Transgender people: do you know/have you met any?

"i think you can be okay with people's right to choose their gender and still believe that sex is biologically determined. i do at least. if nothing is biologically determined that why would a transgender individual need to 'trans' their gender? they would just be what they always were."

I agree. People who are skeptical about transgender folks always like to say "sex is biological, it's based on whether you have a penis/vagina" and "you can't just pick a gender at random"... but "biology" isn't just the physical aspects of your genitals and body shape that people can see, it also includes the workings of your brain and your internal sense of what your gender could be. Since people *can't* just be raised to take on whatever gender identity society wants them to have (although many anti-essentialist gender theorists have assumed they can), this suggests that elements of the way we perceive our gender are innate, and are just as "biological" as our bodies.

For most of us, our "internal" gender and external sex traits match up, for a minority of people they don't. IIRC, some transgender theorists have suggested that being trans could be thought of as a kind of intersex condition -- your internal sense of self is aligned one way, your physical shape/hormones another.

"The surgical part is most commonly called *sex* reassignment surgery, and governments consider the person's sex to have been changed. Is there some standard for saying whether a person has changed their sex v. their gender?"
In my knowledge (I'm far from an expert), the definition of "transgender" is a person who has some desire to change the sex they were assigned at birth, whether they've taken steps toward that or not. It's a more inclusive category. A "transsexual" has changed their physical sex in some way -- the most commonly accepted place to draw the line would probs be whether they've started taking hormones. The hormone therapy creates the biggest biological change, & for some trans people, it's the only medical intervention they need. If you're looking for a way to refer to such people that avoids all these complications, you can just call them "trans men" and "trans women."

I'd highly recommend Julie Serrano's "Whipping Girl" for anyone who wants to learn more about the subject. It delves into the author's personal experiences as well as gender theory stuff, it's clear and accessible, and it debunks a lot of assumptions/misconceptions.

idk i think the relationship b/w sex/gender/sexuality etc. is far too messy to just "schematise" and the way ppl try to seems part of some project of pathologisation of trans ppl as part of a project of othering to preserve normativity yadda yadda yadda

I'm not writing cogently ATM, so I will stop trying to discuss my previous question. But I will ask, How in the fuck is it that federal law - which still denies the legitimacy of same-sex marriage and has still can't pass ENDA after 14 years - accepts that a transsexual as their new post-reassignment sex?? It seems far more difficult to accept that a person can change their sex than that two people of the same sex (of the very clear, biological, since-birth variety) can get married, yet a FTM trans person's marriage to a woman only becomes federally sanctioned once she undergoes the change to being M.

Did the religious right forget to discriminate in this one area? Have there been Defense of Gender Norms bills?

pathologising/medicalising is a way of making queers like car-crash victims and therefore acceptable as a medical condition

xpost-

I was talking about this issue just the other day with a lawyer friend of mine whose thesis was on the legal status of transsexuals- she was saying that there is no clearcut federal policy about their status, and so what you have is a state-specific, deeply conflicted and inconsistent nest of rulings about things like changing the sex listed on ID cards, access/use of gendered bathrooms, the ability to marry, etc. The law is a grey area here, and so small town judges can tip things one way or the other (for or against granting the newly transitioned person the capacity to legally assert their new identity as a change of legally recognized "sex") and it suddenly ripples out onto everybody in that area of jurisdiction. I wonder if, in the next few generations, something is going to come before the Supreme Court and/or surface nationally in a major way to direct people's attention towards this. But I don't know.

As to the biology of it, my understanding is that current research seems to show that there are 3 different ways which set somebody's gender:

* DNA
* Developmental hormones in the womb
* Brain structures

Most people are lucky enough to have all three line up, but some people don't, hence (for example) people who completely look like, have all the bodily structures of, and identify, without ever suspecting otherwise, as women, but who actually have male DNA (and only discover this when they go for fertility tests)--from the womb on, they got all the female hormones for some reason, and so turned out female. Before DNA testing, none of these people would ever have suspected that they were born male, in some sense.

And plenty of people have a brain structure that better matches the opposite gender to their own bodily form, and these people often end up changing their bodies to suit their minds.

xp Jesse: Gender reassignment surgery has been around for sixty-odd years; plenty of time to get laws passed.

Christine, that's why I'm surprised there hasn't been some legislation denying trans people's rights. I'm surprised that DOMA doesn't have provisions in it defining "man" and "woman" in its definition of the marriage of one of each, for example. It seems like a major oversight.

yeah, this is the weird risk if there was a sudden, nation-wide attention grabbing Supreme Court case- it might lead to some really lame decision being handed down across the entire country- or, a more lefty/liberatory ruling might trigger a backlash of amendments and fire up the family values crowd. The weird lack of a position puts trans folk at risk, but it also might be better than a DOMA style initiative- at least in some states, if you transition, your new sex can be your stated sex on ID, and, apparently (going by what my friend told me) the same is the case with marriages in some states- trans people who pass just slip under the radar.

