tell me why i’m wrong (1 Viewer)

[taubstumm]

so bradley manning got sentenced to a long time in jail, and then he/she announced that he/she was really a woman and should now be called chelsea.

but manning is not, biologically, a woman.

therefore treating him/her as one is everyone sort of pretending that a man is a woman.

i had a similar chat with a friend of mine a couple of days ago and i was accused (gently) of being transphobic. i don’t understand what it is about my point that makes it prejudiced, or unjust, or unfair. and i am genuinely curious to hear about how and why i’m wrong about this.

i’m not trying to provoke or troll you all here. i realise that i might sound like kevin myers having a rant.

but: if i consider bradley/chelsea manning to be a man and not a woman, am i being transphobic/homophobic/prejudiced/derogatory, or otherwise somehow not cool? talk to me, thumped. tell me things.

 

[Gambra]

You're in the wrong because Chelsea herself now wishes to be known by Chelsea and referred to by the feminine pronoun. There's not really much more to it, what you think is her "true sex" is irrelevant as it's what she wants that has to be respected.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Spiked had an article saying the same. But Spiked will do anything to disagree with the Guardian.

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/no_bradley_manning_you_are_not_a_woman/13951

If he/she is on his way to being a woman and wants to be called as such then I think we should respect her wishes since that's going to be the end point. Why wait.

If she wasn't going to go through with the change it would seem a bit weird alright; I guess it would be fine in informal occasions but probably not on, say, government forms (BTW not sure how each country respects this formally as it is. I would assume they're quite bad at it generally).

That's how I see it anyway.


p.s. there's all sorts of messy biological things out there as it is right? Like, male/female aren't perfect biological distinctions and the definitive separation is very much rooted in culture.

 

[taubstumm]

You're in the wrong because Chelsea herself now wishes to be known by Chelsea and referred to by the feminine pronoun. There's not really much more to it, what you think is her "true sex" is irrelevant as it's what she wants that has to be respected.

ok. this was the basic point that my friend made, also.

let’s get one thing out of the way: if chelsea manning wants to be known as chelsea, that’s fine. i will respect the outcomes of the choices that this person has made.

however, in my own head, i would still regard this person as a man. to do otherwise makes no sense to me.

the basic philosophical difference seems to be about whether gender is biologically innate or is, in some sense, a preference.

or, to put it another way: imagine that, 500 years from now, an alien from outer space is examining the d.n.a. of the bones of chelsea manning. the alien reports back to their alien boss that the test results are in, and these are the bones of a human male, they have human male chromosomes, they existed in the body of a human male. is the alien wrong?

 

[washingcattle]

First of all why on earth would anyone want to be called Chelski ?


Secondly when it comes to issues of identity, why stop at gender ? If I get arrested I will claim to be a bear. That's right liberals I am a bear. Now you can imprison me wherever you want but I have the right to sleep 6 months of the year and if I eat one of the other inmates, it's your fault for putting a bear in prison with humans in the first place.

It's what I want and I think that should be respected.

Here's what i think I'll look like in prison after I shave my self to look tougher.

 

[taubstumm]

washingcattle, you’re puking all over my lovely thread

Spiked had an article saying the same. But Spiked will do anything to disagree with the Guardian.

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/no_bradley_manning_you_are_not_a_woman/13951

If he/she is on his way to being a woman and wants to be called as such then I think we should respect her wishes since that's going to be the end point. Why wait.

If she wasn't going to go through with the change it would seem a bit weird alright; I guess it would be fine in informal occasions but probably not on, say, government forms (BTW not sure how each country respects this formally as it is. I would assume they're quite bad at it generally).

That's how I see it anyway.


p.s. there's all sorts of messy biological things out there as it is right? Like, male/female aren't perfect biological distinctions and the definitive separation is very much rooted in culture.

that spiked link is making some of the points that i agree with. but they’re making them in a pointlessly cruel and spiteful way. that’s the internet, i suppose.

 

[taubstumm]

p.s. there's all sorts of messy biological things out there as it is right? Like, male/female aren't perfect biological distinctions and the definitive separation is very much rooted in culture.

it’s not messy when, for example, some biologist is classifying samples of insects.

or is it? am i wrong here?

 

[Gambra]

Stop conflating gender and sex. They're two different things.

 

[Lili Marlene]

it’s not messy when, for example, some biologist is classifying samples of insects.

or is it? am i wrong here?

it might be, it might not be. Ask a biologist I suppose.

Ultimately Manning is not an insect and the media is not a scientific journal so these questions are not really about strict biology.

I've a friend going through a sex change, fairly early stages still. They've changed their name to the opposite sex but they aren't super strict about it; they don't start giving out to people when the wrong name is used. Basically goes by both names. What's strange about Manning's statement is how he/she appears to be DEMANDING that everyone change immediately, and that's what probably rankles with everyone and leads to knee-jerk reactions against it.

 

[Gambra]

Someone can be male but not a man or can be female but not a woman. Gender is the innate feeling inside a person as to what they are. Sex is the biological classification. Chelsea is not undergoing a sex change operation (only hormone therapy) but still should be regarded as female.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Chelsea is not undergoing a sex change operation (only hormone therapy)

oh yeah? My bad.

but still should be regarded as female.

Fair enough.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

If someone's inner experience of themselves is as a woman, even though they were born a man, then that is who they are and I'm gonna respect it.
Gender identity is not A or B for everyone.
I won't pretned to know everything about the subject but I know enough not to call it weird or that we're all 'pretending". Respecting someone's sense of themselves is neither of those things.

 

[washingcattle]

washingcattle, you’re puking all over my lovely thread

Yup. I sure am.

Bears don't give one fuck about lovely threads.

.................Your thread.....................................................Me
.....................vvvvv........................................................vvvv

 

[taubstumm]

Stop conflating gender and sex. They're two different things.

all opinions offered in a spirit of humility on the road to knowledge. for real. i’d like to think i’m not conflating gender and sex (at least not in any malicious or prejudiced way). perhaps i’m wrong.

it would seem that, if anything, the conflation of gender and sex is inherent to human communication (not to go all sapir-whorf on you).

or: if someone is male but not a man, then what does the pronoun 'he' refer to? their innate physical nature as a male, or their identity as a man?

 

[taubstumm]

Someone can be male but not a man or can be female but not a woman. Gender is the innate feeling inside a person as to what they are. Sex is the biological classification. Chelsea is not undergoing a sex change operation (only hormone therapy) but still should be regarded as female.

we might be getting lost in the defining of terms here, but:

"be regarded as female" – is that the same as "being treated as female"? because i could treat somebody as female without regarding them as female.

 

[Gambra]

The only way you know in the first place how to refer to someone is the gender they project and wish to be known by, there is no double checking their actual reproductive organs just to make sure. You may have been introduced to any number of transgender people already but you don't even realise it, you only know them as who they are. It's only when someone you know begins to change that it suddenly becomes weird?

"be regarded as female" – is that the same as "being treated as female"? because i could treat somebody as female without regarding them as female.

No, treating someone as female without regarding them as female would be projecting your own ideas of what it is to be female onto another person. Which is exactly what you're doing.

 

[Lili Marlene]

No, treating someone as female without regarding them as female would be projecting your own ideas of what it is to be female onto another person. Which is exactly what you're doing.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't do this. Actions speak louder than words and you can not understand something and still treat it with respect.

 

[taubstumm]

No, treating someone as female without regarding them as female would be projecting your own ideas of what it is to be female onto another person. Which is exactly what you're doing.

this seems to imply that my own (or anyone else’s) ideas of what it is to be male or female have no innate validity. or, perhaps, that someone else’s identity should trump that idea. have i got you right? (again, not asking in a snide way; i’m really trying to understand this.)

 

[washingcattle]

this seems to imply that my own (or anyone else’s) ideas of what it is to be male or female have no innate validity. or, perhaps, that someone else’s identity should trump that idea. have i got you right? (again, not asking in a snide way; i’m really trying to understand this.)

Yeah that's my issue too. And you shouldn't feel snide, if you're confused, ask questions.

As someone completely confused by all of this I need some questions answered so @Gambra ; tell me when I'm being completely wrong and utterly insensitive.

I probably won't care.

Lets say a man is born with male genetalia, male physique and male hormones the whole biological male make up, but, he feels female. Why should that make him female ?

Bear with me but, lets compare this to colour blindness for a second. Lets say I'm the most extremely colour blind person in the world and born into a world with a pink sky. It's my perception of pink right ? there is no actual pink. There is no absolute blue either, so my pink sky exists only in my own experience.

So lets say that there is no absolute female and no absolute male. All there is is biological indicators of sex and the "typical" behaviour of each sex is then used to build a model for gender. Then isn't it slightly unfair to use the idea of gender to describe identity in the first place ? Isn't it just a median range of behaviour which defines gender ? It's identity by default really.

So if you have male hormones, male biology, male genetalia and have lived being perceived as male for your entire life then what you perceive to be female is not what a woman who has lived with female biology perceives to be female. It's a construct.

So speaking for the utterly confused here. If a man decides that wants to be a woman isn't it just his/her perception of what a woman is i.e his construct of female that we then have to treat him as ? and isn't that verging on impossible ?

 

[ann post]

just was back checking to see what i could get about legal status:

The loophole arose after it emerged that a transgender woman was able to enter into a civil partnership with her partner under the Civil Partnership Act introduced in 2010, even though the State currently has no mechanism to formally acknowledge the acquired gender of a transgender person.

The woman’s gender was officially recognised by the Civil Registration Service because their gender had been acquired in another state.

Burton said the circumstances had come about because the transgender woman, who is from another EU country, had her acquired gender recognised in her country of origin.

She was therefore able to have this acquired gender recognised in Ireland, with the Registrar General obtaining legal advice to the extent that the State was permitted to rely on the documents presented by the transgender woman, and not obliged to ‘look behind’ it.

the article is easy googled. basically, it looks like we have arcane laws for transgender people too.