Germaine Greer on Transexuality

lafemmefatale said:
So now we're comparing trans people to AIDS. We've already compared them to dogs, robots, sexual predators, users of bathrooms for sexual arousal and paedophiles. We've advocated their extermination and through repeated animalistic dehumanisaton, yes we get the idea, you think that that the world would be a better place if all these freaks just went and died quietly somewhere.

Apart from a few select posters, nowhere has the humanity, dignity or respect for a trans person been shown.

You can all go around herp derping oh let's all laugh at the man in the frock but that is a person made of exactly the same stuff as you. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Gurrrl, why you ackin' so cray cray?
 
Well there's evidence gender dysphoria is neurodevelopmental disorder, where parts of the brain develop as the opposite gender. Evidence comes from brain scans and also the fact that it tends to overlap significantly with autism/aspergers syndrome, which is also a neurodevelopmental disorder. Also, the fact that many trans people report feeling significantly better just by being on HRT. Lowering testosterone and increasing estrogen should cause depression in males, however, it seems to have the opposite effect in trans people. This suggests their brains are wired for female hormones.

How do we know it's not a mental illness? Well, therapy doesn't fix it, the only thing that treats gender dysphoria is transitioning. Mental wellbeing significantly improves following transition, although it's still lower than the general population due to discrimination, etc. Now compare this to something like anorexia - if an anorexic person is allowed to indulge in their delusion that they're fat, they don't get better, they die, I.e. The opposite of what happens to a trans person.

As for curing it, I imagine trans people would be for preventing it, so everyone is born matching their biological sex. After all, why would they want to wish their suffering on anyone. However, for those who are already trans, I understand they would be opposed to being "cured". The very fact they're trans means they find living as a man abhorrent, which is essentially what a cure would do. Obviously a cure would make them comfortable to live that way but it also means changing who they already are.

Anyway, it seems like transgenderism is gaining ground as the next big civil rights movement. You see a lot of the same arguments used against gay people. I suspect in 10 years people who were opposed to trans people will be fervent supporters.
 
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lafemmefatale said:
There my have been an observable logic back when we didn't know any different, kinda like when the earth was flat.
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I believe this is myth. No one thought this. Unless you did? :p

On topic though; can't believe this thread is still going. I doff my hat to Permabanned and lafemmefatale. :rolleyes:

Personal question and apologies if I have missed in it previously; are either of you gender fluid?

Personally I still don't buy that a man can become a woman just chopping off his bits taking a few hormone pills, getting some implants and wearing a dress. No matter how much his mind thinks he is a woman....

Saying that though I have no problem with this if that is what they want to do. Must admit some of them do look gorgeous. However I would not jump into bed with one.

If this makes me a transphobe then so be it...
 
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balky12 said:
I believe this is myth. No one thought this. Unless you did? :p

On topic though; can't believe this thread is still going. I doff my hat to Permabanned and lafemmefatale. :rolleyes:

Personal question and apologies if I have missed in it previously; are either of you gender fluid?

Personally I still don't buy that a man can become a woman just chopping off his bits taking a few hormone pills, getting some implants and wearing a dress. No matter how much his mind thinks he is a woman....

Saying that though I have no problem with this if that is what they want to do. Must admit some of them do look gorgeous. However I would not jump into bed with one.

If this makes me a transphobe then so be it...
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Well, if it helps you can look at it as them trying to lessen their dysphoria, so they can live comfortably, rather than "becoming a woman". However, I know it can sometimes seem like having to "pretend" that person is a woman, when you don't see them that way. But how I think of it is that while "pretending" may be mildly uncomfortable/inconvenient for me, it could mean preventing someone from killing themselves from dysphoria (suicide rate is 40% in trans people). So if me "pretending" makes helps someone keep living, then so be it.

No ones asking you to sleep with them, just treat them like a human being.
 
lafemmefatale said:
Testing someone's DNA or genotype merely gives us a set of arbitrary data. What society ascribes coercively to that data is what is flawed and wrong.

The fallacy of saying gender is a social construct but coercively assigned sex is a factual absolute is why such rabid and frankly nonsensical prejudice occurs.
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The angle you seem to take is that transsexuals are the norm rather than the exception. I do not see common sense measures to allow the exceptions to the norm and the norm to get along without friction and misunderstanding as prejudice. There are situations where some transsexuals could be misunderstood or mistaken for people they are not because what people see is not the whole picture.

lafemmefatale said:
What is irrational and crackers is transphobia.
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Actually it seems as though you are one of those creatures who presumes prejudice where there is none, irrational.

lafemmefatale said:
There my have been an observable logic back when we didn't know any different, kinda like when the earth was flat and the sun orbited the planet. However further observations proved this to be absurd.

There are millions of men with XX chromosome configuration and ovaries, and women with XY and penises right now as we speak. It's completely absurd to believe that sex is an absolute. To believe that is biological essentialism and as I said before, history has not been kind to advocates of that thinking. Nazi Germany being an extremely pertinent example.
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What's the weather like on your planet?

Angilion said:
Are they exceptions? How would you know? It's an inherently biased sampling.

For example:

You see 20 people who are transexuals but you don't know that. With 18 of them, you don't notice that they've changed sex at some point in the past because their appearance shows no sign of it. With 2 of them, the change wasn't so convincing and you see them as "some hideous examples of TS [..] who are obviously male by birth. So you count 2 transexuals and assume that almost all transexuals are like that.

It's like assuming that almost every homosexual man is camper than a row of tents and gayer than a field of daisies because the minority who are stand out and the majority who aren't don't.

It's a major sampling error, one on a par with looking along the level of a 6 foot wall, seeing only people taller than 6 feet and assuming that everyone is taller than 6 feet and there aren't many people around.
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I didn't say almost all or for that matter mention any ideas of proportion. The two I mentioned were a minority of the one's I have met, of the others some were very feminine and others were borderline.

I also can obviously see a bias sample, Tefal used that very sample to demonstrate the question of transsexuals being completely overlooked in certain circumstances.

As for the question of gay men all being campers, a friend of mine absolutely cant stand camp, he's gay of course but could almost pass for homophobic the way he go's on about camp gay men. His view is "be gay it's fine but you're still a man! no need to try and act like a woman". Every sexuality, gender, sex has people with their prejudice.
 
Out of sheer curiosity as to how people from either "side" answer, here's a question:

Why do we assume it is the body that must change to suit the brain? Why must we change the body's physical form and chemical processes artificially to match the brain when we could instead choose to treat the brain?

(Of course, I understand that hormone therapy and genitalia changes are currently much more understood and readily available today, but that might not always be the case.)
 
As the medical community understands things more, it's clear that it's not a psychological issue, hence the NHS stating exactly that and the latest DSM reflecting that too. The only psychological issues to treat are the ones caused by societies abhorrent and prejudiced views of trans people, as evidenced in this thread.

Unfortunately most people's view of sex and gender is stuck very firmly in the realms of early feminist theory, the kind of rubbish that Greer, Raymond et al peddle. Of course the amusing thing in this thread is how many people are agreeing with Greer because it suits their prejudice, yet are appalled by the rest of her stuff and dismiss it as bigoted claptrap. A wonderful piece of doublethink that shows just how deep the hatred runs.
 
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lafemmefatale said:
As the medical community understands things more, it's clear that it's not a psychological issue, hence the NHS stating exactly that and the latest DSM reflecting that too. The only psychological issues to treat are the ones caused by societies abhorrent and prejudiced views of trans people, as evidenced in this thread.

Unfortunately most people's view of sex and gender is stuck very firmly in the realms of early feminist theory, the kind of rubbish that Greer, Raymond et al peddle. Of course the amusing thing in this thread is how many people are agreeing with Greer because it suits their prejudice, yet are appalled by the rest of her stuff and dismiss it as bigoted claptrap. A wonderful piece of doublethink that shows just how deep the hatred runs.
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If I say the moon is white, but then say the sky is orange, are people not allowed to agree with me the moon is white?
 
lafemmefatale said:
Unfortunately most people's view of sex and gender is stuck very firmly in the realms of early feminist theory, the kind of rubbish that Greer, Raymond et al peddle. Of course the amusing thing in this thread is how many people are agreeing with Greer because it suits their prejudice, yet are appalled by the rest of her stuff and dismiss it as bigoted claptrap. A wonderful piece of doublethink that shows just how deep the hatred runs.
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Unfortunately the more you talk the more credibility you lose. So people either agree to all of someone's views, or none of them? They can't agree with some and disagree with others, just because it has come from the same person's mouth?

You keep throwing around words just as bigot/ prejudice/ transphobe. It's getting tiresome.

Like I said earlier, I don't believe a male can become a female just by taking some pills and having numerous operations or vice versa. I'm not scared of them, nor have any feeling of hate towards them. Nor do I wish them harm.

I however agree with Greer when it comes to 'men who have a sex change fundamentally aren't women'. Does that make me a bad person?
 
lafemmefatale said:
As the medical community understands things more, it's clear that it's not a psychological issue, hence the NHS stating exactly that and the latest DSM reflecting that too. The only psychological issues to treat are the ones caused by societies abhorrent and prejudiced views of trans people, as evidenced in this thread.