When I worked at the Times, Donna Cartwright sometimes came and did overtime shifts in my department, so I got to know her a little. Well enough to say hi in the cafeteria and so forth. Other than that, I worked at another newspaper where a reporter (big burly guy in his mid-50s) announced he was going to have a sex change, but I wasn't there while it happened. The management was surprisingly supportive, given that it was a fairly conservative paper in a fairly conservative city.

yeah i feel like if you have ever worked in a job where you deal w/ lots of members of the public, you will have met a good few.

"this is the weird risk if there was a sudden, nation-wide attention grabbing Supreme Court case- it might lead to some really lame decision being handed down across the entire country"

I get the feeling there are enough tactical reasons for both sides on DOMAs to leave this alone. Like if they screened all the wives of Republican congressmen and found one with androgen insensitivity or something, it would be game over.

some big thing just happened in canada i think, im not really reading the paper these days too lazy

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Yeah. The House of Commons here passed a bill that would protect trans rights by a narrow majority (But one that included members of all four parties, including the currently governing Conservative Party.) Unfortunately, our charming unelected Senate, stacked with appointees by the Conservative Prime Minister is 100% likely to vote against the bill. This sort of thing was up until recently unheard of - the Senate might return legislation to the HoC for further editing, etc., but outright blocking of Private Member's Bills that go against the (minority) government's agenda is galling.

Details here: Globe and Mail but be prepared for blatant transphobic fear-mongering on the part of random politicians and Charles McVety (our equivalent of Focus on the Family) being interviewed like a legitimate source for a newspaper article.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Hard to keep up with this story:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/07/entertainment/bruce-jenner-car-accident/index.html?sr=fb020715JennerAccident5pStoryGallink

ah this is where that legendary san te post is

Since I'm on here, I may as well update my "not to my knowledge" post from four years ago; I may have played golf with a transgendered woman last summer. (Is that the right phrase? I generally avoid these threads, because I'm afraid I'll say something in slightly the wrong way, at which point twelve people will surround me and shame me off the face of the earth.) My playing partner thought so for sure; I was missing it until he said something, but then I thought probably yes.

In high school, when I was a drama geek, there was a young woman who liked to help build the sets, rather than acting on the stage. She was pictured in the yearbook, smiling, wearing denim overalls and holding a hammer. As I have heard, she made the surgical leap to become officially male a couple of decade ago. He was always well-liked by his classmates.

xxpost that accident was horrific. TMZ, for whatever reason, decided to post a frame by frame shot of Jenner's SUV hitting the car in front of them, especially creepy since she was subsequently pushed into the intersection and hit head on, dying horrifically.

This thread is a wiiiild ass time capsule.

Is a bit.

I thought this had been revived as the singer in The Jags ("I gotcha number, written on the back of my hand") was on 24 hours in A&E

More than anything, I'm just amazed how much the discourse has moved in 8 years (also I know hundreds, if not thousands of trans people)

I know two. Actually three now that I think about it, one of them is a child who was quite insistent on her gender switch from an extremely young age. Parents were at first startled and a little uncomfortable and by now are 100% comfortable with it.

The other two worked for me at my last job. They were both great guys, and oddly both of them worked on the same project, overlapping only slightly. One has transitioned very easily in the years since, and other has had an extremely rough time, as it's been compounded by some serious medical problems (MS) and what sounds to me like a really unsupportive family. To make matters worse she was fired by my shit former boss the week after I quit my job in an extremely clear case of wrongful termination on two counts (disability as well as gender identity; she was the best developer we had there). I've tried to convince her to sue them but she's been unwilling to do so.

This thread is a wiiiild ass time capsule.

JFC it really is.

one of my friends from high school transitioned in 2011. i had a lingering crush on him and we talked on facebook a lot and our conversations inevitably spilled over into trans stuff. he was struggling a lot, more than i ever have tbh, so when he disappeared briefly from facebook i was v worried. then he reappeared with a different name and had started transitioning and we talked a lot about his experiences on the other side of it. it was the first time i ever really learned that there was a language for the parallel experience i was having. (albeit mine was occurring at a much more delayed rate.) then he disappeared from facebook again and i haven't been able to find him online anywhere since but i hope he's doing well and living exactly the life he wants because i love him and i'm so glad i knew him

i have two trans students, accidentally misgendered one for the second time yesterday, still kicking myself abt it 24 hrs later

i was curious so i just looked in my old facebook messages and found all of our correspondence and started crying again xp

the messages we exchanged are SO LONG that they feel like they come from a different internet

sorry y'all lol

I wonder if, in the next few generations, something is going to come before the Supreme Court and/or surface nationally in a major way to direct people's attention towards this. But I don't know.

