Leelah Alcorn, transgender teen, commited suicide

[Dessi]

As for accepting a teenager's statements about his / her own gender- I honestly don't know. We've all been teenagers. We knew things with 100% certainty about ourselves that our mothers laughed at- and sometimes our mothers were right.

Even parents who are "right" sometimes don't know how to support their children when they are suffering with depression.

Leelah's parents, with the best intentions, killed their kid. And did so in the most cruel manner possible by socially isolating and ostracizing her, and taking her to Christian counseling in order to "pray away the gay". Her parents should suffer serious legal consequences for their abuse, and the Christian counselor's who enabled their parents to kill their kid should lose their licenses.

Suppose Leelah's parents were right, and Leelah were not actually trans. What should they have done instead? Maybe a little less heavy-handed coercsion, and a little more idle observation and support while Leelah figures her gender out on her own, at her own pace. What is the worst that would happen? Maybe a few months or years of gender play and experimentation, before deciding she can feel comfortable in her own skin without transitioning.

The best advice I can give to parents who don't understand their kid's gender-variant feelings is to let them figure it out on their own, providing gentle support when they need it.

 

[Skeptic Tank]

I'm curious to hear what people think about a particular angle to the transgender issue. Reading this story reminded me of an MNSBC "Lockup" thing I was watching a week or two ago, they were interviewing this guy who had killed his wife in the 1970's and was doing a life sentence for it. (If you're curious, I went and found a transcript of it, it's at about the 30 minute mark in the text here)

Well, he had married her not realizing she was born a man. It wasn't until they'd had sex a few times, and he told the interviewer that something seemed off about his wife down there... he can't have meant that she was still a completely intact male because of the way he worded it, so my guess is perhaps gender reassignment surgery is just not very convincing, and/or that it was pretty crude in the 1970's. I don't know.

But regardless, this guy had gotten caught up in a whirlwind romance and done a rapid marriage to this person and only after having gotten married did he discover this. He confronted her, she admitted it, he struggled with it for a while and then killed her out of anger about it.

He was surprisingly introspective and human in the interview. He was swapping back and forth between referring to her as "him" and "her" but most often he'd say something like "the individual" or something. He was teary eyed and seemed very legitimately to regret what he'd done. He said he was young and angry at the time and if I'm recalling correctly, I think he owned up to the whole thing having made him question his own sexuality and such and attributed a lot of the anger to that. As I said, pretty introspective and remorseful.

Anyway... thinking about that story, and looking at some of the comments I'm reading here, it seems to me worth asking some of you this question:

If someone is transgender and has had surgery do they have a moral obligation to inform anyone they're becoming involved with romantically, and if so, at what stage should they declare this?

I get the feeling from some of the people who confidently assert that this person was a female because they'd declared themselves to be such (the dead teen in this story) that their answer should, for ideological consistency's sake, be "no" they do not have such an obligation.

Yet I suspect the actual answer will be yes.

Sate my curiosity.

And, additionally, if the answer is "yes, they do have that obligation" then couldn't someone who was an even more ideologically pure progressive type than you are, come back at you with a whole spiel about how that is completely demeaning and undermining of their personhood to insist that for the rest of their life they must go around informing people they're dating or having sex with of how they were born... and that it shouldn't matter because only a horrible transphobic homophobic person would even care, and why should such a person's prejudices be accommodated? And even if the person wants to have children, why does that put an onus on the transgender person to inform them that that won't be a possibility... because after all you can end up with someone who is infertile and didn't know it, so it's a roll of the dice even with someone born cisgender... etc. etc. etc.

And since you would in fact get that sort of pushback from a more extreme progressive if your answer was "yes", how would you answer those points from them?

Lastly, isn't it possible that the parents referring to their dead child as "him" are just falling back on the gender they knew him as from birth and for the majority of his life? Couldn't it be force of habit rather than malice?

 

[Dessi]

My biggest issue is locker rooms or other gender segregated public places where nudity is normal.

I understand your concern here, but in practice, it's not normally an issue.

Most or all trans people are considerate enough not to strut around naked in locker rooms, don't want the negative attention they would get showing their nude bodies in gender-segregated spaces, and are normally self-conscious about strangers seeing their naked bodies that they prefer to wear a towel anyway.

 

[angrysoba]

And the quality (type) of evidence.

