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No it’s not.
It is well written and presented, but really doesn’t add much beyond the usual conflation of physical sex and gender, which does more harm than it does good.
Here’s the core of the piece:
First, though, let us address the basic assumption of the contemporary parade: the idea that exchange of one’s sex is possible. It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.
This person is not well informed, despite whatever credentials they happen to have. At the very least, Caitlin has asked her name be used going forward. Doing this is very basic human respect, not something the author seems to understand.
I must fall back on the simple realities inherent in these things, and a real conversation with a trans person works the same way it does with a gay person. People who have not yet had those dialogs really aren’t qualified to comment.
End of story on that.
Should you have one of those dialogs, the gross error in that quote above will become clear.
Put simply, trans people simply *are* the gender they identify with and they see conforming to the other one as an act or life lie where the real them remains suppressed, acting through some facade or other, always inhibited, never free to express who they really are.
The reason they bother with changes to their bodies is all about being able to express themselves honestly as best they can.
Really, that piece is no better than the really ugly one you linked earlier. I will again say the prose and level of presentation is quite good, but the meat is ill-informed, and to a degree cruel. Pointedly cruel in how this matter is equated with a “meme” or “fad” that undermines the entire basis.
In particular, the phrase “problematic future” centers in on acceptance being low, unless the cosmetics are of sufficient quality to escape notice by most people. This is great, if one can successfully transition at a young age. Those futures have a lot less problems.
True.
But that piece really doesn’t get at why that is, while it does correctly speak to some of the ugly dynamics in play. Overcompensating is a valid concern. People who may not pass, or who may not have had the experiences they need to be comfortable in the gender they identify with tend to overcompensate for it all, and this can be seen in Jenner, who goes hyper-fem to a degree that makes many uncomfortable.
But, what of the people who don’t overcompensate in that way? They may well live ordinary, happy lives, or they may be shunned, killed, threatened, and so forth too.
Who is responsible for those things? Surely not the person trying to live as they feel they need to live. No, it’s on the usual crowd of asses who feel like they are entitled to judge others and make their life choices for them, often speaking for god with no material basis for any of that, other than they just don’t feel good about it, and rather than own their issues, they want to force others to comply so they feel better about it all.
Thus, the opposition to “conversion therapy” is seen as a direct attack on religion, nicely presented in this piece BTW, but presented all the same. This idea of “anti gay” camps, or the idea that some sort of erotic fetish or other is the same thing as genuine gender issues are highlights how uninformed and shallow the opinion presented really is.
Pro tip: The people who do have fetishes actually do just entertain them and do not experience the basic misalignment between their body and their self image that trans people do. Both share acceptance issues, but differ in the root causes for their behaviors and motivations.
Anyone attending any kind of therapy rooted in this basic ignorance is extremely likely to come out of it having more harm done than good, and that is precisely why we are pushing back on “conversion” type approaches to what are real problems, not just some minor league confusion, habit, or other.
What I see here is a much nicer presentation, and somebody with considerable skill able to wrap up some of the more ugly ideas in pretty packaging. The usual suspects will see this as the affirmation written just for them, and it, along with other works, will serve as that “evidence” needed to continue harming people over the need to feel better about how they live their lives and what choices they make too.
By “we” above, I mean those of us who get this stuff and who really don’t buy into the idea that it’s OK for people to use religious justifications for judging others, when they really should be minding their own sins and working hard to improve themselves rather than invest time in what others are doing, and making their life choices for them, based on shallow notions along the lines of “god knows better”, or “they are just sick”, etc…
The good news is people are dying off. The up and coming generations are largely past this stuff. They get it, and I believe this is due to the much more interconnected and much less private lives they have lived compared to many of us.
Given some time, acceptance on this will move as it has on gay issues and over that time, more and more of us will treat our fellow travelers here the way we would want to be treated and works like this will be seen as the ugly drivel they really are.
Did you expect anything less by putting that here?
🙂
Funny! I decided to look this guy up. The piece just reeked with the usual garbage.
Is there any wonder?
http://www.glaad.org/cap/paul-mchugh
Look at the company he keeps. That’s all I need to know.
>>Look at the company he keeps
re: glaad.org
Each to his own.
>>It is well written and presented
and extremely convincing…people can’t just announce something and that means you have to believe it true. Thought liberals questioned everything?Look at the company he keeps. That’s all I need to know.
Scott Lively;
On August 14, 2013, a federal judge ruled that the case against Scott Lively, by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a Uganda-based coalition of LGBT rights and advocacy groups, can move forward against him. This is a first-of-its-kind case in which the lawsuit alleges that Lively’s actions over the past decade, in collaboration with some Ugandan government officials and Ugandan religious oleaders, are responsible for depriving LGBT Ugandans of their fundamental human rights based solely on their identity, which the lawsuits alleges falls under the definition of persecution under international law and is a
crime against humanity.
Yeah, that faith thing works in funny ways doesn’t it? You’ve announced all sorts of shit nobody in their right minds would believe.
No matter. This isn’t about you. It’s about them. Most of us get that and the numbers are growing every day as the likes of you age out.
Yes! I’m watching that case. Wondered if anyone would pick up on it.
Broadway is advocating we believe in the causes that back hard core killers. No joke on that. I’ve linked it here in various forms many times for years.
Killers of people who they just don’t feel good enough about to let live.
Thou shall not judge lest ‘ye be judged indeed!
There is a day coming to these people. Either they will age out, or they will eventually face some pretty brutal judgement. Nobody needs these people.
Broadway is doing the classic example of confirmation bias. (It’s pretty much his entire life, isn’t it?)
Never mind the discredited info, and the mess he brought to John Hopkins and the fact that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMS-5) has deleted all mental defect references (it was a mistake to include it in the first place), the doctor forgets the elephant in the room — the 41% suicide attempt rate. He’s so concerned about “harm” but overlooks that they are already harming themselves at a rate 21 times the general population.
It’s akin to having a hospital on fire but only rescuing the corpses in the morgue freezers.
Broadway, you are incapable of doing any kind of research, so take up pipe bomb building or some other hobby that’s less dangerous to society than opening your mouth.
>>Killers of people who they just don’t feel good enough about to let live
Man, you’re talking about abortion again…I am seriously wondering whether the people who are most disturbed by transgender people today have some form of anxiety that they might one day end up in bed with a surgically altered transgendered person.
When I was in college in the 1990s, I remember that another bit of controversy was fear amongst women that a person with a man’s body (a transgendered person who hadn’t yet had surgery) could be using the women’s restroom. My school’s student-run news magazine once ran a story on a transgender student who became Perette (formerly Peter), and the story stated that some female students had complained to the university that Perette was using the ladies’ room. Interestingly, in contemporary discussion of transgender issues, I have not heard this concern brought up.
Quote from my little Brother…
Who will join me in my struggle against the oppression of reality? I seek only justice as I battle the tyranny of the way things actually are rather than the way I want them to be.As a member of the reality based community, I find your proclamations of faith as reality no different from Caitlin’s on identity as reality.
Both are impossible to quantify in any objective sense, yet we see people strongly motivated to actualize these things in their lives.
Who are we to judge, given this lack of an objective basis?
You consistently ask people to grant you consideration that you also consistently deny others, leaving me to wonder why should you be given any at all?
Try to be a good human here. It isn’t hard. Surely no harder than you require of others to get along.
Alfredo, yes I wonder about this too.
Seems to me, getting to a better state of acceptance means less hiding of it and through that less anxiety.
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