Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Suspends Gamer For Being From Fort Gay
maclizard writes "The town's name is real. But when Josh Moore tried to tell Seattle-based Microsoft and the enforcement team at Xbox Live that Fort Gay was a real place, they wouldn't take his word for it. Or Google it. Or check the US Postal Service website for a ZIP code. I personally feel for those of you from Big Bone Lick, KY."
"Mais oui! The name of my village in France is indeed Goatse! We even have a... how you say... website!"
Trolling is a art,
Obviously they would Bing it
The summary stops a bit short... they already unsuspended him, the article even says so at the end.
499 Odd City names: http://www.keepersoflists.org/index.php?lid=3864
Now I've just rendered every post after mine redundant. Have at it, mods.
What's microsofts problem with stuff that's gay? Do they hate gay people?
You find mainly articles on this story now.
So, umm, how about Bangkok residents? Or folks from Palmer's Head? Or Fort Dix? Morehead? Red Lick? Boone's Blow? Phuk?
Microsoft sure pulled a boner this time.
And I find myself wondering just how many people will suddenly be registered as coming from Fort Gay, WV. Certainly more than the 800 people who live there, I imagine.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
...a user from Fucking, Austria would have...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
LOLOLOL u so ghey that I heard you live at Fort Gay.
Well, that's gay.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Maybe Microsoft needs to get aids to look up subscriber locations to ensure they're real?
Lets not forget Dildo Run, Newfoundland. Maybe Hell as well?
The same happened to my wife on some social network when we lived in Cumming, GA.
So a location based story about Microsoft can't get right the name of the city Microsoft is in? Ah, what a life being a /. editor must be.
Dildo; Newfoundland http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=&vps=21&jsv=274a&sll=47.573399,-53.558478&sspn=0.02018,0.044804&ie=UTF8&geocode=FeHa1QIdO8nO_A&split=0
Dildo and South Dildo can be found in Newfoundland not far from St. John's, hard by Dildo Bay. Sadly, the first church built in Dildo, in 1878, had no tower, though it should be noted that two stoves providing heat shared a long chimney.
South Dildo's claim to fame for many years was a life-size wooden humpback whale head.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Almost as good as when my local paper reported on the football matchup between Virgin Valley HS and Beaver High: "Virgin Pounds Beaver".
What if he was from here.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Bullshit. The "community" and the "individual" have zero rights when it comes to this. Its microsoft's servers they can do whatever the hell they feel like with this. Now what they -can't- do is they can't not refund his money for putting down a legitimate town name because that is fraud.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Come on Microsoft. Banning someone for their city name is so... well.. GAY!
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Screwed if you live there
Virginville, Bird-In-Hand, Intercourse, Climax, Big Beaver... the list goes on
I Guess this explains the complete lack of Gaming , not far from me in Knob Lick, Missouri...
And Big Bone Lick is just next to beaver road!!! Hahahaha,
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Big+Bone+Lick,+Walton,+Boone,+Kentucky&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=37.871902,77.607422&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FUldUQIdasPy-g&split=0&hq=&hnear=Big+Bone+Lick&z=15
Where I live, there's no such thing as an AUP. We have social pressure to keep our rights, and don't let such things bother us.
And that's AMERICA for gods sake, the most tight-assed place when it comes to that!
Enough of this 'the good of the many outweighs the good of the one or the few' bullshit. The one embodies the many.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I'd like all my British friends to light up a fag in honor of Microsoft.
--
Toro
Doesn't say much about an IT company when they can't even figure out basic information technology tools, including their own:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=fort+gay
Bibo Ergo Sum.
Don't whip out your punishment too quickly. Oh, and always sleep on your back when you're stopping over in Fort Gay.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
However, the Microsoft representative was having none of the Fort Gay talk
I lol'd.
I live in Chicago. For some reason, Microsoft wouldn't let me update my city, because my "location contains a word of phrase that isn't allowed. Please try again."
But, I spelled it right... I'm so confused.
What if I'm from Climax Springs, MO 65324?
Moore apparently wanted to show his Fort Gay pride
Fort Gay has been restored to the ramparts of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty.
Ok, you've got town pride - nothing wrong there. But insisting on displaying it on your Xbox Live profile?? Call of Duty? I mean now you're just asking to get flamed every time someone sees you're from "Fort Gay". It's not exactly the most tolerant community out there. **Note that I don't know if your town is displayed to other people when you're actually playing - but in case it isn't, then it still brings up the question of why care then? If no one gets to see your town in your profile then why care what your display is?
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Big Bone Lick State Park (KY!) is located on Beaver Rd. No kidding.
Well, he could have been from Fucking, Austria.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Wonder if Intercourse, PA has created any trouble for them.
Why is it inappropriate?
hate to break it to you buddy, but if it has both X and Y chromosomes, then it IS a guy.
Let me see, you worked both construction *and* demolition? Seems like a pretty smart way to keep permanently employed.
You might not realize this, but your sig is hostile and transphobic, even if it is a quote by Carlin.
It's inappropriate to refer to a trans woman as a 'transsexual guy'
What if this guy Carlin is referring too has just made his decision and is not yet living as a woman? I think you are really splitting Harry's here.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sergeant: I can get you delayed entry, your own uniforms, grenades, and ammo. I can probably get you stationed over at Fort Dix.
Butthead: Fort Dix? Is that anywhere near Fort Nuts?
That's right - "gay" has been used for "lame" for decades now. The problem is that it is *also* used to indicate homosexuality.
When I was a kid (five decades ago, sigh), "you suck" was specifically meant to say that you performed fellatio. It was a fighting insult. Today, "you suck" or "it sucks" just means generic unwanted badness, perhaps with emotional overtones. Perhaps someone will be able to articulate the present meaning better than I can. But it doesn't mean what it used to mean.
Society changes, And corporations, being by nature psychotic, have a heck of a time trying to keep up. Look at Apple; perfectly happy to have massively violent games, head-shots, guts spilling out... but sex is cause for censorship. Absolutely out of their minds in the American Gothic, Religio-repressive tradition.
I can see Microsoft's position here, in the same way that I can see politicians pretending to be religious. There's no idiotic depth sociopaths will refuse to plumb if they think it will buy them something of value. And corporations, by their very nature, are sociopaths - one consequence being that they typically embrace the values of a pit viper, while trying to present the face of an angel.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
dude, you should chill and stop being a jerk
Or from Intercourse, PA
Sheesh. All this trouble from a company founded by Bill Gaytes.
Really? Where do you live? I know it's not in the USA, else your statement is ridiculous. Examples abound. Nazi and KKK rallies in communities who *really* would just as soon those people all go die slowly, horribly and screaming at the top of their lungs. Atheist t-shirts that offend the majority religionauts. Flag-burning (though that one has come close at times, the issue still falls to individual free speech, rather than the general populace's embrace of blind patriotism and symbolic worship.)
We have, mistakenly, often embraced "the community", but it's pretty well understood by anyone who can think straight that this is almost always the wrong way to go. Even so, "AUP always trumps individual rights" is balderdash within the context of the USA.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Anyone traveling across the border may be familiar with Gaylord, Michigan. Canada has a lot of odd names if you google up "weirdest Canadian town names" and I'm sure every country has their own share of oddball names. For a company who created Bing Maps, you'd wonder why they would even have a problem with city names.
...I can only assume that gamers from Phuket, Thailand get the same treatment.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
If you were from Scunthorpe, it used to cause all sorts of problems here in the UK; Hotmail, AOL, AIM, ICQ... back in 1999 they all hated Scunthorpe.
Couldn't think why...
Would it kill them to add an e? Fort Gaye. That sounds real lol. And maybe even Big Bone Licke.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I grew up near there and for awhile there was an area named 'Big Ugly' about an hour away. Not sure why they renamed it.
Fort Gay isn't all that far from Lovely and Beauty, KY either. People magazine did an article on the area back in the 90s and mentioned Fort Gay as well.
"Powers. I have them."
I honestly don't care if people are offended or not, just posted so people who are at work aren't going to have a giant goatse ass on their monitor :p
If I had mod points....
Their server, their rules.
Whether it's a dumb business move is another discussion.
Big Bone Lick is actually a state park, not a town. "Home of North American Vertebrate Paleontology". A salt lick with mammoth bones, hence the name (even knowing this, I still laugh when I pass the sign...)
There are those from a nearby town though who can claim to be from Big Bone.
However, Big Bone Lick is right near Beaverlick and Rabbit Hash (yes, named after a food, and the town is famous for having a dog for a mayor).
All kinds of fun places here in Kentucky!
Sincerely,
Just down the road from Big Bone.
Its microsoft's servers they can do whatever the hell they feel like with this.
Then why is the Justice Department investigating Google for "unfair" search results? It's their servers...
it's not inappropriate to use male pronouns to refer to someone presenting as typically male, unless they've made it clear that they are not a man
but it is transphobic and prejudiced to negatively value, stereotype and discriminate against people whose appearance or identity doesn't match narrowly defined social expectations of gender
Microsoft did something incredibly stupid. Tell me something I don't know.
You think this is bad? Poor bastards in Fucking, Austria get banned from everything all the time.
You should Chilli, and stop being a Jerky.
So, Who's hungry?
- Dan
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
yes, you should.
it's not inappropriate to use male pronouns to refer to someone presenting as typically male, unless they've made it clear that they are not a man
but it is transphobic and prejudiced to negatively value, stereotype and discriminate against people whose appearance or identity doesn't match narrowly defined social expectations of gender
IMHO, that is not what Carlin was doing, he was making what is known as a pun. Still, I do consider the issue to be important despite my somewhat flip attitude. So please, explain exactly how Carlin's comment is negatively valuing, stereotyping, or discriminating against transgendered people? Here it is again:
I know a transsexual guy whose only ambition is to eat, drink, and be Mary.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What, biology too hard for you?
Whoa, whoa! Slow down there, maestro. There's a New Mexico?
The travel company I work for just deleted Fucking, Austria from their database because they figured it was better not to offend someone than to allow them to travel there. The only way someone would have actually seen the name is if they searched for it, so it seems rather stupid, but I could imagine some complaining that they searched for Fucking and found what they searched for.
You would have been more correct saying Big Bone,KY
the word play on Mary vs Merry - kinda funny but *shrug* not a biggie
the part that bothers me is using 'transsexual' as an adjective to 'guy'. it negates the female identity of transsexual women and reinforces the stereotype that the person in the joke is a man and that it's okay to laugh at a man dresses, acts, or asserts that they are actually a woman drop 'guy' and it's not quite as offensive
I know a transsexual whose only ambition is to eat, drink and be Mary.
even that is still a little offensive because transsexual is such a strongly loaded word. it'd be better to to change it to
I know a trans woman whose only ambition is to eat, drink and be Mary.
That's at least grants a little more dignity for the person in the joke
(and if it matters, which it shouldn't, i'm trans)
So, it is a feint and I don't have to parry, you had me worried for a moment.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Damn, so now if I hear about someone being the Gay Lord of Gayville, it may actually be about the mayor of a town in South Dakota. Spoilsport.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Mr. Richard Gaywood sends his regards. They've done this sort of thing before.
That's Big Beaver Road, exit 69, dude!