Agreed, bad erxample perhaps, but any example would do. Darat's argument (IIUC) is that we must decide any case on what evidence we have. I'm simply saying that can't always be the case. Sometimes we should look for more or better evidence. It's a philosophic argument that's rather off topic for this thread though, so I'm leaving it at that.

Same as in any social case. Is the story we have true? What evidence do we have to support that? Do we have both sides of the story and do they agree or clash?
Like I said, it's not strictly on topic for the thread itself.


I only actually know what one teenager was like. Much of my memory of him is probably wrong. I do know that my parents sometimes had a better idea of what I was really like than I had, because I fantasised a lot.
I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm saying I don't know.

Fair enough. I think you are correct and it is true that sometimes the existing evidence undetermines our belief about a case.

 

[anglolawyer]

Are people really as involved as the posts above suggest? Well, OK. I basically don't care. Sad story I suppose but I don't really feel sad. I probably lack imagination. I certainly don't think condemnation of anybody is in order. How very weird that is.

What's transgender anyway? Is it biology or psychology?

 

[Dessi]

If someone is transgender and has had surgery do they have a moral obligation to inform anyone they're becoming involved with romantically, and if so, at what stage should they declare this?

I would recommend that my trans friends disclose their trans status to partners for a few reasons. Safety being the main reason, avoiding awkward conversations in the event of an accidental outing being another good reason. Disclosure is also considerably safer today than it would have been 40 years ago.

But are they obliged to share that information? Maybe not. Someone's trans status is intensely private, personal medical history. The kind of information that partners are entitled to on a need-to-know basis only. Aside from a narrow set of issues related to family planning or a trans person having prostate / ovarian cancer, why a partner need to know?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I think that, yes, indeed, there are selfish actors in this tragedy. The deceased ain't one of them.

Except for their callous disregard of the effect of their actions on the truck driver.

 

[maxpower1227]

Are people really as involved as the posts above suggest? Well, OK. I basically don't care. Sad story I suppose but I don't really feel sad. I probably lack imagination. I certainly don't think condemnation of anybody is in order. How very weird that is.

What's transgender anyway? Is it biology or psychology?

I'm not an expert, but I believe it has to do with a disconnect between a person's physical anatomy and their brain chemistry/hormone levels, or between primary and secondary sex characteristics. It is possible for a person to be born with the anatomy of a male but the brain of a female, probably due to abnormalities in gene expression during development which would affect the things I mentioned. At any rate, the answer to your question would be "biology".

I'm also not sure how gender identity is affected by something like Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY).

 

[Dessi]

Are people really as involved as the posts above suggest?

Not sure what you mean by "involved", but if it helps answer your question at all: I would consider myself deeply invested in the issues affecting transgender youth. I help organize a youth group for transgender teens and young adults, and have been public speaking on issues affecting transgender youth since 2011.

What's transgender anyway?

Cisgender people are those whose gender identity and expression conforms to the social expectations of their biologically-designated sex.

Transgender people are those whose gender identity or expression does not conform unambiguously to the social expectations of their biologically-designated sex.

For example, someone is biologically female, but has a gender identity and expression typical for a man, would generally be considered transgender.

Is it biology or psychology?

Perhaps a bit of both.

 

[Meadmaker]

What's transgender anyway? Is it biology or psychology?

No one knows.


And if someone does know, point me to a scientific paper that has the answers. It has been a handful of years since I looked it up, but at that time all known biological indicators of a female to male trans were female, and similarly for males.

We don't know much about the brain, to say whether or not they have "female brains" or "male brains".

 

[Skeptic Tank]

I would recommend that my trans friends disclose their trans status to partners for a few reasons. Safety being the main reason, avoiding awkward conversations in the event of an accidental outing being another good reason. Disclosure is also considerably safer today than it would have been 40 years ago.

But are they obliged to share that information? Maybe not. Someone's trans status is intensely private, personal medical history. The kind of information that partners are entitled to on a need-to-know basis only. Aside from a narrow set of issues related to family planning or a trans person having prostate / ovarian cancer, why a partner need to know?

