Sorry, but you are born that way. It isn't a thing you can change by dressing up like a woman. Or even by cutting off your man bits and molding your flesh to look like a woman's. You can't change it just by "Feeling" like a woman either. *Whatever the hell that means.* Some things just are what they are.
I wanted to be a teenage mutant ninja turtle when I was a kid I even had a costume for it. But it didn't make me any more teenage, mutant, ninja or turtle. And while some people played along and called me Leonardo when i wore it that didn't make me a teenage mutant ninja turtle either.
It was pretend and everyone knew it, more importantly, I knew it too. If I went around telling everyone that i really was a teenage mutant ninja turtle, eventually someone probably my parents would have said "Look it is cute you want to be a teenage mutant ninja turtle but it is time for you to take of the costume, put on real clothes and go to school." Essentially playtime is over. It isn't healthy to run around pretending to be something you are not. In addition it is immature and rude to expect other people to treat you like something you aren't just because you want them to.
Now some of you might think I'm just an evil hatemonger, but how about you withhold judgement for a minute and let me make my point here. I'm white as the day is long, but what if tomorrow i decided to put on black face, claim to be trans racial and went and tried to join the NAACP? wait that's offensive to you? yeah its offensive to me too. How is that any different from what Bruce is doing?
Oh and all of a sudden he is so brave, lets give him an Arthur Ashe bravery award. FOR WHAT? Dressing up like a woman and referring to himself as she instead of he? That is what passes for bravery now a days? Being willing to take the derision of people who rightly say "no you aren't a girl just because you dress up like one" isn't bravery. I call bullshit. Real bravery still exists, this isn't what it looks like.
But hey you know what he is a grown man, if he wants to dress up like a woman go ahead. If he wants to pretend and the people around him are willing to indulge his fantasy great. But lets be clear here, if i DON'T want to indulge him that doesn't make me an asshole or a hate monger. In fact I think him and everyone else that expects me to acknowledge this lie as the truth is an asshole.
Bottom line, no one has the right to dictate reality to me. You have the freedom to dress up like a woman, people around you have the right to choose to treat you like one, *or not*. That is their right. What bothers me is when the gov't or a special interest group decides that i no longer have the right to call a spade a spade. I have to accept their version of reality because that is what is politically correct or what is double plus good. How long until they start asking us to accept other falsehoods like the federal gov't has to violate our basic rights in order to protect us from ourselves? Or that the war in Iraq was to prevent terrorism? Oh wait.
It is important that the people be allowed to say so when the emperor isn't wearing clothes.
You know what Bruce Jenner, really you do whatever you want. Frankly i don't care that you dress up like a woman. I don't care that you really think you are a woman. You and I will likely never ever meet. But if we do i will call you by whatever name you want because frankly my problem isn't with you specifically. It is with an establishment that wants to replace truth with lies just because it will make some people feel better about lying to themselves.
The part that really galls me is that so many people are so fascinated and want to call him brave and courageous. No way, that's neither brave nor courageous.
ReplyDeletePeople who would say that have two problems; first, they're misusing the words. Brave means doing what you know is required of you even if you are scared. Courageous refers to not being deterred by pain or fear.
Second, even if - knowing the proper definitions - people still want to call him brave and courageous, doing so is a huge disservice to those who actually are brave and courageous.
Bruce's "transformation" doesn't compare to looking a bad guy in the eye and telling him he's under arrest and being prepared, then, to engage in violence to secure that arrest. It doesn't compare to searching the interior of a business or home for a burglar that is hiding within.
It doesn't compare to walking into a house that smoke is pouring out of.
It doesn't compare to making sure your rifle is loaded, as you and your squadmates leave your forward operating base to go look for enemy soldiers.
People should be honest about the relative importance of what he is doing. People should be careful about what words they choose to use to describe it, if they are going to talk about it.
I haven't followed this story, but I'll throw some thoughts in.