Okay, if you google Big Bone Lick State Park... you find the address is 3300 Beaver road. No, really!
it's not inappropriate to use male pronouns to refer to someone presenting as typically male, unless they've made it clear that they are not a man but it is transphobic and prejudiced to negatively value, stereotype and discriminate against people whose appearance or identity doesn't match narrowly defined social expectations of gender
I think you're the one with the narrowly-defined social expectations.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The best story is when I worked for Windows Live Search a few years ago. Make a long story(which shouldn't have been long) short, some very big client was trying to run ads in Arkansas, Alaska...As this somehow did not quite compute, I showed my manager the map of United States, an atlas, and even the goddamn encyclopedia brittanica to illustrate that not only is there no town/ city in Alaska named Arkansas but that they were in fact 2 completely different states. I seriously got pulled into a 4hr long conference call to go over where on earth I could have possibly come up with this notion....
/true story
//fired 1 month later
//Bing wins
I'm not sure what you mean?
You meant to reply to the post above his, right?
Bullshit x 2.
If it wasn't perfectly clear to both parties that Microsoft would suspend his account then Microsoft have no right to do so. And putting things in an EULA that only can be viewed after actually paying for the product or putting things in a fine print too small to read or hidden in a wall of text is not what is considered perfectly clear.
Microsoft have an obligation to make sure that the customers have understood the terms of the contract before selling anything to them. (At least where I live, the laws are written that way to make fraud impossible.)
come on, i'm gay, and it made me chuckle.
uptight much ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Have you checked when the Carlin quote is from? Language evolves over time, and it is inappropriate to mark a certain usage as "incorrect" without context if you do not know the "correctness" of the usage at the time of utterance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
This is simply ridiculous. If the place is real and he claims to be from there, there should have been no problem. It is not for Asshats at Microsoft to make judgements like this and then refuse any evidence to the contrary. I would be beyond pissed off. I would demand a written apology from Microsoft for the incident for both myself and the entire town of Ft. Gay.
If he had said that, I would have had absolutely no idea what it meant. I've never heard anyone use "trans" before in my life, and I've never heard anyone use "transexual" in any way other than the purely descriptive. People who are bigoted against a transexual are far, far, far more likely to use a more base and aggressive term, and the fact that trans is just a shortened version of transexual makes the whole thing even more confusing. Calling someone a "nig" or "wet" wouldn't take the sting out. If people in a specific group find a word to be offensive, they generally don't truncate it. The normal course is to change it to something completely different every ten years as each version becomes offensive through common use.
Additionally, the joke becomes anemic and pointless if "woman" is used. "A woman wants to be a woman? No kidding..." The juxtaposition of the male gender most people would immediately associate with the person in question against the female name (and therefore identity) is the point. It is specifically designed to jar the part of the brain that thinks a person's gender is defined by their organs, or even the organs they were born with, and to simultaneously express a kind of "it takes all kinds" comradery. The joke, in its current form, leaves the hearer with the impression that Mary is a nice, laid back lady that one could easily be friends with. The modified version leaves one with the impression that someone far less laid back has ruined a perfectly good joke.
You might not realize this, but your post is overly sensitive and quite ridiculous, even if you did post AC. It's inappropriate to hijack a thread due to your sensitivity.
Now, piss off.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Yup, over-sensitive people should just learn to close their eyes rather than force everyone else to conform to their narrow world view.
But I must say, that picture is neither narrow nor a world view :P
...
For somebody who's so very sensitive to the plight of those with gender identity issues, you seem remarkably callous to those with a genetic disposition to alcoholism.
I love a good shemale bukkake scene as much as the next guy, but please, spare a little of that sensitivity for the alcoholics.
Yes, its their servers. The only recourse the man has is to ask for his money back, if they don't give that to them, yeah there is a problem. But that never happened. They can do whatever to his account, but they can't deny his money back but that wasn't what happened.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I had a similar problem when I tried to sign up for hotmail years ago. It didn't like my last name - so I made one up, who gives if they had something in their TOS forbidding using a pseudonym.
I'm not a bird, I'm a super-advanced flying stealth dinosaur!
You might not realize this, but not body really gives a fuck what "Anonymous Coward" thinks.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
You might not realize this, but a transgendered "woman" is just a guy who's disfigured themselves with surgery. Sorry, I just don't find this kind of behavior to be stable and don't intend to pretend like it's normal. If I cut a tumor out of my arm with a knife myself, good job, let a doctor do it right next time. If I took a knife and tried to invert my penis myself, Id be committed. Why is it any more sane to let a doctor do it? It's no different than when I tried to get a hole put in my septum because I want a three chambered heart. I'm a bipedal alien reptile dammit! I don't care about no "DNA". Gay is fine, their brains are just built different. It can be argued that there is a evolutionary benefit to a society which has members that work but don't reproduce, especially a society exposed to famine.
Perhaps the person's original gender was female.
I ran into this problem when attempting to complete my XBOX Live profile - it didn't allow me to enter my location using my city of Tecumseh, MI; apparently I was attempting to allude to ejaculation by doing so. I even tried it Roman-style, with a "v" for the "u", but they denied that, too. My question is - how the heck did the guy manage to get it into his profile in the first place? My experience is that it denies you up-front as you attempt to save that entry in your profile. Did he just have it in there from before they implemented their censorship?
I heart anarcho-capitalism.
...what they don't tell you on that site is that in Pennsylvania, you go through Intercourse to get to Paradise
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
My uncle hasn't had an easy life...
Yes, but if it was an "ethnic" joke I bet no-one would jump to his defence. I have often found it telling that a guy spouting racist jokes will get called up for it, yet a sexist/homophobic/nationalist/genderist joke is beyond reproach.
I've always thought of registering a nick in http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=gay+head,+MA&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=27.643082,61.347656&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Gay+Head,+Dukes,+Massachusetts&ll=41.351557,-70.814781&spn=0.025514,0.05991&t=h&z=14&iwloc=A
exactly.
Remember, you can't give offense, you can only take it.
so, when someone is being demeaning to me, i'm just supposed to be quiet and take it?
i really try to be patient, but how far am i supposed to let people push me around?
yes, i'm uptight, but it's unfortunately well earned.
being a transgender woman, i've been continually exposed to everything from dismissal to ridicule to violence (and yes, even from people in the gay community)
+ 5 insightful,
definitely not flamebait
I think most people would agree that there's a significant difference between a predisposition (an addictive personality), which can be overcome, as millions of ex-alcoholics, ex-drug addicts, and ex-smokers prove, and gender identity issues, which have proven to be intractable to "curing" except by hormones and surgery.
As for the other insulting crap you posted, I'll refrain from commenting on it. It speaks for itself.
has been taken away from us by the homosexual male community, IMHO. What about a lot of Christmas carols and the Flintstones theme song? They use "gay" in a non-sexual, happy context.
You might not realize this, but it's inappropriate to be a flaming gay activist everywhere you go. Real people don't give a small rat's ass what any of you think is appropriate.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
actually, there is strong evidence to support the idea that the brain of trans-gendered women is closer to cis-gendered women - so there is a biological reason why
changing gender is not the same as changing species, there are several examples in the animal kingdom of individuals changing their sex
This, I can respect. I don't even LIKE homosexuality, but this I can respect. If all the idjits stopped trying to be politically correct, if they stopped trying to mandate how the rest of us think, the world would be a much nicer place. Did I mention that I hate the thought police much much more than I've ever disliked homosexuality? Time was, guys could trade freindly insults all day long. Nowadays, any mention of sex or color is likely to get you put on a list by the local busybody liberal thought police.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sorry I used up my mod points, +1, Insightful.
GENERATION O98346: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig and remove a random number from the generation. T
I think most people would agree that there's a significant difference between a predisposition (an addictive personality), which can be overcome... and gender identity issues.
No I don't think that most people would agree that there is a big difference. I would argue that those with gender identity issues are very similar to addicts and they likely could be "cured" in the same way by learning to live with their condition. However like addicts this would result in a lifelong struggle against the predisposition. Addicts do this because they have no choice: it's either resist or die. For those with gender identity issues the choice is resist or take hormones/surgery and deal with society's reaction....but given that reaction it is certainly not a choice I envy them.
Since changing your external genitalia has no impact on your ability to reproduce as that gender, disfiguring yourself this way is just psychotic.
Think it through. If you just want to wear dresses, go ahead and do it. Changing your genitals to match your screwed up head has no impact on anything.
There is a point though, where on a pseudo-anonymous blog site that we know has no filtering of "naughty" things (witness the original post), where you just have to think "well fuck, he ain't saying it specifically to my face, and its not like I can change his opinion, what's the point?".
Otherwise (and I am not saying he is in this case) you will end up being troll food for a long time.
Now as someone who can suspend their political correctness to be able to appreciate a joke, yes it makes me chuckle. Also remember jokes of 1995 and earlier are beyond the statute of limitations on political correctness.
...
Oh, and in honour of being more politically correct, I have changed my sig to a wonderful song about the acceptance of gender confused individuals.
...
A transgendered woman? So you used to be a chick?
want a three chambered heart. I'm a bipedal alien reptile dammit! I don't care about no "DNA".
There's the way that men treat women in general (which has its own share of dismissal, ridicule, and voilence), and then there's the way that transphobes react - its a second knife wound that most people simply don't have to deal with, and have absolutely no concept of how much it cuts to the core. And we all encounter it at some point during our transition. And you hope it doesn't get to the point where you have to call the police because you don't know how THEY are going to react.
Of course, these same people couldn't do what we have to do to be ourselves - not for one day, never mind for a lifetime. Could you picture one of them even pretending to have "the talk" with one of their friends? Heck no! They'd volunteer to have their appendix removed without anesthesia first. That's "manly". Same as not asking for directions, leaving their dirty clothes on the floor, and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it. Come on you guys reading this, fess up, you do this all the time, and it bugs us that you think we're that stupid. It's 3-ply paper, and you leave a one-ply half square sitting there like an orphan, and you're hoping that when we open the door the draft won't blow away your sorry "excuse" for not changing it. You dissect the toilet paper, and then walk around all day making skid marks in your formerly-tidy-whiteys, rather than change the stupid roll of toilet paper.
In many cases, at some level, at least some of the transphobes know that we have more courage than they do. They don't understand that the real act of courage was confronting the issue and looking at the alternatives, ranging from depressing to grim, and then asking for help and acceptance in an uncertain and sometimes-hostile world.
There are posters on slashdot who are still afraid to "come out" about being trans, simply because they know that someone, somewhere, is going to be an ass. So they stay hidden, same as they do in their personal lives - because they are afraid of the consequences of being "discovered". Been there, done that, traded in the tshirt for a bra and skirt. It's what's right for me, and while I'm willing to discuss it with those who have a problem with it, in the end I'm not the one with the problem.
This is not to imply that slashdot is infested with transphobes - quite the contrary. Most of the slashdot crowd is very supportive, and I owe them for that. At least that's been my experience after I wrote this and this and people began to ask how I knew so much about the whole "woman trapped in the wrongly-gendered body" experience.
On a final note, I guess I really should see if it's possible to change the account name, because when I post something funny and people who don't know go "Dude! That was great!" I'm caught between laughing at the incongruity and going *sigh*. It makes for some interesting back-and-forth. And this account has great karma and lots of equally-great fans.
i'm posting anonymously mostly becausewhile transitioned over ten years ago, i'm not out to the people i work with and the internet has a very long history
New Erection, Virginia
I wanted to see a sign welcoming me to the town, but none existed.
there was an old grain silo there, i guess that was sufficient.
When I was visiting friends in California, everyone thought I was a nudist when I told them that I liked to go fishing at Cummings Beach (Stamford, CT).
Chuckly or giggle, it's all the same with you people.
