people, and aren't transgender by any stretch of the imagination, but that seems to escape his imagination for the sake of an arugment. Maybe he should ask the professionals, or better yet, ask some real transpeople.
After all, while the entertainers, often called female illusionists or impersonators now, are mostly gay men who like pretending and getting attention as women, the vast majority of the rest are heterosexual men, often married with families. They're not gay and while many do go through facial hair removal to help, they don't go through any medical care to transistion. They don't want to transistion.
In short, they like their dicks and they like to play dressup. That's not transgender. It's not in the DSM-IVTR or will be in the DSM-V, although there are some suggestions to find something there for them to be medical and therefore protected as a condition. Yeah, right. weekdays they're ordinary men and weekends, pretend women. Gee, that's a psychological disorder?
Not according to psychiatrists and psychologists who call crossdressing a hobby at best and a fetish, transvestism, at worst. But when they don't need or want therapy, don't need medical professional help tor transistion, don't want surgeries to become women and don't want to change their birth certificate and records, they don't face discrimination just being who they are in life and work.
Mr. McNaught missed the point that in many fights for equality for LGB and then LGBT folks, crossdressers have been the problem, allowing opponents to use them as an example for all, the proverbial "men in dresses in the bathroom" argument. And after LGB people are protected, transpeople get shuffled aside as something later for fear of being identified with crossdressers.
This happened in Tacoma when it took three votes of the council and the failure of the third voter referendum to reverse the council's vote to add transpeople to anti-discrimination in housing, jobs and other activities of life. And even then the third time almost passed allowing discrimination when they used crossdressers as the poster child for transpeople.
This has also happened in organizations where crossdressers formed their own organization from LGBT organizations because they (CD'ers) outnumbered and dominated the political agenda of the organization before the transpeople jettisoned them to get some real progress. The CD'ers only wanted protections for them and wasn't interested in transpeople.
Any wonder why the LGB people hate the T (transpeople) and the transpeople hate crossdressers? I won't argue some crossdressers eventually transistion, but the percentage is small (<~2%) and those leave the crossdressing community for the transcommunity and eventually as men and women.
In the end, crossdressers aren't anything like bisexual people, and aren't transgender by any stretch of the imagination, but that seems to escape his imagination for the sake of an arugment. Maybe he should ask the professionals, or better yet, ask some real transpeople.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Being Thoughtless
There has been some recent jokes or skits about transgender people. It started with Saturday Night Live (SNL) and the skit portraying transgender women as men in dresses. It was clearly and obviously beyond even SNL's standards of taste, which isn't very high anyway (I stopped watching it years ago after watching it from the beginning).
They didn't just ridicule transgender people, they trashed them, needlessly. They should have apologized but I doubt any apology would change anything. They couldn't put all of their stupidity back in the tube and forget they even thought about the skit let alone write it and then perform it.
It's one thing to joke about a class or group of people, but the skit wasn't a joke. It was very bonehead of them from the idea. Transgender people have to struggle throughout their life to live as they know they are in the world today. It's full of all sorts of anger and hate from people, they don't need it from SNL or any TV show.
But SNL isn't the first to ridicule transgender people. It's been done for decades and almost always badly. Transgender people are just as normal and ordinary as everyone else. This seems to be lost on people, wanting to isolate them as abnormal and then ridicule them in extreme ways. It's not fair or right.
And following that David Letterman and Craig Ferguson not only made jokes about transgender people, they invited people on to further ridicule people. Craig Ferguson is known for pushing extreme without any sense of decency, and late night TV is known for this kind of abuse against classes or groups of people.
It's discrimination disguised as humor, really bad humor. David Letterman should have known and done better, but he hasn't in the past, so this new one with Adam Sandler isn't surprising. And Adam Sandler has no decency either, at least in the media and in his movies. Why would we expect anything different from him either?
In the end, it's time to stop attacking transgender people through the media. There are many successful post-transistion men and women and there are many more in transistion who deserve respect not ridicule. But considering the powers in the media support those who ridicule transgender people, why would I expect change?
I don't but then maybe we should turn the joke around to them to the extreme. How would they feel then?
They didn't just ridicule transgender people, they trashed them, needlessly. They should have apologized but I doubt any apology would change anything. They couldn't put all of their stupidity back in the tube and forget they even thought about the skit let alone write it and then perform it.
It's one thing to joke about a class or group of people, but the skit wasn't a joke. It was very bonehead of them from the idea. Transgender people have to struggle throughout their life to live as they know they are in the world today. It's full of all sorts of anger and hate from people, they don't need it from SNL or any TV show.
But SNL isn't the first to ridicule transgender people. It's been done for decades and almost always badly. Transgender people are just as normal and ordinary as everyone else. This seems to be lost on people, wanting to isolate them as abnormal and then ridicule them in extreme ways. It's not fair or right.
And following that David Letterman and Craig Ferguson not only made jokes about transgender people, they invited people on to further ridicule people. Craig Ferguson is known for pushing extreme without any sense of decency, and late night TV is known for this kind of abuse against classes or groups of people.
It's discrimination disguised as humor, really bad humor. David Letterman should have known and done better, but he hasn't in the past, so this new one with Adam Sandler isn't surprising. And Adam Sandler has no decency either, at least in the media and in his movies. Why would we expect anything different from him either?
In the end, it's time to stop attacking transgender people through the media. There are many successful post-transistion men and women and there are many more in transistion who deserve respect not ridicule. But considering the powers in the media support those who ridicule transgender people, why would I expect change?
I don't but then maybe we should turn the joke around to them to the extreme. How would they feel then?