Unfortunately most people's view of sex and gender is stuck very firmly in the realms of early feminist theory, the kind of rubbish that Greer, Raymond et al peddle. Of course the amusing thing in this thread is how many people are agreeing with Greer because it suits their prejudice, yet are appalled by the rest of her stuff and dismiss it as bigoted claptrap. A wonderful piece of doublethink that shows just how deep the hatred runs.
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You keep telling us that gender is fluid, well now let me tell you that scientific understanding is fluid too.

The medical practitioners of the day used to treat people with mercury. Such things are laughable today. Today's accepted medical practices will be laughable in the next century. This is beyond doubt. It is obvious.

Ask any medical practitioner how well the brain is currently understood. Especially brain development, which is practically not understood at all.

Heck, they don't even know what foods are healthy and what aren't. The advice of what you should eat and what you shouldn't changes every year...

As much as I respect the work that is done by the medical profession (have a couple in the family), anyone with a degree of common sense will not believe that we correctly understand mental disorders yet. In fact mental disorders are some of the worst understood in the entire field of medicine.
 
Given that it's that thinking that pervades society and causes trans people to commit suicide, and it be perfectly fine to beat up and kill a trans person purely for existing, then yes, it does make you a bad person.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
 
DRZ said:
Out of sheer curiosity as to how people from either "side" answer, here's a question:

Why do we assume it is the body that must change to suit the brain? Why must we change the body's physical form and chemical processes artificially to match the brain when we could instead choose to treat the brain?

(Of course, I understand that hormone therapy and genitalia changes are currently much more understood and readily available today, but that might not always be the case.)
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I'd say for two main reasons. Firstly, because it's morally wrong to expect people to change who they are because of something that in no way negatively affects anyone else, nor detracts from their own quality of life in any medical way. Just because they don't happen to fit our own set of arbitrary cultural expectations. And secondly, because it doesn't work. Just like "curing" homosexuality, it's a disgustingly abusive process that results in people leading deeply unhappy, uncomfortable lives with a constant identity crisis. If at some point there was a simple "cure", which given the nature of gender dysphoria seems very unlikely, but i'd be highly skeptical of treating the brain as a first option because then you're not giving medical treatment, you're changing who someone is.
 
lafemmefatale said:
As the medical community understands things more, it's clear that it's not a psychological issue, hence the NHS stating exactly that and the latest DSM reflecting that too. The only psychological issues to treat are the ones caused by societies abhorrent and prejudiced views of trans people, as evidenced in this thread.

Unfortunately most people's view of sex and gender is stuck very firmly in the realms of early feminist theory, the kind of rubbish that Greer, Raymond et al peddle. Of course the amusing thing in this thread is how many people are agreeing with Greer because it suits their prejudice, yet are appalled by the rest of her stuff and dismiss it as bigoted claptrap. A wonderful piece of doublethink that shows just how deep the hatred runs.
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A lot of prejudice you mention is along the lines of presumed prejudice. Like the case in the United States where the Midwives Alliance of North America changed what midwives may call mothers/pregnant women because this may be offensive to trans-gendered. Instead of the obvious terms that are quite correct they were instead instructing their midwives to call their clients birthing-individuals or pregnant-people.

I surmise one of the next things you will no doubt spew forth will be that if a guy refuses to accept that a transgender is a suitable person with which to have a sexual relationship then that too is prejudicial, after-all personal preference and freedom of choice are a prejudicial social construct.
 
XX chromosomes? You're a woman

XY chromosomes? You're a man

Random chromosome abnormalities like someone else mentioned in here - hermaphrodite

That's that. If you have XY chromosomes you're a bloke and no amount of psychological issues and surgery will change that IMO.
 
lafemmefatale said:
Given that it's that thinking that pervades society and causes trans people to commit suicide, and it be perfectly fine to beat up and kill a trans person purely for existing, then yes, it does make you a bad person.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
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You aren't helping either. By saying things like "trans people have a right to conceal their birth gender from a partner", you are making people more fearful of the issue.

Transparency and honesty is needed on your side, and compassion on the other side.

But you must understand the rights of one do not trump the rights of the other.
 
lafemmefatale said:
Given that it's that thinking that pervades society and causes trans people to commit suicide, and it be perfectly fine to beat up and kill a trans person purely for existing, then yes, it does make you a bad person.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
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FemiNazi? my eldest daughter find such people hilarious to gratingly-annoying.

Reason? we are all for equality, not for reversing things and turning the prejudice back to face the other direction.
 
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