(rib rib nyuck nyuck)
Arcadia University in Pennsylvania used to be called Beaver College. It doesn't mention this in the Wikipedia article but I recall newspaper articles at the time claiming that, because of web filtering software, High School students were having trouble accessing the college's web site for application and other enrollment information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_University
Ouch, he told *Microsoft* to Google it? He might have had better luck if he told them to Bing it, no?
How is this offtopic?
It directly addresses the question asked by spun...
But I used to ride past Dix and Gays all the time with the occasional jaunt to Brownstown, but I avoided it when I could.
It generally stank in the summer time heat, so I was happy to make it to Mound, (Effin' fuckin' ham) then to Paradise before landing in god awful
hamlet that is Gays.
http://tinyurl.com/2e56es9
I'm transgendered as well... I know it's a bit cliche to those that don't understand what we go through, but I've known my entire life. I've struggled with it my entire life, knowing that I can never be accepted for who I am if I reveal myself, finding myself in the position of either rejecting myself (being forced to be something I know I am not) or being rejected by others if I admit who I am. Even that said, I was in denial for a long time, first thinking I was a bit quirky, then thinking I was a cross dresser, then finally admitting to myself that I don't wear womens clothes for the thrill of wearing womens clothes, I do so because that is when I am at peace with myself.
Looking back, I had started modifying myself in subtle ways to find some alignment with my internal gender. I was scared as hell to pierce my ears even though plenty of guys had done it long before me, since I had feared that it would be a strong indicator of what I was hiding inside and despite having a plethora of holes in my ears today, very few people to this day have still seen me with so much as a diamond stud in my ears. I added more hidden girly things over time for myself to enjoy - more ear holes (pieces of monofilament plastic work well to heal and retain them while barely being noticeable), a belly ring, pierced nostril, and shaved legs. I've become bolder in some other aspects, growing my nails out some, wearing clear nail polish, plucking my eyebrows to give them a little neutral definition, wearing heels hidden by pants in public, etc. I've been debating giving myself a permanent acknowledgment of who I am, considering getting maybe the girliest mark of all, a butterfly tramp stamp, but I'm afraid of the consequences of getting accidentally caught since there will be no denying what it is.
Which gets us back to the struggle between who we are inside and what society expects from us based on the outside. My dad has made enough statements in my life that I know he could never accept me and my mom is such a mess herself, that her entire sanity depends on her perception of me somehow being perfect. If I admitted who I was to her, I have no doubts that she'd have a complete psychological breakdown. I'm afraid my two best friends wouldn't handle it well, though I have begun broaching the subject by mocking myself, showing up to last year's Halloween party as a bad mockery of a tranny hooker. That went over well, but as far as they knew, it was a total mockery, just a costume. I have told a few people, all but one of which is female, most of whom have taken it fairly well. Support has ranged from total (followed by a complete betrayal by the same person, so ultimately, that was a lie), to hesitant with much joking to try to come to terms with it, to mostly somewhere in between.
I've struggled with depression for most of my life, even going on long stretches of suicidal depression... for anyone that thinks we wake up one day, wanting to flip a switch to try the other side out for fun, they simply have no clue what we have to go through. Three of the women I've told have been either ex-girlfriends or potential future ones (yeah, haha, I really am a lesbian stuck in a man's body), including the one who eventually betrayed my friendship to make a new suitor happy, and I've come to the conclusion that, while they're fine with what I am as a friend, a more intimate relationship is pretty much out of the question. That, in turn, has caused more despair, as I realize that, sooner or later, I'll almost certainly eventually die alone with dreams that most people take for granted completely unfulfilled. This type of life is hell and nobody would voluntarily choose it. If pedophiles are the one group everyone is encouraged to hate, transsexuals are the one group everyone is encouraged to mock... largely because people don't and, frankly, don't want to, understand us (and sadly, I know quite a few gay people that dislike transsexuals since they're convinced that we're merely gay and would rather change gender to conform to society th
It's not an "in your face" thing - I'd much rather that they hadn't been such blabber-mouths. Just like it would have been nice to have been able to help someone on slashdot w/o being exposed - but it's all for the better. (at least that's what I keep telling myself :-)
Well that depends, doesn't it?
Ethnic as in skin colour? Sure, people whould have a problem. But jokes about drunken Irishmen? Or english people with bad teeth?
Ethnic (ish) stereotypes are still used and still funny. Hell, people make jokes about others who are tall, short, ginger, fat, thin, jocks, geeks, religious, stupid, clever. republican, democrat, old, young.... anything you can think of.
Some of these are genetic, some of them are predispositions, some are choices and some are inconsequential. The fundamental thing being that poking fun at both familiar and the 'other' is just what people do.
Oh no! Someone call the morality police!
It's a quote from a comedian. Grow some skin or stop bitching about the sunburn.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Er, no it's not.
You know that, like it or not, male is the primary (and hence fallback) gender in most languages? It doesn't mean anything. That you get all bent out of shape over it tells something of your personality.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
... and this gives you license to be a douche and take it out on people who have not done something against you?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I don't care what your gender is or was, but this whole section below marks you strongly as a sexist.
Of course, these same people couldn't do what we have to do to be ourselves - not for one day, never mind for a lifetime. Could you picture one of them even pretending to have "the talk" with one of their friends? Heck no! They'd volunteer to have their appendix removed without anesthesia first. That's "manly". Same as not asking for directions, leaving their dirty clothes on the floor, and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it. Come on you guys reading this, fess up, you do this all the time, and it bugs us that you think we're that stupid. It's 3-ply paper, and you leave a one-ply half square sitting there like an orphan, and you're hoping that when we open the door the draft won't blow away your sorry "excuse" for not changing it. You dissect the toilet paper, and then walk around all day making skid marks in your formerly-tidy-whiteys, rather than change the stupid roll of toilet paper.
None of those things are inherently male. They are all either signs of not giving a shit, or insecurity. I've know plenty of women that do the same thing.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
hate to break it to you buddy, but if a human has both X and Y chromosomes, they are categorized as a male of the genus Homo. (without implications to social or personal values.)
FTFY.
... anyone from Scunthorpe?
exactly why said investigation is BS?
Do I deserve the label of "Transphobe" - a term I've never seen or thought about before? Like many others, this intriguing tangential comment thread is the first window I've had to an unusual new world of personal sensitivity, yet another way I could accidentally offend someone I don't personally know with my assumptions about the world.
Every time I talk about my friends, parents, pets in casual conversation with a new acquaintance, I know there's a small chance that they might have suffered though the death of same, and that I'm unintentionally torturing them. Do I stop doing it to everyone new "just in case"? No. I'd be a ball of nerves otherwise, trying to remember every single thing I could say that people might get upset about, some of which contradict each other.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I might deserve your label. I don't have the intention to offend, but I've made a decision to continue living in happy ignorance, and not to invest a lot of my time and effort into making certain changes that would presumably benefit you if we ever happened to chitchat in a shop, or something. I can only apologise, and offer what I think the silent majority, the kindly but blundering everyman thinks about it all.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Wow... I'm stunned. What a completely uninformed, ignorant, and completely ungracious post. You missed the boat on so many points, nobody even reasonable versed on the topic could even begin to respond in a sane amount of time or conversation space. However, let me point out a few of your truly impressively errors;
Trans-people don't "Wanna" anything. They are compelled by an overwhelming emotional state.
ALL human being start off female in the womb, and it isn't until testosterone switches the morphology causing sexual divergence that male and female genitalia appears, and the two sets of organs are virtually identical in underlying structure, the only difference is morphology. When a male-to-female transsexual receives gender reassignment surgery, the neo-vagina created, is virtually indistinguishable from the vagina of any other woman (this is not an opinion made lightly, but the reported observation of gynecologists), because it's made from the same tissue, consisting of mucosa, even so far as having a cervix (in fact the new woman has to have regular gynecological exams including PAP Smears to prevent cervical cancer, just like any other woman.) The "Mangina" you speak of, I believe is locate a little closer to rectum, not unlike your opinions.
The fake tits you refer to are the results of estrogen, just like any other woman's breasts, depending on the age at onset of hormone therapy, cellular sensitivity to estrogen, and genetic predisposition, breast development among trans-women is similar or slightly less than other women. Some trans-women choose breast augmentation, most do not, just like women everywhere.
Most trans-women, lead perfectly normal lives, working, playing, raising children, and grand children. You wouldn't recognize most trans-women, and the few you do, are those who have been marginalized by the fact that they are poor, and cannot afford the incredibly expensive surgery needed to reverse the effects of testosterone on their faces and bodies. Many trans-women are intersexed to a greater or lesser degree, which is why many never need special surgery to look perfectly normal in their gender of choice. In fact, these people often looked oddly feminine as men, and had to deal with gross discrimination long before they ever took a step to have a change of gender.
As I said before, many trans-people are intersexed. In fact transsexuality has been strongly linked to the sexing of the brain, and may in fact be a profound form of intersexing, where the primary organ afflicted is the brain. Though not necessarily the only organ. There are endless combinations and pernutations of X, XX, XY, and Y, resulting in everything from Klinefelters Syndrome to conditions without names. There are Chimera, the blending of two or more fertilized eggs, literally, a person with genetic contributions coming from multiple people, not all necessarily of the same sex. This doesn't even begin to touch the countless ways sexual development may be impacts during prenatal development, and indeed most transsexual research suggests that this is the time in which critical changes in the embryo may in fact cause transsexualism. Your ignorance of human sexuality, genetics, epigenetics, prenatal human development and gender are utterly appalling. It simply sad when someone is both a bigot, and ignorant, it's truly pitiful, when that same person make a public display of their gross inadequacies.
Personally I have great compassion for people who are uncomfortable with gender issues. Gender like the ground we stand on, seems like it should be permanent, and unchanging, and when it moves, leaves many shocked and strangely unsettled. That said, as primal as gender and sex is (and I choose not to address phobic and hateful behavior), human beings are more than their genitalia. What anyone going through this odyssey discovers on the other side, is that in the end, like everyone else, the thing they are most in search of, is the full and complete expression and affirmation of their humanity. In this way they exactly the same as anyone else.
No, it gives you the opportunity to be a douche and dismiss someone's concerns by calling them a douche. Well, I will diminish your view by snarkily calling it political correctness.
In conclusion, you're a Nazi.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
Be who you want to be, and don't be afraid. Also don't think that people are out to get you, most things would just be innocent if you don't think about it twice. When someone calls you 'dude' it's an honest mistake, and in my opinion not even a mistake since I regard 'dude' in the modern interpretation the same as 'fellow', that is non-gender specific (my girlfriend is one of the 'dudes' for instance). Furthermore I have been called a woman many times on account of my long hair, and I don't think twice about it... People who regard themselves as special often react to much like they are attacked, just regard yourself as normal (in a sense every person is normal no matter their conformity to standards of society) and who you want to be and you'll be fine.
go suck a dick
Can I bitch about bitching about bithing?
So let me get this straight, you're attacking a certain group of people for being narrow minded, whilst making gross generalisations about that group of people?
Most people couldn't care if you're man, woman, rabbit or donkey, yet you seem to be quite anti-male, you seem to have quite strong opinions of this section of the population:
"There's the way that men treat women in general (which has its own share of dismissal, ridicule, and voilence)"
No, men in general do treat women like that, some arseholes do, but many treat them with nothing but respect. Of course, it's not as if all women are perfect, there are plenty out there that will fuck men around.
