no doubt you’ve come across this “news“, about a 16 year old german pop singer who has had gender reassignment surgery, commonly known as a “sex change” in our vernacular.

i have a few problems, as you’ve probably surmised by now. not only with the headlines that are being perpetrated by the media, and the underlying assumptions behind them, but by how the term “transsexual” is used against us, transsexuals.

apparently, the media has unilaterally changed the meaning of the term “transsexual” to a person who has undergone surgery and hormone treatments in order to acquire the physical characteristics of the opposite sex. so here’s a news flash to y’all who haven’t had surgery – you’re not a transsexual. and to those who have, you are transsexual. hooray.

little did i realize that before i had surgery, i really wasn’t transsexual, despite all the medical treatment and diagnoses to the contrary. i shudder to think of all the stigma and torment i could have avoided, had i been aware of this newly developed definition.

the above linked post has more gems of insight. jennifer lance, the illustrious author of the piece, states:

I am not sure how I feel about this news. On one hand, I want to respect Kim and her decision. I am an open-minded person, at least I like to think I am. On the other hand, 16-years-old is awful young to be making life changing decisions. I can’t even remember what I wanted at 16, other than to drive a car and hang out with my friends while listening to music. I am not for elective, cosmetic surgery, but some may argue this is not cosmetic for Kim. I believe we should accept our natural bodies.

i suppose jennifer would prefer that the world use her experience as the model of experience with which all other experiences should be compared. after all, if she “can’t even remember what [she] wanted at 16″, then all us bat shit trannys certainly can’t know. oh, i’m sorry, i guess we really weren’t trannys back then. maybe wannabe transsexuals. or worse, shemales.

and regarding our “natural bodies”, jennifer goes on to say:

One thing I do know, I can’t help but feel like I should move to Germany. My son is considered “uninsurable” because he has a congenital heart defect, and our government offers no support because we are not a low income family, yet Germany pays for a teenager’s sex change! I wish Kim and her family well, and I try to have compassion for her gender issues.

um, jennifer, i’m very sorry to hear that your son has a congenital heart defect, but “i believe we should accept our natural bodies.”

yeah, sounds pretty stupid when it’s put that way, doesn’t it.

but hey, if a government pays for something as petty as a teenager’s sex change, then surely they should pay for a “real” disorder like a congenital heart defect. and yeah, thanks for your “compassion” for my “gender issues”!

lifetime is playing “a girl like me: the gwen araujo story” tonight. i’d never seen it before, so i sat down to watch it. i had to turn it off a few minutes later.

looking at even the movie poster, or the photo preview on lifetime, shows the stereotypical transwoman applying lipstick. um, haven’t we seen enough transsexuals putting on lipstick? and don’t bother reading the comments on the lifetime site.

anyway, it’s just too depressing. i’ll have to save this movie for a different time.

i came across a copy of hbo’s middle sexes dvd at a big lots yesterday for a whopping $3.00. needless to say, we bought it and watched it (again) last night. having seen it before a couple of years ago, it reminded me that this piece of work is one of the best overviews of all things trans available. i highly recommend it.

“biology loves variation. society hates it.”

the dvd includes interviews of trans people of note such as calpernia addams and andrea james as well as other trans people from various cultures, thailand and india as two examples. there are additional interviews with intersex and bi people, as well as medical, scientific, and academic representatives.

big lots also had a copy of normal, also for $3.00, which i did not buy. i had trouble sitting through it when i watched it, and didn’t wish to revisit that discomfort. that scene in the barn, shotgun in mouth, finger on trigger, hit way too close to home. and no, i have never been in a barn.

via the bbc news:

Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.
He explained that defending God’s creation is not limited to saving the environment, but also protecting man from self-destruction

read the whole article. it speaks for itself. apparently, the pope finds himself at odds with the united nations.

i been reading lisa’s post over on questioning transphobia that highlights an article published in cosmos magazine entitled “Gene linked to transsexualism”. another link in the comments points to a bbc article covering the same study. in a nut shell:

…some male-to-female transsexuals carry a different form of a gene, called an androgen receptor, which modifies the body’s response to testosterone.
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…the form of the gene found in the transsexual group had a larger number of repeats of a short, repetitive sequence of DNA – making the gene significantly longer than the form found in the control group of non-transsexual men.
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…”This [study] supports the notion that transsexualism has a biological basis rather than being due to psychosocial factors in early childhood…

many of the comments in lisa’s post express many of my concerns. while i support studying gender identity and its causes, i’m not very confident that the resulting data will be used to my benefit, and/or for the benefit of other members of my tribe.

i can imagine that at some point, some biological template will be developed to diagnose “gender identity disorder”, and those who don’t “measure up” will be denied medical treatment or insurance coverage. or worse, that the unborn will be tested for this and either aborted or “cured” while still in the womb.

it’s unfortunate that a culture who has the technology to study and identify the causes of humanity’s diversity, also has the technology to destroy those types of people that are arbitrarily deemed undesirable.