Well, I personally feel the issue of having children and whether that is even a possibility or not is a pretty significant one, given that it is the entire reason we exist as biological entities (which I acknowledge we are more than, but to some of us reproduction is still a very important facet of what it means to be human.) For me, for instance, eventually becoming a father is incredibly important. I would be absolutely mortified to learn that I'd been investing precious years of my one and only life toward building a relationship and forming lasting ties with someone who had, at the very least, allowed the impression to exist in my mind that it was a possibility with them.

But, let's completely set aside anything to do with reproduction because it seems like you wanted a reason that had nothing to do with that consideration or cancer, whatever.

So, completely setting that aside I still think it is absolutely something a person needs to know, or has a right to know.

I'm guessing you're someone who very much respects people being true to their own sexuality and not having anyone else force them to act in a way that would be untrue to it. Right?

So, in the same way it would be messed up for a Christian heterosexual person to say to themselves "you know what, I know better than Johnny about his sexuality. He says he's gay, but I believe that's a choice no matter what he says about it being just how he is. I'm going to threaten his in-the-closet boyfriend with outing him to his parents and everyone he knows, because I know he's terrified of them finding out. I feel justified in taking this sort of action because I know that Johnny's own beliefs about his sexuality are just a phase, and just based on wrong-headed thinking on his part."

It would also be wrong for a transgender person to decide that they had the right to make an executive decision about someone else's sexuality and decide "yea I don't need to tell Bob that I was born a man, because he's already had kids with his ex-wife, has said he doesn't want more, has had a vasectomy... and while I do get the impression he'd probably be horrified if he knew, there is no reason to create that drama because it just doesn't matter. I know better than him, and I know that the horror he'd experience at that revelation is just based on outmoded, regressive ideas about gender and sexuality, and since the entire mindset that reaction would be flowing from is wrongheaded and socially constructed, I'm under no obligation to inform him."

People have a right to plot their own course and have their own preferences, even if those preferences seem stupid to others. People have a right to make informed decisions about things in their lives, particularly very important things like who they're sleeping with or spending a huge portion of their lives with.

I wouldn't want to be with a man who had gone under the knife and had to take hormone treatments, etc. to pass as a woman. Even if the end product was completely convincing and attractive by female standards, I want the real genuine article.

Just as I wouldn't want to be duped into a relationship with a space alien who was legitimately female within their species, but was using holograms or something to convince me she was human, lol.

The point is, I have a right to know who I'm getting involved with. At the very least I have the right to be able to make the choice and weigh it for myself.

 

[ThunderChunky]

If someone is transgender and has had surgery do they have a moral obligation to inform anyone they're becoming involved with romantically, and if so, at what stage should they declare this?

Obviously there would be a moral obligation to disclose such information in most relationships. If you are not sharing certain information you know your partner would find significant, that is essentially lying. There may even be a legal obligation to disclose given that people have been prosecuted in a few countries for "rape by fraud."

 

[Meadmaker]

Most or all trans people are considerate enough not to strut around naked in locker rooms, don't want the negative attention they would get showing their nude bodies in gender-segregated spaces, and are normally self-conscious about strangers seeing their naked bodies that they prefer to wear a towel anyway.

True, but it has to be "most", not "all". If it were "all", then no one would ever see the person's actual anatomy and become aware of the contradiction.


(The foremost example in my mind is a case of someone who went by the name of Colleen Brenna, if memory serves correctly.)

 

[sylvan8798]

I would recommend that my trans friends disclose their trans status to partners for a few reasons. Safety being the main reason, avoiding awkward conversations in the event of an accidental outing being another good reason. Disclosure is also considerably safer today than it would have been 40 years ago.

But are they obliged to share that information? Maybe not. Someone's trans status is intensely private, personal medical history. The kind of information that partners are entitled to on a need-to-know basis only. Aside from a narrow set of issues related to family planning or a trans person having prostate / ovarian cancer, why a partner need to know?

I absolutely think any potential partner needs to know this kind of thing, but then, I told my dates I was a divorcee on the first date.

People have a right to plot their own course and have their own preferences, even if those preferences seem stupid to others. People have a right to make informed decisions about things in their lives, particularly very important things like who they're sleeping with or spending a huge portion of their lives with.

This, totally. And that comes from personal experience regarding a different, but arguably need-to-know information, which I did not, in fact, get to know when I should have.