"Same as not asking for directions, leaving their dirty clothes on the floor, and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it. Come on you guys reading this, fess up, you do this all the time, and it bugs us that you think we're that stupid"
If you make assertions like that, then yes, you're probably correct in believing people think you're stupid, because it's a gross generalisation that absolutely isn't applicable to many "guys reading this". I can firmly say I've never done this, nor, as someone who frequents shared male toilets at work, have I ever seen any evidence of any other male doing this, it's clearly something that bothers you, but it's not something that most men do, even if some do.
Your attitude is akin to that of feminists who argue that men accused of rape don't deserve anonymity in even if they are actually innocent- you want your rights, you want people to treat you with respect, but you show absolutely no respect for others.
Clearly you have a problem with narrow minded people, which is fine, but then why are you being so utterly narrow minded yourself?
I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulties faced by many people who have some natural trait (such as homosexuality) that gets them labelled, judged, and hated and have even been involved politically in supporting gay rights, despite being straight and having no vested interest in it (other than not wanting to see gay friends treated like shit) primarily because I see it as big an injustice as racism has historically been. Yet when I see people like you saying the things you have, I often question myself whether bothering to help the situation is even worth it, when there is a sizable portion of homosexuals, transexuals and so on who are just as bigoted themselves about people who are straight and happy with their natural physical sex.
Do yourself a favour and reflect on your opinions about males, becoming a woman doesn't mean you have to take on bigoted feminist generalisations about males too. If you continue as is, you shouldn't be suprised to find people continuing to treat you like shit, and less and less people interested in helping you and people like you have an easier time of it. Your opinions of others are helping perpetuate the problems you face, which gives you little moral ground to stand on to complain about treatment of people in your situation- you are part the problem.
I am a member of the LGBT community and I love my queens. I also loved George Carlin. I can certainly understand the sensitivity that comes with constant experiences of prejudice. And I'm not going to tell you that you don't have a right to feel that way. However, as a Carlin fan, I can tell you that he was a very liberal and progressive and considered himself an enemy to the establishment.
If you're not familiar with him, he came across to many people as offensive and he kind of prided himself in it. But his rudeness wasn't merely for the sake of shock, but for subversive social commentary and biting satire. His targets were those in power and the stupidity among majorities. I can guarantee you, having followed him from the time I was a kid, listening to him on my headphones because it wasn't exactly something I'd want my parents to hear, that his pun that caused this mess wasn't meant in offense. When he meant offense, it was much more blatant and undeniable.
FUCK Mickey Mouse. Fuck him up the asshole with a big, rubber dick, then break it off and beat him to death with the rest of it!
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
No, it accuses you of dismissing the concerns of another by calling them a douche. In return, I will dismiss your views by snarkily calling them political correctness.
In conclusion, you're a Nazi.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
And if affords the opportunity me of mistyping my thoughts by typing "it accuses you of" rather than "it gives you the opportunity to" And I bow.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
The great thing about the Internet is that it allows idiots and bigots to immortalize their ignorance without having to spray paint it on a wall.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
I'm assuming you've never gotten shit or been in danger because of your sexuality. If you have, were you uptight about it? Or, as you suggest here, you pacifically accepted it and refused to stand up for yourself.
So are they uptight, do you completely lack empathy, or are you a coward?
I'm pansexual, but even I notice that not only do the transgendered find prejudice among straight people, but they also experience it, sadly, from the LGB section of LGBT, as well. Perhaps you're among them? For what it's worth, I liked Carlin's wordplay and see it as innocent, but I can see their side of it, too.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
There are a couple sides to this, and actually you're square on the money about ultimately doing what makes you happy and developing a little hide when it comes to other people's opinions. The problem is that a lot of trans-people are so bent up over what others think about them, and so messed up about what they think of themselves, that they tend to get a little crazed in public forums.
That said, a couple dozen trans-people are murdered each year, and hundreds or even thousands are beaten, threatened, socially or professionally marginalized, assaulted, robbed, or demonized by bigots and fanatics. This is a tiny community. These people are rare... like 1 in 50,000. To have this much abuse heaped on them (100s of times more than the equivalent normalized population), it makes a person wonder if their very existence isn't some kind of social offense, and that perhaps some twisted deity somehow stuck them with a bulls-eye shaped birthmark.
It can be a daunting experience to find your own personal identity in a world that honestly seems to want to kill you every now and then. Look at kids who grow up in really bad neighborhoods. A few rise to the occasion, but most don't do so well. Being a trans-person is kind of like that.
Gender is between your ears. That said, the request for ggp to change their sig is moronic. It's a joke
Carlin was a genius... and a huge advocate for human rights, and treating people with dignity. Real dignity, not just lip service. His jokes were jokes, and taking them as anything else would be both a disservice to one's own sense of humor, and the dignity of the man who told the jokes.
In a related story, there was an odd medical condition where men would go to the Caribbean, eat lot's of hormone injected jerk chicken, and drink huge amounts of rum (alcohol being a known chemical that inhibits the production of testosterone.) The result was men coming back from extended stays on the islands with a couple more protuberances on their chest than when they'd arrived.
The condition was known as the "Eat, Drink, and be Mary Syndrome".
Bigotry does not target transsexuals persé, more generally everyone slightly different...
I sometimes wonder if some people who purposely attempt to look 'different' do it just to complain about people who react strongly to this. I recently read an article about vamp-goths who protested that they were discriminated because people look at them all the time because they are different and my first thought was "isn't that exactly the point?".
I suspect that there are some very insecure people in all groups who always look to be the victim and go to extreme lengths to put themselves in a position to feel that way, these are the people you will also find 'foaming at the mouth' in their internet forum posts.
In general people just want to live their lives, whether straigt, gay, trans or just dressed a little different. They also just want to be left alone by bigots, but realize that although there is injustice in the world that has to change it's not something that can be forced and a few incidents with those idiots does not mean the whole world is against you.
Yes, there are exceptions, on both sides, but that doesn't mean that it's sexist to point out that one gender behaves predominantly one way, and the other gender the opposite. To refuse to acknowledge this would itself be sexist, don't you think? Let's take another example - criminal behaviour. Men are 10x more likely to commit murder, and 9 times more likely to have been in jail. Is it sexist to point this out? No. Does it mean that every man is going to be a serial killer? No, but ignoring the reality would be sexist as well as dangerous.
Sorry to hear you suffering. I used to think like you... then I just got to the point where it was more important to be happy in this skin than to make others happy in theirs (and by the way you can't make them happy anyway, because their happiness is none of your business.) I have no idea what kind of "GUY" you are, and what resources you may have... but whatever they are, you should find a support group, and get yourself speaking to others who suffer the way you do, so you can at least purge some of that poison. It's true what they say, a joy shared is twice a joy, and a pain shared is half a pain.
You realise that at that point it also ceases to be a joke or funny in any way right?
You're picking at the most trivial fucking shit there.
When I see an irishman joke I feel no urge to bitch and moan at length about how it negatively reflects on a historically oppressed and subjugated people especially if it's just a half-hearted pun or play on words .
Unless its a Chimera, then it can have any combination of X and Y, and can still have get pregnant, if the right parts are female. ALSO don't forget androgen insensitivity. Some of the most beautiful women ever born were androgen insensitive males... and they were absolutely not guys...
Don't make assumptions about things which you do not understand... when you have a thought, validate it first, before showing people you don't know what you're talking about... its the wise thing to do.
On the other hand, I doubt that George would make the same joke over and over again in a venue where he knows that there are going to be a statistically much higher than average number of transgenders (such as the tech field in general, and programming in particular). And he certainly wouldn't do it one-on-one. Comics are very much aware that the other side of laughter is pain.
To take your "friends, parents, pets" example - none of those contain implicit put-downs of the person you are talking to - and you probably know at least one transgender - though they're probably doing a good job of hiding it, which they learned to do at a very young age after getting beaten up and made fun of all the time.
Sure, people make stupid jokes ... sometimes to cover up their own unease, or as a way of trying to show that they're okay with it, or whatever. If no offense is meant, then it's no harm, no foul, and we can all laugh at our flaws and weaknesses. Unfortunately, what is okay among friends, where you know that deep down they have your best interests at heart, isn't the same thing as, for example, the posts that insist on looking only at the chromosomes. Even the Olympics had to stop doing that - not only were there too many anomalies in the general human population to make it a universal standard, but when they flunked someone who later gave birth, it showed that it's not all about that 46th chromosome.
We all say stupid things, we all make social gaffes, but the great thing is that we don't think the other person is a jerk or evil just because they were a bit maladroit when confronted with a situation they didn't understand.
If you remove everything offensive from comedy you are left with little more than the sad pathetic little jokes found in Christmas crackers.
It was a trivial pun.
But of course, carlin wasn't making a trivial vaguely funny pun, no, he is guilty of everything that is wrong with the world and everything done by every shithead who hates trans people.
re-read that quote.
Carlin did not refer to anyone as "it".
That's all your own craziness conflating one thing you don't like with everything bad in the world.
The Wikipedia page you pointed to has dead links in the references. The correct data can be found here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/gender.cfm
It is also worth pointing out that although males are more likely to kill, they are also more likely to be killed. This suggests that a large amount of the murders comes from male-to-male violence.
Furthermore there is no mention in the statistics of involvement of women, but from anecdotes you can assume that in a lot of cases a violent outburst involving a group of men and a women results in the man (generally being the physically stronger one) takes on the role of the defender/aggressor. Whether based on culture or evolutionary psychology males are more likely to commit violence beside the predisposition purely based on gender physiology. You understand how this might skew statistics, and might lead to the false impression that men are inherently more dangerous.
I also completely agree that men and women are equal but their differences (and especially strong points) should not be hidden to be PC. Men have a different psychology, and asking for directions is something they are more reluctant to do because it can be construed as a sign of defeat. But there is a difference between factual gender specific traits and clichés. When you start complaining about men and the toilet (mostly based on assumption) it's just feeding another common chiché about women...
Funny side note- a human of unknown gender should be "he" not "it".
objects and animals are "it", humans are he or she defaulting to he if unknown.
I also think that most people are insecure about *something*, whether it's their appearance, their intelligence, their age, their weight, their height, their social status, their job, their spouse, their kids, their parents, their grades, or something else.
Now while I personally am not offended by the Carlin joke when he made it - he was an equal-opportunity joker - it's not the same thing when it's in a signature. For one thing, the context is lacking. For another, the poster is not George Carlin. I can choose to ignore it, but I can also understand how others might not be able to. Also, by choosing to ignore it, I then become part of the problem. So there's a choice - either ignore it, or discuss it. After all, next time it might be something that *I* feel I cannot ignore.
There's no anger at the original poster - just a "hey, you might want to consider that this is a site that has a lot of transgendered people, many who are living in fear of discovery, and your signature is derogatory, not to our beliefs, or to our country, our politicians, or whatever, but to us as human beings. Just something to consider."
"On the other hand, I doubt that George would make the same joke over and over again in a venue where he knows that there are going to be a statistically much higher than average number of transgenders (such as the tech field in general, and programming in particular)."
I'm intrigued by this comment, do you have any evidence for this or are you just speculating? I'm wondering why there would be a higher than average number of transgenders working in technical jobs like programming over any other say, office based job.
