Recently in Transgender Issues Category

This has been tickling my brain for a while and I haven't been able to find any satisfactory discussion about this issue with the specific questions I have in mind, so I thought I would ask if anyone here could give me more insight into this problem.

Let me start by outlining a few assumptions.

1.  There are no inherent differences in the way male and female children think or feel.  The differences we tend to recognize as gendered are basically culture induced.

2. Even if there were such inherent differences, we couldn't possibly know anything other than our own experiences.  This is simlar to the philosophical problem of color.  Basically, you might see red the way I see green, and vice versa, but since we're not in each others heads, we can't possibly know.

If either of these are the case, particularly if number 1 is the case, I don't see how someone can consistently claim to be transgendered.  If there is no difference in the way men and women typically feel, and gender notions are basically a culture construct, how can someone think that they should be a member of the opposite sex?  What defines sex at that point other than genetics?

Where to begin?  Especially in light of the TDoR...

Forums can be such catalysts for thoughtful articulations! Arguing with people has always been much more fruitful for my brain than analyzing by myself. Recently, as in, over the last two or three days, there has been a conversation going regarding the murder of Angie Zapata.

Now, any feminist who's been around the block has seen this exact same rationale leveled at women who are raped, "well if she didn't [whatever she did] then [that] wouldn't have happened to her!" And we call this rape apology.

I don't know if there is a term for this that I simply haven't come across yet, but there should be a term for the blame I see leveled at trans people for "getting themselves murdered" which is basically what I have been dealing with. In contemplating all the overlapping issues I could think of, I came up with a few things, which I'd like to share with y'all.

There seemed to be a few different concepts underlying people's responses to Angie's murder. The most prominent, which I have seen just about every time this topic comes up anywhere, is that she was "lying", she "deceived" the man she slept with, and don't we all get angry when we're lied to?!

Okay, I love the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but I'm tired of the tranny jokes on both shows. I realize that they make fun of a lot of different people and that's great (or whatever), but I believe that there is a difference between the way that they use other identities in funny ways and transsexuals. The segment I'm posting below is a great example of this

I'm posted this segment because it includes all the worst parts of the jokes made about transsexuals.

1. While "pre-op tranny" was in good company on the list of people found in fake America, there has never once (as far as I know - please correct me if I'm wrong) been any other reference or example of transsexuals other than the stereotypes they present when they use transsexuals as the butt of their jokes. They've had feminists, gays, Jews, and Muslims on to their show and their jokes more often than not are played out to make negative views or actions against these identities look lame and stupid. However transsexuals receive on very little positive treatment on either shows, there never having been a transsexual guest on, nor do they ever really (correct me if I'm wrong) present a positive image of transsexuals or in any way more than a two-dimensional stereotype. On the Daily Show and the Colbert Report we're just a joke.

2. Another majore problem is that these jokes typically ignore the existence of trans men. If these jokes included anything more at their core than the "men in dresses is funny" joke and opened the terms like transsexual or slang like tranny to a wider and more accurate definition in a joke they would become much more complicated and more difficult to use. At the end of the fake America segment I paused and had to ask myself whether or not the joke was that he was a trans woman who had yet to begin transition or whether he was a trans guy who had begun hormones but had not had mastectomy and/or a hysterectomy. I'm sure most people didn't have to ask themselves this or else they would not have found it as funny. The term tranny and transsexual on this show are being used specifically in reference to trans women, continuing the trend of trans women are something to ridicule, trans men are something to be ignored.

3. The use of "Pre-op" in the joke directs the humor away from the identity of being a transsexual towards the state of our genitals. This extends the "men in dresses" joke (since I don't think they were referring to trans me here in any way) to "men in dresses who have their penises cut off". Transsexuals are not defined by their identity or what they feel, but instead by what they do to their body. There is a whole long life that transsexuals have before and after surgery, but other aspects of ourselves is obscured by terms like "pre-op" and "post-op".

4. This is just a lazy joke. This is something that requires no skill and is widely used. In making this joke they share the company of all those bigoted jerks on the radio, TV, or just in communities across the United States who think "pre-op trannys" are pretty funny too (we are both equally ridiculed in real America and the fake one). I'm all for bringing different sides together on common beliefs, but what I really can't stand the lack of effort they put into it. I expect better. If they are going to tell a tranny joke I want it to be a good one and stead of the bullshit above.