 

[sylvan8798]

My biggest issue is locker rooms or other gender segregated public places where nudity is normal. I'm of the opinion that if people see boy parts, they are going to react as if those parts are attached to a boy. Similarly with girl parts. I think until you are surgically altered, use the facilities that match the plumbing. I wouldn't want a bunch of naked teenaged boys hanging out with what they perceive as a naked teenaged girl, even if that teenaged girl self-identifies as a boy.

I'm told that, these days, high school kids in the United States never take showers after gym class anymore, so it isn't the issue that it would have been back in my day. If you search the archives, you can find a thread or two about it.

I haven't been naked in a "public" place since HS. The closest I've been is in my underthings. My kids didn't shower after gym class like we used to. Are there a lot of places where adults are running around naked these days?

 

[TubbaBlubba]

I wouldn't want to be with a man who had gone under the knife and had to take hormone treatments, etc. to pass as a woman. Even if the end product was completely convincing and attractive by female standards, I want the real genuine article.

Just as I wouldn't want to be duped into a relationship with a space alien who was legitimately female within their species, but was using holograms or something to convince me she was human, lol.

I'm what you would call a neurotic - for example, when writing posts on sensitive issues, I spend a lot of time worrying about whether my post might hurt someone's feelings, even slightly or through misunderstandings, and whether posting it is worth it in that regard. Sometimes, I exaggerate that kind of thinking to the point where it interferes with my functioning or personal relationships, and I wish I could worry a bit less about potentially hurting others.

But then I read posts where someone's line of reasoning goes "trans woman" -> "space alien" and you know, maybe I'll just stick to being neurotic if it stops me from doing THAT.

 

[Skeptic Tank]

I'm what you would call a neurotic - for example, when writing posts on sensitive issues, I spend a lot of time worrying about whether my post might hurt someone's feelings, even slightly or through misunderstandings, and whether posting it is worth it in that regard. Sometimes, I exaggerate that kind of thinking to the point where it interferes with my functioning or personal relationships, and I wish I could worry a bit less about potentially hurting others.

But then I read posts where someone's line of reasoning goes "trans woman" -> "space alien" and you know, maybe I'll just stick to being neurotic if it stops me from doing THAT.

Believe it or not, I'm the same way or at least I have traditionally been.

My "default setting" has always been to be way, way too concerned about what random, anonymous people (let alone real life people, who I'm even more like this about) feel and think.

A good example would be how I routinely feel an incredible amount of concern and stress when I see someone I vehemently disagree with getting ganged up on on a forum.

A recent example would be Ann in the UVA "rape" case thread. It was very, very difficult for me to read what I felt were overly harsh/rude/aggressive posts toward her from people I very very strongly agreed with. I have this natural "oh no, someone's outnumbered and they probably feel embarrassed" type of reaction. This also extends to when I see a bad comedy skit bombing, or a comedian bombing on stage. I almost cannot bear to see another person be embarrassed. It is extremely difficult for me to watch because I seem to have some sort of over-exaggerated sympathetic response to that sort of thing.

Of course, most people here would not suspect that about me because I make what people consider to be very offensive posts, I think. If you look at my post history though you'll find it's only my worldview and abstract thoughts which are "offensive", and you will find very little in the way of engaging harshly and one on one with another poster directly. I'm sure a lot of people would say "yea, typical coward hater. You can't say the sorts of things you believe to anyone's face, you are only able to have such awful views because you cut yourself off from looking at the personal stories impacted by people who think like you!" but my harsh worldview is actually very new to me. I was as hardcore of a progressive touchy feely type as you could care to find until a few years ago. I'm still processing a lot of recent, very significant changes to my view of the world, and figuring out what (if any) implications those have for how I interact with other people. It comes naturally to me to be deferential and warm to individuals, and I've had a great many close friends who would surprise those who see my views expressed here, in terms of what sort of people they are.

I guess I've just come to believe there are some very unfortunate, inconvenient, and unpleasant realities in our world which cannot be wished away and which, sadly, have very hurtful implications for a lot of people.

But enough about all of that. You seem to believe what I said about the space alien example was offensive.

I'm not sure why. It was merely an attempt at humor, and infusing a bit of randomness and silliness into the post.

I wasn't attempting to imply transgender people are equivalent to space aliens, and I don't have any negative feelings about space aliens anyway.

 

[The Atheist]

I'm also not sure how gender identity is affected by something like Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY).

I'd describe that as an intersex condition.