This is a site with a lot of transgender, gay, straight, male, female, geeky, tall, small, christian, muslim, atheist, etcetera people, basically all sorts of people. There are always *some* people who think a certain remark is hurtful, especially if a joke is make at their expense. There are of course remarks that 'go too far', but I think people will automatically be considered assholes for this, no need to start forcing everyone to be all PC. We cannot be considerate to all people from all walks of life, especially if you consider some groups have opposing beliefs. A joke about a certain group of people does not imply an attack, it's only perceived that way by some overly PC persons whether from that group or just for the sake of pointing out that you have to be PC. But it's wildly unrealistic to keep everybody happy and still allow people the freedom to speak their mind, talk about facts, or simply express humor.
I am personally not offended by anything (at worst I will think someone is an asshole for trolling). But I have one exception: I will take offense to people who take offense. In this single statement you can see the paradox caused by trying to be PC for everyone. And I do not joke, I really mean that I have a problem with people who are trying to convince others of what they cannot say because they think so. Pay attention and you'll see that often those same people will claim it's okay to say the same statement about another group of people, just not about them. It's not about doing right to all, it's about their own personal issues. People need to decide what they think is okay for themselves and act according to that themselves, not tell others what they need to do and don't apply it to themselves.
I'm somewhere between applauding you for your courage in handling your problem, and chiding you for your overt use of male (and female - most of my friends wear t-shirts and hate skirts) stereotypes.
Also, you'd note that "dude" is pretty gender-neutral nowadays.
This is the first I've ever heard of this toilet paper thing. It's also kind of hard to believe. Since women use 97% of any given roll of toilet paper in a shared bathroom, men must have a genetic predisposition to horrible timing to consistently even be in a position to cause this!
I can not believe that when contacting MS directly with an actual person on the other line, that they would not take the time to review any maps (or streetmaps that THEY created) to check if what he was saying was true. Seriously, what duchebags.... I can't fathom how this company has not gone bankrupt yet.
...and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it...
None of those things are inherently male. They are all either signs of not giving a shit, or insecurity. I've know plenty of women that do the same thing.
Yeah, my wife does this shit all the time. Sometimes she goes out of her way and puts a roll on the counter, like it takes that much more work to change the f-king roll? Of course, caring about this makes me pre-GBLT no doubt :-)
Considering that there has been websites out there that have had the word "breast" censored from their site, even when that site was about breast cancer it really doesn't surprise me of the foolishness. I mean I have heard that my country's national animal the "Beaver" is banned in many places, because somehow people think a big swimming rat that builds things is lewd. Also considering the XBoxLive is largely populated by 12-14 year old douchebags, it doesn't surprise me at all.
MS not doing its homework, and then trying to stick by the decision is disappointing, but then again its Microsoft, what do you expect. Remember they tried to sue a guy called Mike Row about his website "MikeRowSoft", sometimes big corporations go off the rails and it takes a while before common sense can kick in.
Yes, but the Irish are not an oppressed and subjugated group nowadays, so it is not the same thing as making a racist or homophobic or transphobic joke.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So gays aren't "real people" now?
You are a bigot and a moron, pardon the tautology.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That is not in itself an excuse.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Hey Patrick, based on what you just said and especially because your intention isn't to offend, no I wouldn't label you a "Transphobe". Kinda like it's possible for someone who isn't racist to say something that might sound racist to someone else but honestly didn't mean offense, I'd guess that anyone, including myself (and other trans people) to say something unintentionally or otherwise that would fit the definition transphobic without being a transphobe () I'm not asking people to walk on eggshells, but I am asking that when I let people know that something they did hurt me, that they at least acknowledge it. If they continue to do it, I'll either remove myself - or remove them ;)
It was only a few of decades ago that rental signs in london would read "no cats, no dogs, no irish".
It's not something of hundreds of years ago, plenty of living irish people experienced no shortage of racism and discrimination and the effects are still being felt.
Any good joke is offensive to someone and the quote in question is only offensive in the most trivial fashion to the most overly sensitive of fainting violets.
But it isn't what he said, it's the world he said it in of course.
Toughen up.
Before everything was bookable from internet there were plenty of people who had problem spelling their name in their bad English..
R-U-O-K-O-L-A-H-T-I
Typical answer is: Yes, are you ok?
Yes, there are exceptions, on both sides, but that doesn't mean that it's sexist to point out that one gender behaves predominantly one way, and the other gender the opposite.
Sure sexist stereotypes aren't sexist and have a core of truth unless they happen to be about you or offend you in some way in which case batten down the hatches, we're in for a rant.
My hometown in Quebec, Canada is called Châteauguay, which is litterally "Gay Castle". I'd like to meet this guy on XBL and become his friend lol. We kinda share something special after all!
Don't know about the GP but we just keep a stack of rolls in the box next to the toilet and have no dispenser.
I've never even heard of that little piece of sexism the GP apparently seems to think is a widespread stereotype.
Where does the GP keep hers?
down 3 flights of stairs at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused storage room with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard"?
I don't know if I think you're being overly sensitive or not.
Please understand I *do not* have the same experience as you and so am woefully uninformed about it. One of my gay friends has described me as the gayest obviously straight guy he knows (still don't know what that means...) so there is the frame of reference I'm coming from.
Anyway I have a question for you:
At my work we have a few transgender folks, some more feminine than others (one sports quite a shadow by the end of the day). I mostly avoid any discussion about them, mostly because of fear of lawsuit/HR/what have you. It's not gossip, so much as curiosity. What/how/????/when do you make the changeover in gender identification?
At one point my lunch group simply referred to the particular individual as a contraction of she-him (shim), not out of mean spirit, but for a genuine lack of understanding as to what to refer to this person as.
FFS that's not even a question is it. I guess I am curious, do you encounter more bigotry and shunning, or more simple curiosity in your daily life and how do you tell the difference between ill informed (like me) and malicious? I'm sure there is some blurring going on there.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I'm a total pansexual hippie freak who has several trans friends. I understand the incredible prejudice transsexuals go through. I've also seen first hand just how 'right' living as the opposite gender can be for a transsexual, my friend Fish (that's what she went by...) was the most awkward woman I've ever met, but as David he is more man than I am.
I just don't think the Carlin quote is worthy of rebuke. We all need to pick and choose our battles, and while it may not seem trivial to a trans person, this isn't a fight that will win you much sympathy. There are better vectors for education than picking on Carlin, who I'm sure had absolutely nothing against trans gendered people.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yep, but I can bitch about your bitching about bitching of bitching.
The recursion is making me ill...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
That is not in itself an excuse.
What needs excusing? God damn, if you'd just stop being so uptight, you might see that it's funny!
Bow-ties are cool.
While the two are certainly 'different' conditions, I think most people would agree that there's very little "choice" in something you've got a predisposition for hard-wired into you, whether it be gender or alcoholism.
We have "cures" for both, which include medical procedures designed to "correct" the problems - for alcoholics, medicine that damps the brain's reward circuits and helps eliminate the cravings - these treatments are imperfect, ineffective for many, and alcoholism and addiction is something that the person will struggle with their entire life. For transsexuals, hormones, surgery, and cognitive therapy to help them deal with their feelings, and help their external appearance match their internal gender identity - and the consequences of all that will probably be something they struggle with their entire life.
Trivializing alcoholism is just as bad as trivializing gender identity issues. Please don't do either.
I think you might have responded to the wrong person. I'm not bent out of shape over anything. I was wondering why the person I was responding to was. You do know what quoted text looks like on Slashdot, right, and that those are not my words at the beginning of the post?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
@networkBoy -
First, a little about me - I started transitioning gender fourteen years ago, started hormone therapy twelve years ago, started living and working full time as a woman ten years ago, legally changed my name nine years ago, and had the "bottom" surgery six years ago. I haven't done any other surgery (ie no face, no boob job, etc) and I don't think I look that great - but apparently I pass pretty well most of the time, at least enough that I've worked at my company for a couple of years and no one has said anything to make me think they suspect (and I usually pick up on that pretty fast).
So I've kinda gone through a lot - I've experienced bigotry, shunning and violence by family, friends and strangers, but I've also met people who were just very curious. I much prefer the curious - they're way more fun and not as scary. ^_^
I never know though what's going to happen when I tell someone, and that makes me feel like I'm always on guard. This was a few years ago, but there was one woman I met that, and I'm not sure why I told her about my "situation" - I think it was because I wanted to be her friend and thought she'd freak out about my gender situation and so I "told" her like the second time I met her to protect my own feelings, and I was right - she totally flipped out - but in a good way and started asking me a million questions. We became bff's (until she fell in love with me and wanted to leave her husband for me- but I squashed that). (my life has enough drama in it already without turning into a soap opera)
Also, sometimes people start out curious or supportive and then turn nasty, and sometimes it happens the other way. People surprise me all the time.
As for what to call someone, the polite thing to do would be to refer to someone as the gender they are presenting as. and btw since you didn't realize this, calling someone a he-she or she-him is generally considered demeaning and insulting to most trans people i've known - although I suppose there could be exceptions
Microsoft Denmark has just informed the world that they simply love gay people.
I'm not gay, but if I was I would reconsider my sexual orientation... I'm simply not prepared for Microsofts love.
Sorry, that was intended to be a reply for this post.
Slashdot has been mangling the "post indentation" on me over the last few days and is making it extremely difficult to tell who is who when the threads are more than 3 replies deep :/
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
(this problem is specific to IDLE, the new testing ground for broken code apparently)
(also, clicking on subjects not only collapses/expands them as it should (for a moment) but it also works as an anchor, as if I clicked on the CID.... kind of broke?)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
they will not even let me type Grapevine Texas in the location field, because Grape has rape in it. true story, when i bitched about it on the phone they were like "oh well".
Dang, that is weird. I never noticed that about idle but you are right.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The joke is kind of funny and when Carlin told the joke he probably wasn't trying to be intentionally malicious.
But times change and what's considered acceptable in one context doesn't necessarily make it acceptable in another.
Hopefully we''ll all grow as society and people will start to treat each other with respect instead of lashing out with disparaging remarks in order to maintain the status quo - and in the words of Billy, "the status is NOT quo."
On a final note, I guess I really should see if it's possible to change the account name, because when I post something funny and people who don't know go "Dude! That was great!" I'm caught between laughing at the incongruity and going *sigh*. It makes for some interesting back-and-forth. And this account has great karma and lots of equally-great fans.
Why sigh at the incongruity? Sometimes I can't remember the name of the child who's attention I want, much less worry about the gender preferences of someone who I can't see and don't even know. Respondents are likely to say "Dude" without even having made a decision about whether your login is gendered male or female.
Life is too short to assign weight to the random stuff other people say.
All humour has a "mean" component to it - it's the way we lance the wound to help drain the pus and help it heal. However, like any surgery, it has to be done with skill. Carlin had that skill - the right place at the right time in the right context with the right audience. He would say a line like that, and people would laugh, but because it was Carlin, and it was done in a greater context, you knew that he was also very much poking fun at the people who found such lines funny at the expense of others; his edginess had a purpose, and he was good at it. No, that's probably a lie - he was great at it.
Good comedy challenges the status quo and makes people think. It opens up avenues of discussion that we wouldn't normally have - and this has been true for centuries. Just look at the Fool in King Lear - he could get away with telling the truth to the King when nobody else could. The Fool has always had a dual role, as both entertainer and social bellwether. Comedy leads, society laughs (a bit self-consciously or nervously) rather than acting violently, and then a while later, society has advanced to the point where it no longer gets a laugh. Society has internalized the issue.
20 years ago it was sexual orientation - gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. 40 years ago it was skin colour - blacks. 60 years ago it was European ethincs - italians, Greeks, etc.
