LafayetteLady
Posts: 7683
Joined: 5/2/2007
From: Northern New Jersey
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: OttersSwim
quote:
ORIGINAL: HeatherMcLeather
I personally think that one of the biggest problems that transgendered people have is due to people <meaning other people> put far too much emphasis on gender to begin with. While it has a bearing on one's sexual and romantic activities, it really should have no bearing on anything else. What is between a person's legs really has little bearing on their value as a human being.
I agree that humans put too much emphasis on gender. But...we cannot really help it. We are by nature attuned to "categorization".
We look at one another and take in a whole host of basic information about that other person - gender being one of the first and most important factors for how we will interact with this new human in our sphere.
A transsexual who does not "pass" upsets that 1/10th of a second visual categorization that human brains conduct on every person they see - it short circuits the system and our society has not yet embraced gender variances enough to give people a rational path out of that conundrum...so the reaction in many is that they get flustered, they feel unsure and don't know what to do...
While I agree that all people should be valued for who they are, not their gender, race or ethnicity for that matter, I don't think it is as simple as people wanting to put people in a "gender box" per se. Certainly, I'm not referring to centuries ago when the deliniation between male and female behavior was rigidly defined, but in more recent society.
It brings to mind the European (Swiss, I believe) parents who would not tell anyone the sex of their child so the child could "choose" for themselves and the daycare that refused to use gender specific pronouns. As a transgendered person, I'm sure you can confirm that you didn't choose diddly squat about your gender identity, it was something that came from within. For something as simple as which bathroom a school age child is going to use, those genders, like it or not, are going to be relevant in today's society.
While I think that teaching children to be accepting of all kinds of people, I don't believe we get there by doing the above. Actually, I think the above is likely to cause psychological issues that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Children look to adults for guidance. That includes not only how to behave, but for who they are. Thinking your child has a choice of which sex to be is not only biologically inappropriate, but in the end can be more stressful for a child, causing them to think they MUST be androgenous to be accepted as opposed to being who they are and being fine with it.
I have known plenty of homosexual people in my life. And more than a couple cross-dressers and transgendered. I never had any issues with any of them. Well except for one guy who was a cross-dressers (actually I think the correct term for him would be drag queen). He was a perfectly pleasant guy and worked as a model. He looked positively hot and both a male AND a female. Damn it! That just wasn't fair, lol, and I told him, "most of us have to put some work into looking good as one OR the other, and here you are batting 1000 either way." It was not a comment made to offend at all, and he certainly didn't take it that way. But really, how unfair was that, and how lucky was he? "He" is appropriate for those who wonder because while gay, not transgendered. "She" of course would only apply while in drag.
|
The Transgender Thread - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread