Leelah Alcorn, transgender teen, commited suicide

[Cl1mh4224rd]

I don't know if it's been pointed out, but the fact that there are people who are physically male or female, but feel like they are actually the opposite should indicate that the issue of gender is just a bit more complicated than what we have tucked between our legs.

 

[Dessi]

However, after exerting the existence of these categories, man and woman, it asserts that there is no objective measures by which one can determine whether or not a person is of one category or the other. It makes the categories incredibly important, asserting that it is necessary that we treat people as part of the appropriate category, and at the same time makes the categories meaningless, because they have no objective reality.

I'm not sure why there needs to be an "objective measure". I've certainly never challenged anyone to objectively prove that they are gay or straight, that they are right or left handed, that they are liberal or conservative. There's certainly no category objective measure that one is a skeptic, that they are a cat fancier or dog fancier, that they are an atheist or otherwise. People are assigned a nationality at birth, but they can change it at will if they go through the right legal channels. Parental status and guardianship can be assigned or removed at will; you can be a father or a mother to a person who is not biologically related in any way at all.

People have a lot of attributes which they have simply by declaring them, not because they "proved them objectively" to anyone. Some attributes like political party affiliation and nationality are supported by legal registration, but even these things can be changed at will. Some attributes like parental status neither have nor need an objectively biological measure at all.

Trust and believe there are a lot of categories people belong to which have no objective reality whatsoever, but that hardly means they're "meaningless".

So, according to the "sex is in your genes, gender is your head" or "gender is socially constructed" views, how would we know what gender anyone is? Often times, the best objective measure of gender is the WYSIWYG rule: what you see is what you get. Most people's gender -- their private, subjective sense -- is communicated externally through their gender expression, which includes their manner of dress, manner of speech, preferred name and pronouns, and other gender normative attributes.

For 99.9% of people you will meet in your life, whether cis or trans, their gender will be transparently obvious through their gender expression, even among people who do not generally conform to gender stereotypes such as effeminate men and butch women, even among trans person who do not "pass" particularly well.

Even without the aid of an "objective measure" of someone's intensely, private, subjective experience of their gender, gender categories are neither "meaningless" nor is it difficult to correctly identify others' gender in practice.

 

[ponderingturtle]

i don't see the majority of people changing what they mean by the word any time soon. Cis-male is a an unknown term to most people. I can see why one might want to change the word, but it strikes me that this is a barrier to clear communication. Like all the arguments that hinge on one side using the common meaning of sexism while the other side uses the gender studies definition and pretends the other meaning does not exist. It's not an absolute reason not to change the meaning, but it's non trivial and will cause confusion.

And yet people have no idea what they actually mean when they use it, hence the problem they have with actually defining it. When such people actually try to define it they invariably do so in a why that is at odds with how they actually use it. Like bringing up genetics and then not knowing if they know any XX men, or actually that de la Chapelle syndrome is a real thing. Thus either they are not men despite their appearance from birth or being XY is not intrinsic to maleness.

So they are at best left with the definition as how the doctor assigned the individual at birth.

 

[FromBelgiumWithLove]

I wondered about that too and talked about it with a transgendered friend of mine (who also happens to be gay) and he agreed that it was strange. Gender and sexual orientation are not linked (well, statistically they are, since most people identify as straight) so why lump gender identity and sexual identity together into one 'community'?
I'm afraid it has something to do with the fact that both groups are (have been?) seen as deviants by society at large. And the presumption that someone who has an issue with their genitals will have a sexual reason for it. So the budding trans movement could only look to the gay community for support, since in the public's eye, they're all dirty weirdo's anyway.

That's very close to the only sensible explanation I once read, many years ago, when someone similarly bemused brought up this issue in a newsgroup. It's a result of binary thinking, imposed from outside, where everybody who doesn't fit into the standard penis-into-vagina stereotype for whatever reason is lumped together into one "community".

I have it from the same friend that, ironically, anti-trans predjudice and hatred are more pronounced in the gay scene. Transgendered individuals tend to be seen either as imposters who want to encroach on gay territory, or as looking to deny their sexual deviation from the norm by dressing it up as a gendered deviation from the norm, denying the importance of the LGB movement. (This is all anecdotal of course, I cannot cite any research for this)

Neither can I, the more so since I think the concept of a "gay community" is a crock of excrement, too, and am unfamiliar with "the gay scene" except for what I've read about it.

Another aspect to my bemusement however is how marginal this issue is, in statistical terms.

To have some hard numbers from an official source, I'll stick to what I can find for Belgium, but I cannot imagine the relative numbers are that different elsewhere in the western world. There is a federal government agency responsible for gender equality, which goes by a traditional Belgian alphabet soup acronym of IGVM/IEFH (they're often that long because they have to be in both Dutch and French). They have transgender issues in their remit as well. Their website has some numbers (I'm pointing to the French version, hoping that more people might be able to follow that, even though the URL shows the Dutch one was the original.) These numbers don't just include those people who have legally changed, but are an estimate based on how many people have been in contact with various bodies active in the field. They come up with 1 in 13,000 of the male population (i.e. M to F), and 1 in 34,000 of the female population (i.e. F to M).

Translated to the Belgian population of about 10.5 million people, that means there are about 404 M-to-F transsexuals in Belgium, and 154 F-to-M ones, a total of 558. The odds of knowing a member, let alone several members, of such a tiny minority are minute. Even if every one of those people have 100 family members, friends and acquantainces each who know about their situation, and none of those circles overlap, that's still only 55,8000 people with some kind of direct contact, about half a percent of the population. Just how many opportunities of displaying prejudice (or lack thereof) towards transgendered people are there, really?

 

[shuttlt]

And yet people have no idea what they actually mean when they use it, hence the problem they have with actually defining it. When such people actually try to define it they invariably do so in a why that is at odds with how they actually use it. Like bringing up genetics and then not knowing if they know any XX men, or actually that de la Chapelle syndrome is a real thing. Thus either they are not men despite their appearance from birth or being XY is not intrinsic to maleness.

So they are at best left with the definition as how the doctor assigned the individual at birth.

The problem with this isn't the vagueness of the definition. Usage defines the meaning of the word. The problem is that people object to the usage for philosophical/political reasons.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That's very close to the only sensible explanation I once read, many years ago, when someone similarly bemused brought up this issue in a newsgroup. It's a result of binary thinking, imposed from outside, where everybody who doesn't fit into the standard penis-into-vagina stereotype for whatever reason is lumped together into one "community".



Neither can I, the more so since I think the concept of a "gay community" is a crock of excrement, too, and am unfamiliar with "the gay scene" except for what I've read about it.

Another aspect to my bemusement however is how marginal this issue is, in statistical terms.

To have some hard numbers from an official source, I'll stick to what I can find for Belgium, but I cannot imagine the relative numbers are that different elsewhere in the western world. There is a federal government agency responsible for gender equality, which goes by a traditional Belgian alphabet soup acronym of IGVM/IEFH (they're often that long because they have to be in both Dutch and French). They have transgender issues in their remit as well. Their website has some numbers (I'm pointing to the French version, hoping that more people might be able to follow that, even though the URL shows the Dutch one was the original.) These numbers don't just include those people who have legally changed, but are an estimate based on how many people have been in contact with various bodies active in the field. They come up with 1 in 13,000 of the male population (i.e. M to F), and 1 in 34,000 of the female population (i.e. F to M).

Translated to the Belgian population of about 10.5 million people, that means there are about 404 M-to-F transsexuals in Belgium, and 154 F-to-M ones, a total of 558. The odds of knowing a member, let alone several members, of such a tiny minority are minute. Even if every one of those people have 100 family members, friends and acquantainces each who know about their situation, and none of those circles overlap, that's still only 55,8000 people with some kind of direct contact, about half a percent of the population. Just how many opportunities of displaying prejudice (or lack thereof) towards transgendered people are there, really?

So the odds that the 20 or so people invited to by bachelor party included 3 FTM individual and one individual who presents as male but prefers to be thought of as neuter and prefers It as a pronoun, met through 3 entirely different means who had only the two in a couple had previously met before is statistically impossible in Belgium?

To say nothing of the trans performers and supporting crew in the burlesque troop.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The problem with this isn't the vagueness of the definition. Usage defines the meaning of the word. The problem is that people object to the usage for philosophical/political reasons.

So even though people have no idea what they mean when they say it and can not define what the difference is between one who fits the category in their mind and one who does not.

 

[FromBelgiumWithLove]

back in the end of the 70ies start of 80ies when we spoke of that issue, it was indeed called trans-sexualism.

A part of the confusion is no doubt due to the fact that English has these two different words, "sex" and "gender". And as we all know, if there are two different words, there must be two different things. People using languages with just the one word for "sex" never got this confused. Until quite recently, when a sad tendency to transplant the word "gender" in its mostly American usage (which until recently didn't match the British usage, either) emerged, just so non-English speakers can enjoy the same semantical confusion and hairsplitting.

ETA: The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary, published in 1991, which I have sitting on the shelf still has "a person's sex" only listed as the third and last definition of "gender", with the addition "colloq.[uial]" - their code for "not really proper English, but we have to include it."

 

[Giordano]

i don't see the majority of people changing what they mean by the word any time soon. Cis-male is a an unknown term to most people. I can see why one might want to change the word, but it strikes me that this is a barrier to clear communication. Like all the arguments that hinge on one side using the common meaning of sexism while the other side uses the gender studies definition and pretends the other meaning does not exist. It's not an absolute reason not to change the meaning, but it's non trivial and will cause confusion.