Monday, February 7, 2011
John Muir Moments
I've read a number of the books by John Muir, his walk to the Gulf, his travels in the Sierra Mountains of California, and other adventures. And while I have long forgotten much of his writings, one story sticks in my mind about moments we often face in life and have to decide whether the past, known as it is, or the future, the gamble it is, is better.
It's about being stuck. A moment when going forward or going back freezes the person. The story John Muir told was about a canyon he was exploring in the Sierra Mountains. He started up a creek following the bed to the headwaters where he stood before a cliff to the higher plateau above the basin.
He faced the choice to go back downstream and into another canyon or find a route up the cliff to the higher elevations which was he real goal. He choose the latter when he found a crack in the cliff face he could climb. So he started up the cliff face and then climbed into the crack and climbed higher.
The crack, however, slowly widened as he climbed until he was using he feet and back to slowly inch his way up. The crack appeared to widen more where it was clear he might not be tall enough to reach across it and still climb higher, and so he stopped and rested. He faced a moment he had to choose.
He had to choose to go back down, however dangerous that would be with the likelihood he would fall from being tired and sore. Or he could risk going up, and hope the crack didn't widen beyond hold and climbing with the top of his back and neck and the ball of his feet and toes. He stayed there quite a while until he didn't to go up.
And sure enough the crack didn't widen at all and he reached the top, climbed over the ledge and stood on the top of the plateau over looking the creek below with the Sierra mountains above him, an easier climb anywhere he wanted to go. And he did.
I call these John Muir moments when and where we're stuck. Sometimes the transistion of someone will reach a moment like this where you know going back isn't the answer but you don't like the immediate prospects of the future. You're stuck in time between who you were and who you want to become.
These often occur when events, circumstances or situations put us where there aren't any easy or good answers or directions. In a transistion, which could be from or about a host of things, people or whatever making us feel nothing will help, going back or forward and we feel standing still is worse than the choices.
Often it's one of those moments the whole world around us sucks and we're at the center of it, the vortex being spun around with nothing clear, just a whirl of things we can't decide where to go. Except we know going back isn't the answer and going forward holds nothing good. At least at the moment.
We know beyond the moment we'll be ok, or we hope, because that's the unknown, will things widen and we fall all the way down with no chance to go back to who we were and find it harder to go forward. That's the problem, the future holds not assurances, only our hope and our willingness to try.
And we know the reality of transistions of transgender people, the reality isn't all that good. The majority of transistions don't go well and many fail, and only some will succeed. The stories of the folks who succeed are always good to know, but all carry the one caveat we can't lose or erase, who we were.
We all carry that one thing we can never erase from our history, our birth. Everything else changes, except that and it's always that which allows people to add that one word we hate after the transistion, "transgender" or "transsexual." The undeniable reality. And facing that will also be a John Muir moment, to let it drift by as the wind or hate it with the label someone sticks on us.
It's unfair and not right, but it is reality of our times. All the other John Muir moments can be overcome, save the one we always have inside us. And all the freedom reaching the top won't change it. We can simply leave it as our history and get on with our life, knowing we succeeded even over this.
It's about being stuck. A moment when going forward or going back freezes the person. The story John Muir told was about a canyon he was exploring in the Sierra Mountains. He started up a creek following the bed to the headwaters where he stood before a cliff to the higher plateau above the basin.
He faced the choice to go back downstream and into another canyon or find a route up the cliff to the higher elevations which was he real goal. He choose the latter when he found a crack in the cliff face he could climb. So he started up the cliff face and then climbed into the crack and climbed higher.
The crack, however, slowly widened as he climbed until he was using he feet and back to slowly inch his way up. The crack appeared to widen more where it was clear he might not be tall enough to reach across it and still climb higher, and so he stopped and rested. He faced a moment he had to choose.
He had to choose to go back down, however dangerous that would be with the likelihood he would fall from being tired and sore. Or he could risk going up, and hope the crack didn't widen beyond hold and climbing with the top of his back and neck and the ball of his feet and toes. He stayed there quite a while until he didn't to go up.
And sure enough the crack didn't widen at all and he reached the top, climbed over the ledge and stood on the top of the plateau over looking the creek below with the Sierra mountains above him, an easier climb anywhere he wanted to go. And he did.
I call these John Muir moments when and where we're stuck. Sometimes the transistion of someone will reach a moment like this where you know going back isn't the answer but you don't like the immediate prospects of the future. You're stuck in time between who you were and who you want to become.
These often occur when events, circumstances or situations put us where there aren't any easy or good answers or directions. In a transistion, which could be from or about a host of things, people or whatever making us feel nothing will help, going back or forward and we feel standing still is worse than the choices.
Often it's one of those moments the whole world around us sucks and we're at the center of it, the vortex being spun around with nothing clear, just a whirl of things we can't decide where to go. Except we know going back isn't the answer and going forward holds nothing good. At least at the moment.
We know beyond the moment we'll be ok, or we hope, because that's the unknown, will things widen and we fall all the way down with no chance to go back to who we were and find it harder to go forward. That's the problem, the future holds not assurances, only our hope and our willingness to try.
And we know the reality of transistions of transgender people, the reality isn't all that good. The majority of transistions don't go well and many fail, and only some will succeed. The stories of the folks who succeed are always good to know, but all carry the one caveat we can't lose or erase, who we were.
We all carry that one thing we can never erase from our history, our birth. Everything else changes, except that and it's always that which allows people to add that one word we hate after the transistion, "transgender" or "transsexual." The undeniable reality. And facing that will also be a John Muir moment, to let it drift by as the wind or hate it with the label someone sticks on us.
It's unfair and not right, but it is reality of our times. All the other John Muir moments can be overcome, save the one we always have inside us. And all the freedom reaching the top won't change it. We can simply leave it as our history and get on with our life, knowing we succeeded even over this.
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