It's a fine line, but transgender normally refers to a transition between one gender and the other. Intersex people aren't given the full set of anything to begin with.

 

[The Atheist]

At the very least I have the right to be able to make the choice and weigh it for myself.

This is the subject that causes the most angst among trans people - when to tell.

Obviously, FtM trans is pretty damned obvious when the clothes come off, and while it's relatively easy to tell a born vulva from one sculpted by a surgeon, a bloke who has never had sex would have a difficult time knowing.

The usual advice and action is to tell the other party early on. As soon as any interest is perceived, because then it's early enough for both to pull back without hurting too many feelings and at least friendship may result. Leaving it too late can be ugly, as plenty of battered trans women can tell you.

And if it's someone worth bothering with, it won't make a difference, so there's no need to delay.

 

[Dessi]

I'm guessing you're someone who very much respects people being true to their own sexuality and not having anyone else force them to act in a way that would be untrue to it. Right?

So, in the same way it would be messed up for a Christian heterosexual person to say to themselves "you know what, I know better than Johnny about his sexuality. He says he's gay, but I believe that's a choice no matter what he says about it being just how he is. I'm going to threaten his in-the-closet boyfriend with outing him to his parents and everyone he knows, because I know he's terrified of them finding out. I feel justified in taking this sort of action because I know that Johnny's own beliefs about his sexuality are just a phase, and just based on wrong-headed thinking on his part."

It would also be wrong for a transgender person to decide that they had the right to make an executive decision about someone else's sexuality and decide "yea I don't need to tell Bob that I was born a man, because he's already had kids with his ex-wife, has said he doesn't want more, has had a vasectomy... and while I do get the impression he'd probably be horrified if he knew, there is no reason to create that drama because it just doesn't matter. I know better than him, and I know that the horror he'd experience at that revelation is just based on outmoded, regressive ideas about gender and sexuality, and since the entire mindset that reaction would be flowing from is wrongheaded and socially constructed, I'm under no obligation to inform him."

I'm having a hard time seeing how a heterosexual Christian takes it upon themselves to terrorize a gay couple in order to split them apart, is at all comparable to transwoman who goes about her day-to-day life causing no harm or grief to anyone.

People have a right to plot their own course and have their own preferences, even if those preferences seem stupid to others. People have a right to make informed decisions about things in their lives, particularly very important things like who they're sleeping with or spending a huge portion of their lives with.

I wouldn't want to be with a man who had gone under the knife and had to take hormone treatments, etc. to pass as a woman. Even if the end product was completely convincing and attractive by female standards, I want the real genuine article.

Fertility aside, the difference between completely attractive trans and cis women doesn't strike me as such an overwhelming important distinction. Even if you have an admittedly stupid preference for one over the other, it seems like such a petty preference that you'd suffer no real harm if a trans women chose not to disclose her status.

Knowing whether someone is trans might help you make a decision of some sorts, but I wouldn't necessarily call it an informed decision.

The point is, I have a right to know who I'm getting involved with. At the very least I have the right to be able to make the choice and weigh it for myself.

Knowing your partner's intimate thoughts and feelings would certainly help you make an informed decision about whether you commit to them, but I doubt you'd say this gives you a right to snoop through their private diaries and emails. That must mean your right to know is balanced against another person's right to privacy.

Medical history is an area where people have some reasonable expectation of privacy. You have no right, morally or legally, to another another person's medical history, except on a need-to-know basis only.

You definitely need to know whether your partner has an STDs, for your own safety and the safety of future partners. You need to know whether your partner has food allergies before you cook for them, for their own safety. You need to know about one another's fertility if you want to start a family.

But you don't need to know everything. You don't need to know whether your partner has ever had cosmetic surgery, if they used to be fat, used to be anorexic, if they've ever taken ecstasy, ever had a same-sex partner, whether they are a virgin, whether they were ever raped, whether they have Jewish ancestry, whether they have Kleinfelter syndrome, or a complete insensitivity to androgens.

I don't see why partners would choose to keep some these sorts of medical facts private, but in the strictest sense, I don't see why they would be obliged to disclose them either as they don't affect your safety or long-term relationship satisfaction in any urgent way.

It would be smart for transwomen to disclose their status for their own safety (too many stories of women being beaten or killed after being outed), not because you have a "right to know" your partners intimately private medical history.