Today it's transsexuals. The only problem is, it was also transsexuals 20 years ago. And 40 years ago. And the violence is still also there, often from the time we're kids, and at the hands of parents, relatives, classmates, and long-time friends who then betray that friendship and beat you up in public before the whole school just to be popular.
People who wouldn't dream of using the N word in public still have no problem with calling a woman with a trans history a .. well, let's just say it's the TS equivalent of the "C" word and then some. It's mean, it's rude, and it's downright nasty. But it still gets a laugh from the chuckle-heads - the same ones who, paradoxically, just love using it as a search term for their porn fantasies. Go figure. (./shrug)
There's still a long way to go - look at how many people still think that transsexualism has something to do with sexual orientation, or don't understand the difference between gender and sex. At least now we *can* talk about it openly in some venues, but the sad fact is that TS are still heavily discriminated against even today - and the financial and social impact is an ugly fact. How would you like to have most jobs illegally denied to you based on your gender? It happens all the time.
I guess what I'm saying is that the punch line doesn't work in this context - many of us don't find it that funny when compared to our reality. If it were a one-off post, that would be one thing, ignore it and move on. As a signature line, it's making a statement - and not a healthy one. This is not to criticize the person - to the contrary, I would find it very hard to believe that someone adopted such a signature on purpose to put down anyone. They probably wanted something from Carlin, and "These are the 7 words you can't say on television etc ..." doesn't fit in slashdot's crummy signature length limit - something that people have been complaining about for years.
I got you a present. It's a fence! Here, take it.
I can ask for directions without it being seen as a sign of defeat (or maybe weakness), but a man can't. Doesn't that sort of prove one of my points - that a lot of our behaviour is hard-coded, and and as such not only leads to such stereotypes being formulated, but also validates them?
Even if we grant that this may be the result of social conditioning, it still shows a gender difference in behaviour. And the studies on housework distribution just rub it in.
Now I've never said that these differences are universal - there are men who will clean the toilet, replace the toilet paper, ask for directions, clean up after themselves when they've done cooking, just like there are probably women who refuse to ask for directions, will move to a new apartment before they'll get down on their hands and knees to scrub a toilet bowl, let the cat lick the dishes "clean" and then re-use them after a cursory rinse and wipe, and can't cook worth a darn.
But I'm not going to deny what I've seen with my own eyes, and other women have confirmed - and that study after study still confirms - that even when both sexes work outside the home full-time, the woman still bears the brunt of the housework. This is clearly a gender bias.
As for aggression, the statistics you link to clearly show that in cases where one party is the aggressor and the other the victim, it's several times more likely that it's the woman who gets killed. Maybe it's due to the fact that women are generally easier to kill than men, or that men act more aggressively in the initial attack, so that women don't have the opportunity for the "fight or flight" mechanism to actually work, but the fact remains - the stereotype of men usually being the killer in both male | male and male | female murders is 100% true.
Some stereotypes are just prejudice. Others, such as who cleans the toilets, are a reflection of the current state of the division of labour among couples in todays' society.
Just to make sure - you do realize that queens and trans women aren't the same thing, right?
Compared to other office-based jobs, programming is more accessible to transgenders; this is certainly the case before transitioning, where most companies still want a woman working the reception desk. But more importantly, IT is more open to transsexuals than, say, construction or other male-dominated professions.
The computer you're using right now is only possible because of the work of this woman. Multi-player computer games owe much of their success to this woman. And what list would be complete without a rocket scientist?
My personal thoughts on the matter are that our attempts to reconcile our differences with our external life provide extra stimulus to the problem-solving area of the brain, even before we're aware that we are different at any conscious level. So we end up gravitating to fields that
(1) have problems that use those same problem-solving skills - for example, I *love* the challenge of debugging, whereas most programmers would rather write new code, and
(2) don't force us as rigidly into a gender model we don't fit in - it's okay for women to be programmers, but men "man" a jackhammer.
(3) if we're outed in an IT context, we're less likely to get the crap beaten out of us, and more likely to be treated fairly.
That last one is a big consideration. Ask any transgender (either m2f or f2m) and they'll probably have more than one story about being physically assaulted just because they were "different".
Or just look through the comments here. Idle isn't exactly known for being a popular slashdot feature, and yet this particular discussion ... well, it speaks for itself, just like the women who have said that they can't post publicly because of fear says something.
The only reason I can is because I've gotten over my original mortification ... but I certainly would rather that it hadn't come out. All any of us want is our lives. IT is a relatively safe area for us to build a life, so it's to be expected that you'll find transsexuals over-represented compared to other fields where the gender participation lines are much clearer.
I've struggled with depression for most of my life, even going on long stretches of suicidal depression...
I went through the same. It all pretty much resolved once I transitioned. I recommend going for it. If need be, move somewhere transfriendly, like Seattle.
You wouldn't recognize most trans-women
I disagree. But I'm occasionally wrong too.
these people often looked oddly feminine as men
Again, my experience strongly differs. Maybe it's different in the UK. And don't even get me started about the voices..
the tshirts mocking the lesbian stuck in a man's body
That tends to be a transvestite thing; most transsexuals invert their sexual preference when undergoing physical transformation, so a MTF that was attracted to women will become attracted to men (and vice-versa).
my friend Fish
This always bugs me. How come so many transsexuals have no taste in names at all?
It's like having parents from hell, but self-imposed. I remain perpetually confused..
I interpreted it as 'flaming gay activists' aren't real people. Personally I lump them in with raging feminists, evangelical christians and other bigots and morons.
That was her old name. I think she just really didn't like being a woman...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
But is IT really that different from say engineering, finance, HR jobs in the way a transgender would be treated? What about retail and food sectors?
"That last one is a big consideration. Ask any transgender (either m2f or f2m) and they'll probably have more than one story about being physically assaulted just because they were "different"."
But is it a transgender specific problem? People have suffered the same for being fat, gay, ginger, jewish, black, white and many other things. It's because unfortunately, there's too many arseholes in the world and not strong enough repercussions for their actions.
I also made it clear that I think Carlin's purpose, as with much of his material, was NOT to put down transpeople, but more a comment on society in general, and people's attitudes on what constitutes "funny." George works on more than one level. He also worked within a specific context. I think if we could ask him, he'd say "Yeh, I said it, and it's funny. It's funny because ******* people are ****** ***** who will laugh at anything. Maybe one of them will wake up and get a ******* clue and realize that I'm making fun of their ignorant ******* behaviour. Yeah, like that's going to happen in my ******* lifetime."
\ That being said, the original poster was right on the money - referring to a transgendered woman as a "transsexual guy" is offensive. Very offensive. That is *all* that they said. They didn't slag the whole quote, just that one word. If anyone used that on me, I certainly wouldn't be too pleased about it. It's wrong.
The original context where Carlin said it not this context, and what was social commentary there doesn't come across the same here; if it was a one-time post, it would have been ignored, but signatures, well, people sometimes pick them to say something representative, and in this context, it's understandably offensive to some. Context is important. Without context, we don't have information, just noise.
I can see the complications with living by the "I will take offense at people who take offense" creed. I would suggest, however, that some things are validly offensive in certain contexts. The context here is a tech site where many transpeople feel that they can participate with minimum risk. Referring to a transgendered woman ("Mary") as a guy in a signature file is a bit messed up.
Does it offend me at this point in time? No - because I doubt the poster ever even gave it a thought. However, if they then went on a long transphobic rant-fest, I'd change my opinion. Either way, though, the original poster was well within her rights to say that referring to a woman - either genetic or trans - as a guy, in this venue, is offensive.
If you're offended by that, I don't know what to say. I'm not going to say that you don't have the right to feel that way, just as I'm not going to say that the original poster doesn't have a right to use the signature of their choice. However, in this debate, I side with the woman who pointed out that referring to women as "guys" is offensive.
If you look elsewhere in the thread, I make it clear that the dividing lines are not clear-cut - there are women who wouldn't dream of cleaning a toilet, and men who ask for directions without worrying about what someone might think. We're certainly not all stamped out of the same mold - or if we are, someone must have broken it and duct-taped it back together before it was my turn.
I don't know - maybe it's because I've had the unfortunate "privilege" of seeing it from both sides (sort of like an "under cover gender spy", I guess), that for me the differences are highlighted - and a source of raw material for a bit of both humour and social commentary. I've sat through I don't know how many conversations where the guys are all acting like little boys when a woman enters the room, and where women are evaluated for job reviews, not on their talents, but strictly by their looks - "Hire that one, she's hot." And sure enough, that's the one who gets hired. And that's just the surface. Guys married and with kids chasing after every woman they see, then talking about them like they were pieces of meat (whether they "scored" or not), openly saying that "that customer 'fits the gauge'" because they think they're sharing "just among the guys", speculating on whether the waitress would be good in bed or not, not realizing that she's now right behind them with their order. It's embarrassing. I know that not all guys can be like that, but so many of them (easily the majority) are so much of the time when they think there are no women around.
And I've experienced it from the other side, working as a receptionist, when male sales reps come in and most of them do "the scan" - they look at two things - boobs and ring finger. Same thing when I walk my dogs. Guys will cross the street a half-block away so that they can "casually" be on the same side of the street when our paths cross. After a few "accidental encounters" they'll talk, they'll try to find out if I'm single, what am I doing later on - it's so transparent. It's okay though, because it is a bit of an ego boost, though I will be the first to admit that I was really startled the first time it happened. And I'm certainly not complaining about having doors opened for me, or stuff being carried to the car by a store clerk. Or the freedom to wear a skirt when it's 100 degrees outside and guys are stuck wearing pants because "men with hairy legs in shorts is not suitable office attire". And I'm sure there are some men who wish they had complete freedom from neck-ties, even for the most serious occasions.
With all the hassles, there *have* to be a few counter-balancing points, right?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while we shouldn't depend on stereotypes to give us the "plain unvarnished truth", in some instances they do have a basis in current or past social customs or values, and, just by the law of averages, some of them are going to contain more than a kernel of truth. And that if we can't laugh at ourselves and our weaknesses, we're doomed.
Same poster as you replied to here.
One ex-girlfriend that I told lives in the area, so I've been there quite a bit and didn't particularly care for it. I'm not all that big on cities to begin with and, unlike a lot of LBGT people, I tend to be politically conservative with libertarian streaks (the government has no more right to tell me how to live or how much of my money I should be compelled to give to other people than it does to tell me who I can have consenting sex with or how I choose to dress), so even if I could tolerate cities, a Seattle, San Francisco and the like wouldn't be friendly to me in other ways.
So, I'd like to stick to a small town, fading into the background, though it probably couldn't be where I am now, the town I grew up in. It's further complicated by the fact that my dad, who wouldn't be able to tolerate what I am, would have to come with me since I'm his caregiver. I probably will never do anything of consequence for myself while he's still alive and yet, in my early 30s as the effects of testosterone have begun taking an even greater toll on my body (the beginnings of balding and various bone growth issues probably bothering the most), I regret not starting even before I hit puberty since I already knew, though I denied it, what I was.
I know that, one day in the future, the pressure will eventually reach a point where I'm forced to fully accept myself and transition or completely lose it, probably committing suicide, since I can't reconcile who I am with what society wants me to be. Given my outward appearance, which is in part affected by my own self-hatred, I'm not sure I could ever pass (5'6", 250# with a rib cage larger than even most guys thanks to a medical condition, so we're not talking about the idealized girly-girl image that western media likes, but actually not having a body that can be mistaken for even an ugly woman even with HRT), so I'm not sure even transitioning will help. I can remain a disgruntled "guy" or transition, only to end up as an even more disgruntled "guy in a dress" as far as society is concerned. I think the likelihood of successfully finding peace with myself is slim. In the meantime, I keep making offerings from my outer self to my inner self, hoping to placate her enough that she'll be mollified for another year, month, week or even day...
