The right to mis-define oneself

[bennyboy]

We've addressed this already. It has nothing to do with interests, stereotypes, sexism or what society perceives to be male or female. This is rooted in brain structure and chemistry.

Okay, let's get scientific. What about a transgender's brain structure or chemistry make her a woman? And what would you say about an actual woman who does not have that specific brain structure or chemistry?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I need help. Where's the part in your horror story where the dude has something shoved up his ass against his will? Unless you insert this into your little scenario you don't have anything close to rape. Your imagined trauma is like saying you know what slavery was like because you were asked to work some overtime; there is simply no equivalence.

They are both kinds of sexual assault.  They involve an expression of one's own sexuality that one should know will cause trauma in another individual.

They are of such different characters that your continued equivocation, without addressing the point, is grating.

[bennyboy]

One is clearly assault. The other is taking offense to an extreme.

Assault should be defined by the foreknowledge that one's actions are likely to cause trauma.  Do you disagree that many men will be traumatized by discovering just before coitus that the woman they are with has a penis?  Do you disagree that pre-op transexuals know their actions are likely to cause this trauma?

[bennyboy]

They are both kinds of sexual assault.  They involve an expression of one's own sexuality that one should know will cause trauma in another individual.

They are of such different characters that your continued equivocation, without addressing the point, is grating.

Look.  If I say beating someone and murdering them are both acts of physical violence, would you start crying that they are not comparable?  No.  They are both acts of physical violence.  And exposing someone to an unwanted sexual experience without their foreknowledge or consent, when you can have a reasonable expectation that they will be traumatized by it, is still sexual assault.

[bennyboy]

I feel like this is sort of relevant to the topic at hand and I wanted to say it

Regarding some of the special snowflake tumblrina indentities (agender, pangender, omnigender, Non-Natives who appropriate the term "Two Spirit", Pansexual, demisexual, etc etc) I do feel like these are cases of mis-representation.

I think feeling you are between male and female can be real in itself, I'm sure if you can be fully trans in seeing yourself as the opposite gender, you can also see yourself as mentally between male and female. However, I feel like all these terms are, like I said, cases of special snowflake syndrome where these people are digging for attention. I saw one guy (sorry, a "demisexual androromantic pangender", let's not call them a guy in case we trigger them) on Tumblr... apparently 14 years old. Really? I barely knew I was gay at that age, you mean to tell me you've found yourself enough in life to know what all those terms are supposed to mean and that you are all of them? No no no. It's like "just" being gay or trans is too passe for these people.

This might sound petty, but I have a real problem with this. When you have people calling themselves all these unicorn identities, it's making a circus act out of the LGB and trans/gender-variant communities. People won't take the community seriously with that bollocks. It's probably part of the reason people are looking at Caitlyn Jenner (whose identity as a trans/woman truly is legitimate) with questioning eyes. It's not ok.

Here's the thing.  What's this "between male and female" stuff?  What, if not purely physical terms, defines the terms male and female?  The way you react emotionally to things?  Whether you like puppies or not?  Whether you want to wear an apron and be dominated by your sexual partner?  Whether you enjoy adding items of flair to your wardrobe?  Exactly, what?  If you're not looking for innies or outies in defining both sex AND gender, it seems to me you are supporting male and female stereotypes.

If you have a penis but you like to look beautiful and wear a dress, why do you have to insist this is somewhere in the middle of a male/female scale?  Doesn't this undermine the femininity of the many women who don't care about conventional "beauty," or who don't like wearing dresses? Are you going to tell them that they are male, because they don't conform to a 1950s view of what it means to be a woman? I think Jenner does a disservice to actual woman by pretending that adopting those stereotypes makes him one.

[Thumpalumpacus]

They are of such different characters that your continued equivocation, without addressing the point, is grating.