Bwa-ha-ha! It all did bubble up a lot faster than anybody anticipated.

I haven't met any new transgendered people irl since this thread was started, but my social circles are very small and suburban. A few online acquaintances (here and elsewhere) have transitioned in the interim, but not even like, any old high school friends on Facebook or whatever.

kind of a depressing thread for me because all the "wild ass time capsule" reactions are mostly the reactions i'm trying to deal with now :(

I am a college instructor and genuinely want to refer to people by their preferred pronouns, but I'm having a tough time remembering. I have 35 students and four who responded to my request to tell me about preference. That seems easy in retrospect but I've already slipped up. I find it's easier to just use their name even if it's a occasionally grammatically awkward.

It's much easier, effortless really, with the (few) trans ppl I know personally.

More than anything, I'm just amazed how much the discourse has moved in 8 years (also I know hundreds, if not thousands of trans people)

― Get Me Bodied (Extended Mix), Tuesday, February 12, 2019 4:54 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you are not kidding

xp i've found something similar to be the case. i've only recently started having trans or genderqueer students who cared enough about how they were identified that it was worth it for them to say anything about it (i suppose i might have had some genderqueer students in the past for whom it wasn't an issue, or it was but they didn't say anything, for whatever reason), and it seems obvious that they're encouraged by recent shifts in institutional practices (like pronoun preferences being included in the biographical data from the registrar for instructors). but some have cared but did not say anything about it, trusting to the institutional stuff (on my end) or leaving it to how they would be identified in context by their peers from their presentation and what they actually said about whatever - even to the point of talking about trans issues, obviously from personal experience and stakes, with classmates but leaving some less sophisticated classmates ignorant of how to refer properly to them. i was worried about making a mistake, mainly in front of a class when i would most normally have cause to refer to a student with a pronoun - i found that with students with gender presentations that were more ambiguous than their stated identifications, i would sometimes slip a little mentally toward choosing a pronoun depending on (the wrong gender aspect of) their presentation before thinking of their identification. my experience in the moment as a speaker was that it was not too different from the challenge of remembering everybody's name (and preferred nickname) in a group full of new people, but still a bit more prone to forgetfulness or lapsing, i guess because linguistic gender markers are something you usually manage more lazily from your perceptions in context. mostly i did like you said - used names (which i would say predominate over pronouns in a classroom context anyway - so only rarely did i deliberately avoid constructing sentences that i might have used pronouns in).

(for a while through the early days or weeks of a course it's totally permissible in context to ask a student's name right before you refer to them by it, since being the one person responsible for knowing everyone's name gets you a pass. more so if you can come off as the addled/aloof/busy type of instructor. it would be very convenient if you could do the same with their preferred pronouns etc., but given current practice it kind of seems like you could not do so without substantial risk of giving offense.)

i have been tasked with giving a presentation about pronouns to my fellow faculty members because my school is very behind/ooooold school in that regard. i have known a number of trans people, including but not limited to students.

I find it's easier to just use their name even if it's a occasionally grammatically awkward.

It's much easier, effortless really, with the (few) trans ppl I know personally.

this is good thinking, i think

here is an excerpt from benjamin dreyer's interview with terry gross where he talks about his awokening wrt pronouns. i think it might be useful itt

DREYER: This ultimately was the intersection of my perspective as a copy editor and my perspective as a - simply as a human being. I remember reading a few years ago an article in The New York Times that was all about a person who did not identify as male or female. And I made my way through the article, which was extremely well-written, and toward the end of the article, there was a quotation.

There was a description of this person by this person's father or mother that referred to the person as they and then added - was added parenthetically using a pronoun that The Times does not use. And I then went back, and I read the entire article and realized that the writer of the article had managed to write the entire article about this person without ever resorting to a pronoun. And it was done seamlessly and eloquently.

And I was sort of - I mean, on the one hand, I was sort of impressed by the effort, while, at the same time, I was also beginning to contemplate the necessity of this avoidance. And then, what happened subsequently is that I gained a colleague whose pronoun of choice is they. And when I was first introduced to this colleague, I found myself for months doing anything I could in writing or even in speech to avoid applying a pronoun. I'd refer to the colleague as the colleague. I mean, can you hear how dreadfully stilted I'm becoming?

GROSS: (Laughter) Yes.