All I'd really want, is for my outer self to match my inner self, to be normal... whether that means a male body with a male mind or a female body with a female mind doesn't really matter, so long as they align. Instead, I'm stuck in my own personal hell. Of course, you know that feeling.
Transgendered covers both vestite and sexual, but yes, I know what you're saying. It's just that I know more queens than TS.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
My sister who has to deal with a hubby and 2 adult sons who consistently can't replace the toilet paper in either bathroom - in both cases, they're sitting right there beside the toilet in one of those "tube-type" thingies. I've walked into the bathroom and the roll is completely empty. Funny how, no matter how little toilet paper was on the roll, it was always "just enough" to "do the paperwork."
I'm not going to deny the other stereotype, though it is exaggerated a bit - obviously women do use more toilet paper, because there's more places to wipe. But not 97% more - especially after the guys have had an impromptu chili-eating contest. "Come look at this - you won't believe it!" No thanks. I've changed enough diapers, I pick up after my dogs - I get the picture.
Seriously though, I've compared notes with other women, and it's amazing how many men need only exactly what was left on the roll. Maybe it's related to the toilet-seat thing.
Speaking of the toilet-seat thing, on this I side with the men - the seat should be up. I've seen too many toilets in too many households where either the guy thinks it's long enough, or his aim good enough, (or if it's an adult, he's pissed enough), that he doesn't feel the need to lift the seat when he pees. So please, lift the seat before you pee, and leave it up so that when I go into the bathroom, I know that nobody's "dribbled" or "backspashed" or whatever. In return, I'll lift it when I'm finished, and at 2 a.m. I'll turn on the light and look before I sit, so you won't hear a splash followed by my screaming your name. Is that fair enough?
It gets even more special. Look here
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Let's look again at the original signature:
Now, let's cut to the brass tacks.
Could it be offensive to refer to a woman, either genetic or trans, as a man? I think it could be. You may want to ask around. Go up to a few women and address them as "Mr.", or a few men and address them as "Madame", and report back your results. :-)
Here's what she wrote:
She politely pointed out, while giving the benefit of the doubt, the truth - that misgendering someone is inappropriate.
Everything else has followed from that. Some people have taken umbrage when I've written that this stereotype is rude and crude and offensive to women, and yet they go into denial when I point out that statistics back up some stereotypes of men, such as that men don't do anywhere near their share of the housework (latest stats say women do 3x as much cleaning around the house, and 6x as much laundry), and that men are several times more likely to kill women than vice versa - and as another woman pointed out, that the stats for men killing transgenders is even worse.
And that is very much on topic to this particular thread - that some stereotypes are not based in fact, but are used to attack women, and other stereotypes reflect reality - that men do most of the violence in today's society, that transgendered women are even more at risk, that socially as well as financially, transgendered women face the double whammy of being discriminated against as women and as being transgendered.
But again - I was not personally offended. I'm an admirer of George Carlin's work. I "get it." However, I also think that in this venue, the original argument that it is offensive is valid, especially when you consider how many transgendered people are afraid to speak up here because they fear both being outed and being subjected to the same "transsexual guy" thing. All negative stereotypes need to be worked on. Women shouldn't be referred to as "transsexual guys", by anyone of either gender, and many men need to pick up their share of the housework and stop killing their wives and former girlfriends.
I remember one study back in the dead-tree days that, while it didn't explain this disproportionate tendency to kill, leads me to propose a simple theory. The study showed that while women are usually hit hardest during the initial breakup, we also get over it quicker. Men on the other hand, show the opposite, with higher levels of depression later on in the "grieving" process. I think this could be due to the way that the whole dating process works. The man is the one who usually "puts himself at risk of rejection" when asking a woman out, and the last thing anyone needs after a break-up is more rejections. So while the men trying to re-establish their lives will accumulate more rejections during the following months, the women get an ego boost every time they're asked out, without having to take that same risk of rejection. For women, this serves as a counterweight to the depression of a break-up and re-establishes self-esteem.
As a society, we need to give men the ability to sa
Point well explained, and taken. Thanks.
You're wrong on both assumptions, and by much. I can take good "gay" jokes too, though. Not that all of them are good, but some are.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
All the jobs you named have greater public exposure, and thus greater risk of someone asking "whatever happened to ...", even if they're kept out of the loop, and the more people you bring into the loop, the more chances for a negative reaction. You can be perfectly passable to the general public, and at ease in your gender, and then one day, it only takes one person who already has a fear of transgenders to make the connection and ruin your job and your self-confidence.
It;s not the same if, for example, someone makes a fuss because you're black or white or red or yellow. Most people haven't gone through years of messy scenes with friends or family because they "should change their skin colour".A parent's negative reaction to a child who identifies as female in order to "get them to man up" just doesn't work on so many levels. Unfortunately it's often only the beginning of a stream of physical abuse from schoolyard bullies and others, so it's no wonder that many transgendered women learn to put on a public persona that is so at odds with who we are.
I'm a transwoman, and whenever I've been to any trans- group events, the proportion of computer folks is almost unnerving! Now, that might just be my biased memory, or that I end up having longer conversations with techies than others, so they're more memorable, but I don't think so. But my suspicion is that techies have an easier time coming to terms with it, because:
So I think there's a strong selection bias, meaning that there might not be more transfolk in technical professions, but the number who have gone public about it is disproportionately high. Which is great for me, because it sure helped!
Yep, spot on. Makes you strong, once you can give it a chance!
"I'm not saying that in anger, just pointing out that you might want to re-read what I actually wrote. I was pointing out that there are still plenty of people who are not ashamed to call a woman "it" if she's got a transsexual past. Not Carlin. I would be astounded and disappointed to learn that he ever did such a thing. "
Then it has absolutely nothing to do with a carlin quote and as such is nothing more than conflating the issue with your own unrelated problems with the world.
"As a signature line, it's making a statement - and not a healthy one. "
as a signature it's making a joke, like any other.
whenever someone gets offended over something idiotic there's always one trivial little difference from every other case in the world that means in this case, this case it's utterly different and their long-winded complaints are more than just ranting about trivialities.
"and many men need to pick up their share of the housework and stop killing their wives and former girlfriends. "
I'll be sure to kill my girlfriend less and continue as the primary housekeeper then.
It might be hard though, with the rampant testosterone surging through my veins and the eternal urges to show everyone my shit and the pressure to piss all over the place.
"that some stereotypes are not based in fact, but are used to attack women, and other stereotypes reflect reality"
Yes, we've already covered this, if you and your friends believe them then they obviously ones which reflect reality, if you don't then they're not and are utterly unacceptable.
There's a time and a place. This was neither, though I'm sure you enjoyed yourself, like usual. Why, I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. But hey, if it will make you happy, pretend this is written all in caps, and me being angry or upset, instead of just shaking my head at how someone can be so eager to show that their opinions are once again worthless :-)
Your statements confuse me a little, for example when you claim that men are killers when men kill... it's a tautology! But it still implies that because men are more likely the killer females are more likely the victim, while the statistics I pointed to show that over 65 percent of the murders are a man killing another man. The fact is that men kill more, but the stereotype that women suffer disproportionately under the aggression of men isn't.
When I talked about anecdotal evidence I meant in regard to that point, most certainly nothing to do with house cleaning. Like the anecdote heard all too often of nightlife incidents involving groups of both males and females where the men are driven to defend the women, often cheered on by them, which sometimes results in one man killing a man from the other group. The women are most certainly involved, but given cultural disposition of men as defenders of the group and their physical strength it's very much more likely to be the man committing the act. This does not prove anything, but places into context a factor as to why men commit more murders. An explanation that men commit more murders because the statics show they commit more murders will not do, and scientific facts like testosterone leading to higher aggression does not explain the whole story. So I am interested in the social, psychological and cultural aspects that also play a role. Hence also the explanation as to why men would culturally be reluctant to ask for directions (I personally don't have that limitation)... to assume it is inherently male is shortsighted to say the least. Feminism proved that a lot of presumed inherently female aspects are stereotypical, why is it so hard for people to understand the same applies to a lot of male gender roles?
I am a firm believer that the sexual revolution did a lot to free women from a lot of stereotypes and expected gender roles. But the revolution is not over yet because men are for the most part still forced into gender roles, and worse they are told they are inherently this way. Have we learned nothing from feminism? For men and women to be truly equal we must also recognize that the same culturally limiting factors that apply to women also apply to men, it's just less obvious if you assume that men rule the world and thus have control over these things... Culture is not decided by a few men, it's all people together creating these roles in an evolutionary fashion, and only be identifying and recognizing this can we change it.
So especially when you have a problem with some things you perceive to be male behavior, attempt to change this not by blaming this on something inherent to the sex... it's so 1950s (just reverse the male-female parts and you'll see that those arguments were exactly the same then). Instead attempt to help give men a chance to change by recognizing that some roles are not inherent to being male. For example: a 'typical' male behavior is to be homophobic, is that inherently male? Hell no! It's only cultural, and specifically cultural conservatism.
As a transwoman, I deeply feared my parents' response (they have this "expectation-based" opinion of me); I didn't fear my friends response (I can talk to them, and if they dump me, they weren't my friends); I fear my associates (at work, frinstance, because I can't talk to them all but they have huge influence on my work); I don't fear (most) strangers, because they rarely have influence and I can look after myself.
It's interesting going through the list of minorities and seeing who they're likely to fear!
A key aspect of being gay or trans is that you fear rejection from everyone, and mostly those dearest to you - you have to find your own way. That's why community groups are so helpful.
You have to be very mature to be able to face these fears and sort them out. This stuff is easily the most complex thing I've had to work out, and (in the words of Randall Thingummy at xkcd) "I’ve spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics"!
As someone who is not well versed in the PC way to describe a transgender person I do not even know if 'transgender man' means formerly male or currently male... it seems ambiguous to me especially given the fact that you can have multiple definitions of what is male, would you point out the gender of the psyche or the gender of the genes? And when do you stop calling a man a man, at the point they dress differently, or at the point they get the surgery and lose their penis, and in the case of Hijra from India it becomes more of a distinct class of men instead of women so can you call them men? It raises questions like that because it's a fairly rare phenomenon, for example: how would you address the even more rare person who had a sex change operation twice (it happened)? The problem is that this is outside of the comfort zone of what is well known for most people (this is also the reason for homophobia I guess), and it's not something you can just look up in standard etiquette books. You must understand that it's not easy for people who aren't insiders to know all the answers and proper ways people want others to talk about them.
Why not just 'man' and when the need to clarify arises 'man born a woman' I wonder?
Perhaps it's because in the Netherlands it's become more acceptable and thus less important to adhere to a strict PC way of talking or writing about it... For example the Wikipedia article about the most famous transsexual dutch person start by stating she was born as a boy, and in the text they use 'she' and 'he' in one sentence... It's a natural way of the language, and the Dutch aren't so uptight about PC-ness. The English version of the article specifically does not mention her being born a boy, and never uses the term 'he'... clearly much more PC, but in the eyes of the Dutch that is just hypocritical and 'forcing people not to talk about the elephant in the room'. When it's normal you can talk about it freely, until that time the strong demand for PC-ness only indicates that it is controversial and not yet regarded as normal and equal to other things people are allowed to talk about...
