Thursday 8 January 2009

Today's Battles

Not so much battles against bigotry this time, as efforts to educate.

Over at The Cellar Door, they ask in all sincerity the question
Is feeling like you should be born a woman when you are biologically a man the same as feeling you are a dinosaur?
In other words, is it delusion, psychosis? They honestly don't know. So I try to answer.

Another question, over at Jossip :
If you can't make fun of him (it) who can you make fun of? If mocking the transgendered is wrong, I don't want to ever be right.
So I propose some more worthy targets.
who to make fun of? Well let's see… there's MassResistance, who wrote this about Transsexuals :
"…transgender/transsexual” activists… want to offer your children on the bloody altar of transsexuality — pulling them into sex-change operations involving unimaginable bodily mutilations and hormonal manipulations.

The culture of death has created a compulsion in the souls of the homosexual radicals and their "trans" allies, driving them ever further into new perversions. There is no bottom to this pit of depravity, and they will drag many innocent victims along with them: the young, the lonely, the psychologically and physically wounded, the confused – including some of your children and grandchildren, family, friends and neighbors. There will be no safe haven. You cannot cocoon in your homes or churches. Our public schools, businesses, public accommodations (which may include churches), your employers and insurers, will all be forced to yield to yet-undefined perversions, protected by law."
I think that's worth some mockery.

Or there's Adol T. Owen-Williams II, a Montgomery County Republican Central Committee member, who shouted "Heil Hitler!" immediately after the vote to allow Intersexed women and men to be allowed to drink from public drinking fountains. "Wait until little girls start showing up dead all over the county because of freaks of nature."

But I think the ones most deserving of it are those with IQ's actually greater than their shoe size, who comment on blogs without bothering to do any research on the biology. May I recommend Biology Prof Veronica Drantz's presentation on the subject? They're quite similar to ones given to both Medical and Psychology students here at the Australian National University, and are available on the web, free of charge.

You;ll be able to see from MRIs and autopsies that transsexual people really *do* have "male brain (and hence mind) in female body" syndrome, or at least, until the body gets modified to the minimum degree they can live with.
At Eve-101, there's a less combative dialogue, one that's not really a battle at all.
To correct a few bits of misinformation and misunderstanding…

TS (transsexual) women who receive breast augmentation get exactly the same surgical procedure as other women. A “boob job” to use the vernacular. If done correctly, sensation and lactation (yes, most can lactate) are both preserved, as they are with other women....
And so on and soforth. As I said, clarifying misconceptions and correcting misinformation, though in far too much detail I'm afraid. A friendly bunch, I felt at home there.

At TinyCatPants (???), some information for a Gay guy who wonders why those who are the T in GLBT feel we've got good reason to mistrust elements of the GLB.
In 1979 Janice Raymond poured more gasoline on the fire with her virulently anti-transgender book The Transsexual Empire. Raymond also took it a step further in 1981 and penned a quasi-scientific looking report that was responsible for not only ending federal and state aid for indigent transpeople, but led to the insurance company prohibitions on gender reassignment related claims. Germaine Greer’s anti-transgender writing combined with Raymond’s led to involuntary outing and harassment of transwomen in lesbian community settings. It also sowed the seeds for the anti-transgender attitudes in the lesbian community that persisted through the late 90’s....
Plus rather a lot more. maybe it's the thousands, and possibly tens of thousands of us who have died for lack of medical treatment, all in the name of some GLB philosophy, and directly because of some still revered GLB philosophers.
Elizabeth Birch for a while eclipsed Janice Raymond as Transgender Public Enemy Number One when she was quoted at a Chicago GLBT event as stating that transinclusion in ENDA (the Employment and Non Discrimination Act) a top legislative priority of transgender leaders would happen ‘over her dead body’.
The consistent historical pattern of statements like that didn't help either.

This one's not so much a battle, as a genuine question that I've found it impossible to have answered. Over at the Catholic Forum, I ask What is the Church's position on the Intersexed and Transsexed?. You'd think it's a simple question, easily answered. But it appears not, and it looks like the Pope doesn't actually believe Intersexed people exist. Otherwise the Cracked Crystal Ball would never have been able to so thoroughly demolish his latest speech to the curia as being factually and scripturally unsound.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am sorry. This is annoying. You completely took my quote totally out of context and then proceed to become incredibly condescending.

When I said, "Is feeling like you should be born a woman when you are biologically a man the same as feeling you are a dinosaur?", you left out the part where I add, "Obviously not." (in short)

Funny. I thought we were having a dialogue instead of a lecture.

Zoe Brain said...

Sonia I'm so sorry. The only ting I can say in y own defence is that Im just too used to being called delusional, insane etc. Sometimes by people who just don't know anything about the subject, but often by people who wish me harm.

And I don't mean cyberstalking type harm either, I mean harm with petrolbomb and gunshot.

Fortunately, there's the Pacific Ocean between us. Usually.

That doesn't excuse me taking you out of context, and I'll now go back to make sure that's what I did. You thought I did though, so that needs publicising, along with my apology.

Yes and I lecture too often too. Sorry it's a known failing of mine I should work harder to correct.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your sincere apology. I do appreciate it. I also hope you see where my indignation comes from.

I have worked with transgender communities for many years now (both in the US and India.) And the communities I work with don't have access to the kind of information that you and I do. And the stigma of mental illness is often used as a reason for abuse and torture of all kinds from the family, public, and the police.

As I say in my post, I believe it is not a mental illness. And I had assumed that (if nothing else) that was clear from my post. So it was a bit of a shock to see this quote of mine.

But regardless, no hard feelings. Thank you for your grace.

Anonymous said...

Most if not all galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are believed to have massive black holes at their cores.

It was unclear whether black holes came first, helping create galaxies by pulling matter towards them, or whether they arose in already formed galaxies.

"It looks like the black holes came first," said Dr Chris Carilli, from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, who took part in the study. "The evidence is piling up."

Zoe Brain said...

Sonia, thanks for being so understanding and forgiving. I owe you. Doubly so considering the work you've done. Thanks.

MgS said...

Otherwise the Cracked Crystal Ball would never have been able to so thoroughly demolish his latest speech to the curia as being factually and scripturally unsound.

It's not hard to dismantle an argument that's based on such awful logic as this Pope uses.