I believe that there is a need to change the word so as to destroy the existing barrier to clear communication. There is currently a misunderstanding by many people that animals must be male or female, and that this is determined by their genitalia. I am indicating that this is incorrect biologically (many animals change gender during their life, or have both sets of genitalia) and psychologically and therefore this erroneous belief is actually hampering clear communication. Gender is much more complicated than that.

There is a reason to change the meaning because the commonly heard meaning is incorrect. Just as in the 19030's the commonly held meanings of the word Jewish, Indian, African etc. were wrong in terms of the actual facts, but led to people making very unfortunate decisions based on those incorrect meanings. People were certain: "skin color is a physical basis of who you were and what could be expected of you." The idea of marrying a person with certain hidden ethnic roots was considered higly disturbing to many people back then (it even was a common theme in literature and movies: your spouse was secretly 25% Jewish, or Black, etc. and now what would happen?). This was a shocking idea but then, but we know better now, better then to simply call someone one thing based on their skin color, for example.

 

[epepke]

I'm not sure why there needs to be an "objective measure". I've certainly never challenged anyone to objectively prove that they are gay or straight, that they are right or left handed, that they are liberal or conservative.

Good for you. You seem to be a fair egg.

However, I doubt that it has escaped your attention that people do this kind of thing all the time, and it significantly affects the discourse. There are all sorts of things that affect the discourse. It probably isn't too realistic to expect a conversation on a thread like this one to be entirely free of the context.

Part of the context involves a lot of people making assertions of fact that are actually driven by political motivations. That is usually of the form "if we insist on X, then that will make people do Y." Arguments about whether something is inborn are quite frequently of this form, and asking for an objective measure is a useful pragmatic tool in figuring out the motivations for saying them. It helps to winnow down statements that look objective to statements that are objective, more or less.

 

[Lithrael]

I think you do get people who argue about whether somebody is really a fan of something. It's a conflict between equivocating objective and subjective definitions. Same here, multiple definitions of male and female. I don't see that there is necessarily a single uniquely correct definition.

This is true. Personally I suspect that much of the fighting that goes on over whether a person is a 'real geek' a 'real gamer' a 'real man' or a 'real woman' essentially comes from the same place: a revulsion for the perceived erosion of the category the person feels they rightly deserve to belong to. Women being cruel to transgender women and men being cruel to transgender men is little different, IMO, to teenage girls and boys being cruel to nonconforming or poorly conforming members of their own gender at school.

 

[ponderingturtle]

A part of the confusion is no doubt due to the fact that English has these two different words, "sex" and "gender". And as we all know, if there are two different words, there must be two different things. People using languages with just the one word for "sex" never got this confused. Until quite recently, when a sad tendency to transplant the word "gender" in its mostly American usage (which until recently didn't match the British usage, either) emerged, just so non-English speakers can enjoy the same semantical confusion and hairsplitting.

No, they came from different origions as well. Gender from language, as there are plenty of languages with more than two genders. Like inanimate and such.

 

[Giordano]

Just to be clear: I am not stating that one must be attracted to Blacks, or Asians, or Eastern Europeans equally, for the same reason that I am not stating that one must be attracted to redheads equally as to blondes, vis-versa, or to average looking people the same as to fashion models. Everyone will have personal preferences based primarily on society and on one's upbringing. I do believe that people have a right as to how they see themselves, even if I might disagree internally. If driving licenses denoted people as beautiful or ugly next to their names, would we feel the need to tell them that the "correct" term based on their actual appearance was "ugly" if they felt that the correct word was "beautiful."

 

[shuttlt]

I believe that there is a need to change the word so as to destroy the existing barrier to clear communication. There is currently a misunderstanding by many people that animals must be male or female, and that this is determined by their genitalia. I am indicating that this is incorrect biologically (many animals change gender during their life, or have both sets of genitalia) and psychologically and therefore this erroneous belief is actually hampering clear communication. Gender is much more complicated than that.

There is a reason to change the meaning because the commonly heard meaning is incorrect. Just as in the 19030's the commonly held meanings of the word Jewish, Indian, African etc. were wrong in terms of the actual facts, but led to people making very unfortunate decisions based on those incorrect meanings. People were certain: "skin color is a physical basis of who you were and what could be expected of you." The idea of marrying a person with certain hidden ethnic roots was considered higly disturbing to many people back then (it even was a common theme in literature and movies: your spouse was secretly 25% Jewish, or Black, etc. and now what would happen?). This was a shocking idea but then, but we know better now, better then to simply call someone one thing based on their skin color, for example.

In those instances you aren't changing the objects that fit into the category "black". In this instance you want to change the objects that fit into the category "male". In the first instance you are correcting some errors of fact about the properties of the objects in the category. In the second instance you are not unless you've already succeeded in enforcing a particular definition of "male".

 

[FromBelgiumWithLove]

Along with New Zealand, which doesn't appear in the list despite not requiring surgical intervention, there are other countries noted here where surgery is not necessary.

The kind of article that gives Wikipedia a bad name. A list that knows of only 5 European countries (not including my own) isn't much of a list, is it?

Maybe "many" was wishful thinking, but there are several, and like the sweeping changes to marriage laws for homosexual relationships, I expect laws to continue being updated regarding gender status.

So there are very few countries where legal gender changes are possible but where they aren't linked in some way to medical procedures and diagnoses. The only one I can find in a quick perusal of the article you give is Argentina, since 2012. I also have never heard of some kind of groundswell that could lead to a big change in that situation any time soon, completely unlike the situation with same-sex marriage.

You're kidding, right? No? Ok then.

One is bigotry, the other is a person's life.

And you'll be the one judging whether something is "bigotry", and people should therefore keep it to themselves, or whether it is "a person's life", and its expression should be free from negative comments?

Generally, I am not a great fan of the idea that you can magic away ideas you think are bad by banning people from expressing them. I'd rather know what people really think, than what they are allowed to say.

 

[xjx388]

If you had said someone born male, I would not have replied but you are still insisting that they are male instead of female or some other category.

But I am talking about my sexual preference here. I would be repulsed by having sex with a male, even if that male identified as female, took feminizing hormones and had very convincing surgery.

Socially they should be taken as female and biologically they would fall into neither category fully.

And socially, I have no problem with calling them women out of empathy with their plight. But I must disagree on the biological question. Outside of a few genetic anomalies, the issue of male/female is very clear, biologically.

 

[FromBelgiumWithLove]

So the odds that the 20 or so people invited to by bachelor party included 3 FTM individual and one individual who presents as male but prefers to be thought of as neuter and prefers It as a pronoun, met through 3 entirely different means who had only the two in a couple had previously met before is statistically impossible in Belgium?

No. Just highly, highly, highly improbable. In Belgium just as anywhere else. Do you get the difference between "statistically highly unlikely, based on numbers from a government agency specifically tasked to offer support in the matter" and "impossible"?

To say nothing of the trans performers and supporting crew in the burlesque troop.

I'm not quite sure what a burlesque troupe is, if they exist here, and if so, what they would be called. Thanks to the Simpsons, I know there was a burlesque house in Springfield. Are they anything like that?

 

[Slowvehicle]

What makes me incredibly sad is that so much of this thread has been dedicated to the issue of what a trans person should reveal to potential partners.

The question has nothing to do with Leelah Alcorn's tragedy.

If this had been the first time I've seen this tangent, I might think "Oh, what an odd direction for this conversation to go" But having seen it again and again when trans issues come up, I have a hard time seeing it as a random occurrance.

I think a large part of transphobia originates when straight men start thinking of how awful they would feel if they accidental had sex with a trans woman. I think this ridiculous fear is so strong, that even though we're talking about a girl who is dead, the first thing some guys think about when the word "trans" is uttered is the horrible possibility of sticking their penis into a "man".

Regardless of what the actual ethics of disclosure, the fact that so many discussion get dragged to this weird topic just disturbs me. Yes yes, human beings are lving hellish, abused lives, but let's talk about what really matters apparently, the fear of a penis touching a man.

How does one "accidentally" have sex?

 

[Giordano]

In those instances you aren't changing the objects that fit into the category "black". In this instance you want to change the objects that fit into the category "male". In the first instance you are correcting some errors of fact about the properties of the objects in the category. In the second instance you are not unless you've already succeeded in enforcing a particular definition of "male".

But I am. I am talking about which "objects" should be considered "black." You know that no one is purely "white" or "black" as defined by the physical appearance of skin color. People are an entire range of skin color. Surprise: people are also an entire range of gender. So neither is really easy or correct to put in one category or another.

I am darker skinned than my wife, but Eastern European in family origins. Am I "white?" What if a DNA test proved that I had some genes more often associated with Africans in me: would I still be "white?" This ambiguity is why racists often had to establish a rule (1/16?) that defined people's race as an one or another binary when deciding whether to legally allow a person to drink at one or another water fountain.

If I am forced to (on a driver's license application for example), I usually put down "white" when asked because that is the category I mentally have selected for convenience. But there is no sharp line, it is a gray area (sorry) physically and is easiest to just ask what someone believes themselves to be. And it should not matter (nor will you ever be able to check physically) for the vast, vast number of people who you might meet in your everyday life.

 

[Cavemonster]

How does one "accidentally" have sex?

I know!