DREYER: And I would refer to the colleague by name. And at one point, even I began to realize how ridiculous I was. And the word they popped out of my mouth, and I thought, oh, be done with it already (laughter). You know, like, just honor your colleague, honor this person that you work with, honor this person you actually like a lot and and honor the pronoun choice.

And it shouldn't have to take something personal, you know, a one-on-one encounter with another human being. It shouldn't necessarily have to take that sort of thing to make you evolve properly. You should - you know, maybe you should be a better person, and you should be able to do it in the abstract. But sometimes it does take a personal encounter to get you to change how you see things.

GROSS: Well, I - you know, I think, like, if you're gender queer, if there's a lot of, like, rights that you're going to have trouble getting because of discrimination in our society, one of the things you should not be deprived of is, like, the right to have a pronoun (laughter).

DREYER: Right.

GROSS: Like, that shouldn't be something that you have to go to the Supreme Court for, to have a pronoun to use to describe yourself.

DREYER: Yeah. And the last thing that I want to do is to pass myself off as some sort of ferocious gatekeeper who, in some sort of argument about the purity and the wonder of the English language and how it must be preserved, is simply being unkind and cruel to other human beings. You know, if I've learned anything in my increasing years, it's that just being kind, you know, being respectful is more important than how I feel about pronouns.

that's interesting, but i'm not 100% clear how it's useful

because a fundamental change in the way we use language affects everyone differently and i thought dreyer's experience as a copy chief/arbiter of "taste" illustrates how people might approach the issue of respecting someone's pronouns in spite of resistance, even if that resistance is born of style and linguistic "elegance" (whatever that means). i guess i thought it was interesting and therefore useful?

i agree, it’s useful in reaffirming the moral principle behind respecting people’s pronoun choices

i’m just really uncomfortable w making pronoun mistakes

i think it's natural to make mistakes at first -- this is all very new. imho an indication that you are trying and doing your best still counts in the early stages. again, this is all very new! a language shift like this may happen once in a lifetime, if ever. function words don't change much even though we invent new words and usages all the time.

we are struggling with Latinx at my school, and we are like ~90% Spanish-speaking Latinx-identifying people, it's hard. give yourself a break for making an error. i know i have made some!

I had a hard time with 'they' (actually i know no one who insists on this but mentally I have a hard time with it) until I realized that in some circumstances I've always said 'they' for a singular person anyway.

xp i appreciate that

it’s hard for me because i have gotten to be good friends with the advisor for our school’s TRUTH program (chapter?) and i hear a lot about these students’ private social traumas. i think some of my colleagues are sort of oblivious about it ... nobody (adult wise) is resistant to using preferred pronouns at our school but i think some people have a simple “oops my bad” reaction w/r/t social awkwardness and don’t give it much of a second thought

i think what is frustrating for me is that my classroom is the one social space where i can exercise (extremely limited, possibly illusory) control over how people socialize ... so i want to make it as safe a space as possible ... and it’s upsetting to be the person that undermines that sense of safety

i'm not too worried about being disrespectful, it's more that i have no job security and don't expect to be given the benefit of the doubt should i ever inadvertently give any offense

i suspect that establishing pronouns as a discretionary rather than compulsory linguistic item in a way that people can master (i.e. become able to use routinely without any risk of giving offense or losing face) really calls for a change in the ways that people introduce themselves and one another, sociologically/ritually speaking - which would be a lot more marked a change than just swapping in a singular 'they'. which is why schools have been a vanguard for the change; they are places where authorities can exercise control over how people socialize, and places where there can be a certain formality to linguistic practices of introduction and address and reference, without it seeming like an absurdity or a nicety or an optional convenience.

there's a countercultural type restaurant around here that had lots of staff with (declared—i think on their nametags?) non-standard pronoun preferences, some of whom became increasingly uncomfortable when they found that they were nevertheless being misgendered by customers who did not know how to call for them where they would normally say 'sir' or 'miss'. at the time their idea was that they might conduct more detailed introductions where they supplied not just pronouns but preferred forms of address, as well as names ('i'm conor, and i'll be your server'). i don't know how that went over.

ideally i would like to manage this dimension of my classroom without talking about it, so that it can't become a thing for students who have any problems with it, and students who care can see it work without a lot of overt ritual showing of respect (or heavy-handed intervention from the person who can exercise control over how people socialize).

More than anything, I'm just amazed how much the discourse has moved in 8 years

It's amazing and wonderful because one of the biggest things Santorum types were crying about in the fight for marriage equality has come true and every normal person is just like "oh, cool, good for them."

remember back in the mid-90s in my first co-worker is trans experience. there was a lot of pushback on bathroom issues
weirdly unaware of individuals in current large corp, although there was a recent internal intranet discussion about neutral bathrooms and lack thereof