ReplyDeleteMy current understanding is that some people suffer from something called "Gender identity disorder". Wikipedia's page on the topic is informative. In a nutshell, it consists of significant dysphoria with one's gender, and apparently has non-behavioral causes such as genetics and prenatal exposure to hormones. That is to say, it appears to be (at least some of the time) something that one is born with - like race, or intelligence, or, well, gender.
The dysphoria is apparently not mild. "Symptoms of GID in children include disgust at their own genitalia". I've never experienced anything like that, but it sounds awful.
My understanding is that medical science doesn't currently know how to help. We don't know how to relieve the dysphoria at its source. The things we do know how to do are changing the body's appearance, and changing clothes, and changing names, and so on.
The way I'm looking at this today is that calling people by different names, and helping them change their appearances - these are kindnesses we can do for people who are suffering. I don't know why they're suffering, and I've never felt the way they say they feel, but I have no reason to doubt medical science on this. If I should encounter a person suffering in this way, I will try to be kind to him or her, as I try to do with everyone.
I think that putting a lot of thought into whether so-and-so *really* is male or female is unlikely to improve our state of knowledge.
I agree that, while publicly changing one's gender must be a difficult ordeal, it is dissimilar to the examples of courage and bravery that Rich enumerated. I don't know enough about this particular person to know how difficult this was. It would be miserable for someone like me. It might not be for someone with a different personality. My unsubstantiated suspicion is that a lot of the public praise is an attempt to ride the current political wave.
Just because someone decided to give it a fancy name doesn't mean it is legit. the research mentioned on the wiki is suspect at best, a 6 person sample size? with structures that show up commonly among not transgenders? seriously? that isn't science. This is just like every other preference that people develop through their life. no you weren't born that way. that is the biggest fucking cop out in existence. There isn't a shred of *credible* evidence to point to genetics or even prenatal hormone exposure as the cause of trans-genderism or even homosexuality much as they have tried to find it. But people gave up looking for actual proof and just kept saying it loud and long. So much so that it just became hate speech if you dared point out that there wasn't any scientific proof of the claim. But really that is how propoganda wars work.
ReplyDeletebeing trans-gender is basically just saying i prefer to act like what i think the opposite sex acts like. It is a preference just like homosexuality or liking burbon over scotch. This isn't to say it is right or wrong that is a moral call, but there is a true or false objective reality call here. Preferences are developed over time, they aren't inborn and they aren't conscious choices (typically). They are somewhere in the middle. But those with an agenda want to claim that these particular preferences are inborn because basically it forces everyone else to accept something they might otherwise not wish to accept. This kind of blunt force propaganda bothers me. This is double think in 1984. It is true because we say it is, never-mind evidence to the contrary or any evidence at all really. This bothers me to my core.
Again it is important to separate the right wrong argument from the true false argument. Frankly if a dude wants to dress like a woman because it relieves his "dysforia" (a fancy word for discontent) well then go right the fuck ahead. But I have just as much right to say that is weird and i don't like it. Don't tell me i have to conform to your view of reality, don't tell me i have to tell my kids that it is perfectly normal. It certainly isn't normal it is on the far reaches of abnormal just based on statistics alone. No i don't have to accept your life choices, i'm not an asshole if i choose not to associate with you because i don't like that you dress up like a woman. it makes me uncomfortable and I don't want to deal with that. That is all my prerogative and yours and in a free society i can do that and it is fine. We both get to exercise our preferences and take into account each other's feelings when acting on our preferences.
But when you start with oh i was born this way, then that carries with it an implicit requirement that i have to accept it because there is nothing you can do about your inborn "condition". "you have to accept that i'm transgender because i can't help it. I'm not exercising a preference I'm responding to an imperative. SO you have to accept this about me. And if you don't you really are an asshole." This is the kind of social programming and use of rhetoric that restricts thought and paves the way for other mistruths being enforced with social requirements.
the truth matters. it is important to call something what it is and be able to discuss it for what it is not just what people want it to be.
If someone wants to pretend and i want to play along to make them feel better great we are all in agreement and everyone is comfortable. But we also know we are all pretending. But when you forget that basic truth you start down a slope that is very slippery.