and frankly, i think we’d all be a lot better off studying the cause of bigotry, and working on a cure for that.

charlene moore-arcila is apparently not passing, through the philadelphia septa system that is. their “transpass” has a gender marker, and depending on the driver, charlene is sometimes perceived as male when she buys the “female” transpass, and female when she buys the “male” transpass.

maybe they should call it the “cispass”.

from abc 6 action news.

according to this article from ascribe:

New figures released today by the Transgender American Veterans Association reveal that transgender service members and veterans, like many transgender people in the U.S., face a variety of forms of discrimination based on their transgender status. The survey of 827 U.S. military veterans and active-duty personnel mark the first major empirical findings on transgender people in the military.

ya think? well, at least now there’s actual empirical documentation.

kinds gives this issue some teeth.

it started with posts like this, from say uncle, a gun rights proponent, whose blog i read pretty much every day. yeah, he supports mccain, but no one is perfect. on the other hand, he’s pro rights, so he also supports glbt rights, and the pink pistols.

it was escalated with posts like this, from kynn, a “transgender::genderqueer” woman who takes issue with “pompous, idiotic gun-fetishists [who] need to shut the fuck up and stop trying to politicize tragedy to justify their own lunacy.”

words were exchanged, including the obligatory insults on trans appearances and subsequent apologies. and all the while, feeling torn between my affiliation with both what i’ll call “gun culture” and the “trans community™”.

why can’t we just “get along”?

it seems the baptist press is “educating” the world in “medicine”. i had no idea they were “the” authority when it comes to “medical treatments”. to wit:

For teenagers who believe they are transgender, Spack (which, by the way, rhymes with quack) will offer hormone therapy. These treatments are considered drastic and will alter the way a teen will grow and develop. Long–term hormone therapy cannot be reversed.

obviously, any doctor whose name rhymes with any word that has any negative connotations is unqualified. i wonder how that works with “columnists” who write for “news with a christian perspective” websites. after all, “boggs” rhymes with “hogs”. or something.

but wait, there’s more:

I find it criminal that impressionable young children and teens are led to believe they are biological accidents just because they exhibit interests that are deemed more appropriate for the opposite gender. Dr. Sills told FoxNews.com that the three year-old she deemed as transgender insisted she was a boy and mimicked masculine behavior.

I wonder if Sills has ever encountered a three year-old that insisted he or she were an animal or super hero? Some young children become jealous of a parent and insist they are married to their moms or dads. I wonder how Dr. Sills would handle such cases.

right, because “gender confusion” is the same thing as “species confusion” or belief that one is a superhero. after all, humans procreate male, female, and intersex offspring, just like they produce cat, dog, and spiderman offspring.

or something.

Now it seems some progressives think little Sally playing with a fire engine indicates that she really wants to one day be Frank the fireman.

i wasn’t aware that the only criteria used for a diagnosis of transgender, and the subsequent “sex-change” of said person was that they play with toys that children of the “opposite sex” typically play with. i wonder what happens if one plays with all kinds of toys.

it doesn’t end there, however. the “author” of this piece provides us with a “scientific & medical” “solution”:

I am not trying to make light of the fact there are people who are psychologically confused when it comes to their gender — and some of them are children. However, these people and kids are in need of prayer and counseling, not hormone therapy and a surgeon.

“prayer and counseling”, the cure all for every social, medical, and spiritual ill. cause, you know, it seems to work so well within their own ranks. not. how many men of the cloth are convicted of sexual assault each year?

i have nothing against religious belief. in fact, i’ve been known to say a prayer or two now and again. and i’ve been known to hold a belief or two in a mystical invisible being living in the sky. but i don’t use that ever shifting belief as justification to speak with any authority about medical or scientific issues.

it wasn’t my 40 years of daily prayer that corrected the incongruity between my physical and mental existence, but rather the intervention of the qualified medical practitioners i hired to treat me.

what a concept.

this is classic, as it perfectly illustrates how trans people are simply not understood. to wit:

When transgendered folks get through the final stage of transitioning and reach “the end”, all that gender fluidity goes right out the window and solidifies into the crusty crud on the bottom of my boots. They have merely succeeded in upholding the gender binary — the very same binary which has held women down for the last 10,000 years.
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there is also no corresponding need to switch out body parts in order to express what is basically described as internal character, unless the purpose is merely to commodify one’s personality as a dainty girl might wear pink or a goth craves black. The genitalia have been reduced to the status of wardrobe accessory.

i guess the majority of trans people who never reach “the end”, and never “switch out body parts” don’t actually exist. and the majority of trans people that i know, who are in fact “gender fluid”, don’t exist either.

see, this version of “feminism” uses a few examples of individuals, and applies the characteristics of those few individuals to an entire class of people. i seem to remember there being a word that describes that type of stereotyping.

h/t belledame222