Look.  If I say beating someone and murdering them are both acts of physical violence, would you start crying that they are not comparable?  No.  They are both acts of physical violence.  And exposing someone to an unwanted sexual experience without their foreknowledge or consent is still sexual assault.

Except that that analogy fails. It's more as if you're equivocating name-calling and a physical beating. I'm not "crying" about anything; I'm pointing out that your equivocation is horseshit. You may not wish to admit it, but the fact is that one act is forcible, and most often results in injuries, sometimes grievous, and sometimes fatal; the other is ameliorated by a simple "What's this?! No thanks!"

And according to the Department of Justice, foreknowledge is not a condition of sexual assault:

Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.

Trying to shoehorn foreknowledge into the definition in order to buttress your case is not warranted, clearly. Your comparison is inapt, and you'd do better to simply acknowledge that fact.

[bennyboy]

No, I don't think I do.  I think in America, when people say "black" or "colored," they are referring specifically to African origin.

Indeed, it would be odd if color words like "black" and "white" were primarily used for something like continent of origin instead of for being used to say something about color.

Really?  So an Indian man is black?  Or a Korean man?  Or a dude who spends a lot of time on the beach?  I don't think people use the word as you are saying it is used.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Is there a reason to say Bruce/carlin Jenner is a stegosaur if he/she/it feels with every fiber of his/her/its being that he/she/it is a roof lizard?

You could try looking at reproducible scientific data to decide rather than lumping all things that you don't understand together into one phenomenon.

Transgendered people can be shown to have the same brains as the gender that they claim to be. It's been known for a long time but now we don't have to dissect the brains of trans people, we can scan them while they're still alive, even before they start taking hormones.

But you're on very shaky ground if you're equating this with someone who identifies as black when they were born white because you are then saying that black and white people have different brains and there is no scientific evidence for that.

With the latter you are referring to something completely different, but even this isn't that odd to my mind.

We are a mixture of nature and nurture. You don't choose where you were born and where you were raised. And it's obvious that society is made up of a whole range of different types of people. So it's not that difficult to appreciate that some people may not have been born and raised in cultures that are the best fit for who they naturally are as people. This can lead to a mismatch between their natural characters and how they are raised.

After all, if it wasn't then this forum wouldn't have American members would it as you'd all be Christians.

So I don't see it as particularly odd that someone may identify more with black culture even though they are white. What is unusual is passing yourself off as black.

[bennyboy]

Look.  If I say beating someone and murdering them are both acts of physical violence, would you start crying that they are not comparable?  No.  They are both acts of physical violence.  And exposing someone to an unwanted sexual experience without their foreknowledge or consent is still sexual assault.

Except that that analogy fails.  It's more as if you're equivocating name-calling and a physical beating. I'm not "crying" about anything; I'm pointing out that your equivocation is horseshit. You may not wish to admit it, but the fact is that one act is forcible, and most often results in injuries, sometimes grievous, and sometimes fatal; the other is ameliorated by a simple "What's this?! No thanks!"

And according to the Department of Justice, foreknowledge is not a condition of sexual assault:

Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.

Trying to shoehorn foreknowledge into the definition in order to buttress your case is not warranted, clearly.  Your comparison is inapt, and you'd do better to simply acknowledge that fact.

lol @ the DoJ as our source of moral correctness.

Okay, let's stop playing semantics, because I don't need to draw an equivalence to rape anyway.  I posed a simple question: do you or do you not think that a last-minute reveal is likely to cause trauma in many men?  Let's forget about the rape "analogy," and look at this in terms of assault.  Yes or no: do you believe a significant % of men will be traumatized by this experience?

[bennyboy]

Transgendered people can be shown to have the same brains as the gender that they claim to be. It's been known for a long time but now we don't have to dissect the brains of trans people, we can scan them while they're still alive, even before they start taking hormones.

So this means that someone born with a vagina, but whose brain does not have this "female" structure, isn't really a woman? It seems to me that by defining gender as something different than sex, you are invalidating the identity of at least some women.