Ideas for the daily show to begin working on this problem... First, make a better, smarter joke. If you want to make fun of us, go right ahead, but make sure that some where in the joke is a little bit of the actual lives of transsexuals and not just the stereotype. Second, have transsexual guests on the show. I feel like the number of tranny jokes should some how be balanced by the number of guests on the show, but I'll settle for just one guest to be on. Jennifer Finney Boylan is a very funny person, wrote a best-selling autobiography, and is working on a series of op-ed pieces for the New York Times. Her new book didn't sell as well, but when it comes out in paperback they should have her on the show. I would really love to see Julia Serano or Helen Boyd and a lot of other people who write about trans issues on the show, but I'll take what I can get at this point.

Okay. If you want you can write the daily show and Colbert report about this - I know I'm going to and I encourage you to do it too. Thank you for taking the time to read and hopefully think about this issue.

Transsexuals are an abomination. They mock God, for we are made in his image and transsexuals pervert this.

If you saw Bones last night, something like this was said by the preacher's wife - the same preacher that became a post-op MtF transsexual in Thailand and was declared dead in order to separate herself from her old life.

Isis is not "America's Next Top Model" this cycle, but I think there is a lot that can be said about her time on the show. The presence of trans women in this competition is groundbreaking and I’m not the kind of person who would say this lightly.  I've never cared about this show before, but I glad that their viewers who are only just becoming introduced to trans women have examples like this to look to.  I live in Ohio and most people at best only know the not so flattering images found in most films or at worst on Jerry Springer.

For the first time in the history of Title VII, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, a federal trial court has ruled that a woman-born-man, Diane Schroer, can recover for discrimination, because discrimination against a man transitioning to being a woman is discrimination "based on . . . sex."  (Previoiusly, transgendered persons have had some avenues of recovery under the Price-Waterhouse line of cases, most of which involved cisgendered persons who failed to meet stereotyped expectations regarding gender presentation, i.e., attire, makeup, gestures, hair length, etc.)

Congratulations, Ms. Schroer!

I just came across this video from National Geographic about Indian transpeople, and I felt it was an important consciousness-raiser. In India, transpeople are known as 'eunuchs' and considered a third sex. They are outcast from society and treated almost as a freakshow, with people paying them to dance at parties and bless them with their 'magical powers'. The women interviewed are clearly not happy with this life.

Here's another video, which should illustrate just how much stigma they receive (being called 'The third gender', etc):

My friend just told me that the cycle of America's Next Top Model starting in September is going to have a transgender woman as a contestant. 

After educating my friend that this woman, Isis, is not called a 'transvestite' but a transgender person, we continued to discuss how ANTM would 'handle' this contestant's situation.  She wondered if they would do anything different with nude or lingerie shots (she is 'pre-op' according to Entertainment Tonight).  I just wonder if they are going to be able to not offend the LGBTQ community during the season.  ANTM hasn't always dealt with things in a discrete and respectful way.  What are your thoughts on this?  I think it is great they are including diverse individuals, but am skeptical if they are going to be able to do it the right way (the tv show I mean)

when I think about trying to communicate why my identity as a woman is authentic and valid, my first impulse is to talk about how hard it was growing up and struggling with this.  I'm still reeling from it.  I'm reeling from my transition too - from being identified as male and now female and then times when I have to exist inbetween.  I feel like I'm shaking inside.  There is anxiety and a tenseness and some part of me thinks that if I tell this story about how hard my experience, just over and over again, that at some point it will get through... and while I want to do this I knot that this isn't the way. 

Imagine.

The world as we know it abruptly ends. Thousands of years from now, an alien race of anthropologists sift through the ruins of American Civilization, trying to understand what, and who, we were. Imagine they were to compile a list of what we, culturally, believed to to be The Worst Things Ever.

The first Worst Thing Ever would be easy: Anal Sex.

The second Worst Thing Ever would be Female Orgasms and anything associated with them (ie: vagina's, feminine sexual pleasure/desire, et. al).

The third Worst Thing Ever might take some considering. The aliens would rub their chins if they had them with their fingers if they had them and ponder. Is Communism the third Worst Thing Ever? Maybe Terrorism? Or Liberals? Eventually, though, they'd come to it.

The third Worst Thing Ever is Transgender Folk Using Public Restrooms.

At least that's what I'm given to believe from Kathleen Miller's DC Examiner cover story yesterday.