[citation needed]
"You're arguing for a universe with fewer waffles in it," I said. "I'm prepared to call that cowardice."
The stats have a section where only male/female killings are considered. In fact, it's kind of hard to miss - it's right at the top of the page: Male offender/Female victim 22.7%
Female offender/Male victim 9.6%
The vast majority of the time, it's the woman who is the victim.
Don't you think this says more about "drunks shouldn't have guns"? Being cheered on, even by 1,000 women, is not a rationale to kill someone. "But judge, I couldn't help myself. She made me do it - she was cheering me on." This wouldn't even work for a speeding ticket. If you want to look at the social and cultural aspects, look no further than your gun culture. The US has an out-of-control crime problem, which explains why it has more people in jail than any other country in the world. Anecdotes like the one you describe are a symptom of that. They also have absolutely nothing to do with the ratio between men killing women and women killing men, which is a separate statistic.
A second contributor is laws that encourage murder. The three-strikes law is one such really bad law. "If I get caught this is my 3rd strike, so I have nothing to lose by killing the b*tch." Laws that encourage the killing of witnesses to a crime are dumb. People who vote for politicians who cynically push for such laws are equally dumb. A culture that supports this sort of stupidity via the voting booth, the executive branch, and the courts, is going to be a violent culture, because now both "sides" need to escalate, and when you create a situation where people have nothing to lose, don't be so surprised when they act "rationally" by killing people who could send them to jail for life.
People understand, which is why the "she cheered me on" defense doesn't work. However, just because "a lot of" aspects are stereotypical doesn't invalidate that there is a biological basis for much human behaviour. To say that it can be explained away by culture doesn't work - the differential murder rate between men killing women and women killing men, and the universally higher rates of men as killers, say otherwise. Both sexes have the same "fight or flight" mechanism, but men are by far more likely to fight.
But let's look at other stuff that isn't so violent, but reinforces typical stereotypes. How about shopping? I love shopping, even when I don't buy anything. Guys? They admit that most of them approach it like a military mission - go in, acquire the target, and get out. Why the difference? It can't be entirely cultural when so many different cultures share the same stereotypical behaviour. Another one - shoes. How many pair of shoes does the average man have? 3 Women? it depends on age
And th
Well I don't know about your species, but humans tend to keep their reproductive organs quite a bit lower than between their ears.
As to what to call a woman - you have to first understand that someone only accepts that they have to transition because they are not, in their own eyes, their biological sex. If someone has gotten to the point where they are presenting as a woman in public, referring to them as Madame instead of Sir is the right thing to do. Anything else is just rubbing salt into a nasty wound.
But if in doubt, just ask. She won't bite your head off, if you aren't rude about it. In other words, don't go "So, do we still call you Mr?" That's just mean. Many names have a gender bias - they're more common for one sex. If they used to be known as Mark, and they now ask to be called Marsha, that should tell you enough. In other cases, such as an androgynous name, if you know that they're transitioning to being a woman, then again, use Madame or Miss.
In other words, use the target gender (the one they're aiming for :-). It's just the polite thing to do, and makes everyone's lives less complicated in the long run.
As to whether the English version of the wiki is hypocritical or PC - it's neither. Remember, she has no say in how the article was written. Here's an example. Lynn is referred to throughout the article as "she". It does mention her being born a boy, and her transition, but really, if you read the article, it's a lot less confusing to the reader to do it all with one pronoun.
But this brings up another question - why should a person's previous medical history be germane? You don't see wikipedia articles mention when someone had their appendix removed or corrective eye surgery.
Well, we're talking freely about it, aren't we? And I've certainly talked freely about it with family and friends, and neighbors who wanted to discuss my situation. Then again, I'm lucky - I have 2 big dogs to reassure and protect me. A lot of people can't be so open because of fear of retribution, either on the job or at home or school or in public. That's the unfortunate truth, and it has nothing to do with being politically correct, and everything to do with being actively discriminated against, bullied, assaulted, insulted, etc. Can you blame them for not discussing it so openly? We would all like nothing so much as a climate where we don't have to live in fear that "the other shoe will drop." That's the real 800-pound elephant - the fact that even today, transgenders of all sorts still have real concerns about safety.
It's true that it wasn't my choice to be "outed", but that's water under the bridge. I'm not going to cry about it :-)
I'm not trying to be mean here, just a bit curious. You have put all this money into changing gender. Why would you not use that money to move to a country more accepting of your choice? I see this story all the time, transgender individual suffers left and right, depression etc etc. There are ways to combat it that are far less expensive than the actual transgender process.
Please understand that I do not advocate a defense of 'she made me do it' or anything close to shifting blame. I am trying to point out that the statistics may be misleading since they do not mention accomplices, and given common gender roles when a man and a women are accomplices at the scene of a murder it is likely that the man performs the actual murder and is shown in the graph... (or put the other way around, I consider it a possibility that a lot of those 12% of murders committed by women were committed without a man present). It also does not mean that I think most accomplices are women, it only means that statistics as simple as this can offer a slightly obscured view of the truth. We are only guessing as to why there are more men in the graph...
You make an excellent point with the shoes (interesting statistics also), the biological evolutionary principle of gender roles can indeed be seen in many animal species and should apply to human females just as well. But beside the differences that can be pointed out to exist in the biological sense a lot of other stereotypes are certainly cultural, and although we may be able to explain how this came to be trough cultural evolution. Historically a lot of differences between sexes (that are not physiological) are assumed genetic predispositions in psyche (same goes for race etc.), but turn out to be cultural later on... it's very tricky to properly assess this purely on statistics, even if the statistic clearly shows the difference. It could also mean the gender roles are just stronger than we suspect. So a correct conclusion would be that women tend to take better care of their appearance in general. The shoes and clothes fit that definition, but the specificity of claiming that women have 10x more shoes than man just because they are women is becoming a stereotype. Given a different culture the care women take of themselves could easily come to expression in a different fashion than the shoes (some cultures don't even wear shoes for example).
On the equality part: of course no two people are the same, and there are some inherent differences between men and women, but we are equal in the sense that we are each others peers and deserve the same human rights regardless of gender, sexual preference, or race. I do agree with you that people are taking the 'equal' too literal and deny that there are any differences... We should embrace the differences and especially point out the strong points people have.
You may be right that it's mostly men limiting men at this point, I agree that men in general have not awoken to this realization. It's like I said: the sexual revolution for men has not even started! The transformation and empowerment of women with the rise of feminism is what needs to happen in a way for men. Most men feel obligated to live their life in a very narrow culturally accepted stereotype of a man. Slowly more and more men fight free from this, but resistance is high.
I've experienced this all my life, when I was 4 I liked pink and wore pink clothes and the other children felt obligated to point out it was 'for girls'. When I was older I had long hair, or shorter hair dyed pink (and all kinds of other styles) and I was called girl, gay, and all kinds of other names because of that. I still don't give a shit about what people think about stupid things like clothes or hair, and go to work on my purple-pink bicycle. I've never tried to conform to the accepted male standard, and found that even the slightest deviation will result in idiots feeling the need to make their problems your problem... In my experience men can be really hard about expected male gender types, but women just as well. I dunno, you probably have a much better understanding of things like this, I can only imagine the sort of resistance you may have encountered. I must say I expected some profound insights about both sexes from you, and you certainly have... but it also feels like you feel some resentment toward men. Correct me if I'm wrong (or out of line)
I don't see it as purely medical history... Especially when writing something like a biography referring to a boy as 'she' seems odd. From the perspective of the person who may have known by then that 'he' was actually a 'she' it may make sense, but other people remembering that moment in time remember her as the boy in class, the son, the brother, etcetera, who only later became a woman. It seems like rewriting history when someone perceived from the outside to be a boy is referred to as 'she'. It makes sense and doesn't at the same time so both ways should work depending on source, but especially when something is written from the perspective from an outside source I would prefer the historically correct one as opposed to the personal feeling correct one.
We are talking about the subject freely, that's to your credit. But when people in general become so scared to offend and try to make everyone behave as PC as possible it remains an indication that the subject is 'touchy'. Forcing people to use a PC choice of words makes it a discussion about words, not about the content or topic, and even more it detracts from the question if there is actually intent to insult or cause hurt... that is not caused by a specific word (although admittedly some words may be closely associated with it, but they will fall from grace naturally). This a problem with all PC-craze, not specifically for this topic.
I would like to let you know I am very impressed by the ease you talk about this subject, and would like to thank you for this interesting and enlightening conversation(s). I learned a lot of new things.
The only "cure" for transsexualism is through a sex change. At that point, statistics show that most go on to live a happy life similar to the general population. Of course, that is tempered by whether or not someone really is miswired between their brain and body, whether or not they are passable after their reassignment, etc, and that's where the RLT portion comes in, forcing you to live as your new role for a year or two to try to ensure that it is what you really want.
As far as moving to another country goes, well, that's a bit silly, just like being a single issue voter is. If you're willing to throw away everything you take for granted to get one thing that you think you really want, soon you'll find that you threw away the other things you cared about. Look at free speech issues around the world for example. Would it be worth giving up the very broad standards of free speech in America to, say, emigrate to Britain to get a free sex change while suddenly finding yourself being sued for libel but not being able to use truth as a defense? People always talk about how great it would be to emigrate to somewhere else on the internet, but few people do because there are a lot of trade offs and as much as you might not like an issue or two in your native country, chances are, you tend to agree with the majority of their culture and would find yourself in deep shock elsewhere.
And, FWIW, I haven't transitioned yet, so I've probably spent less on feminine things for myself over the course of my life than your typical slashdotter does on their favorite hobby over a year or two. Should I eventually work up the courage to transition, I'd probably be looking at $100k in expenses... and yet there are even slashdotters that drop that on toys like buying a Tesla Roadster which do little to actually improve their lives.
Because it is offensive to the fags.
A point to note - the statistics of murder involving a man and a woman all require that a man be present :-) The stats I am referring to are strictly for murders where the aggressor and victim are opposite sexes.
There are more men on the "men who killed women or women who killed men" graph because more men have been convicted of killing women than vice versa. That's what the statistic tracks. It is what it is, and when it clearly shows that women are the majority of victims, it means something. But let's look further. 90% of ALL inmates are male. That's something that cannot be brushed aside, or a statistical fluke. Men are more likely to engage in criminal behaviour. Why is irrelevant to the reality, which is that more than 1% of all American males are currently sitting in a jail cell. That's a serious eye-opener, and holds serious implications for the future of the American economy. Right now, warehousing prisoners is a "job growth" area. That's creating the worst types of incentives for "growth."
We don't need a "men's liberation movement". A large part of women's lib was about ending the legal restraints against women - for example, requiring that their husband or a male relative co-sign for a bank account or to administer an estate. Those legal restraints impeded women from having control of their own money. Money is power, so in a relationship, the man, thanks to the laws and customs of the time, had the power. This "women as chattels" view was further perpetuated in law by legalizing violence against wives - a man could not be charged with raping his wife. Consent wasn't required. It was his "right."
Contrast that with the situation today. Women aren't in sole control of men's finances. Rape is still mostly a crime committed by men, against both men and women. It's not like women have some legal right to rape men, and men need to be "liberated." Heck, in the cases where men are sexually assaulted by women, they're mocked by other men - "how can I sign up to be 'raped' by a woman?" Women listening to the same situation don't make fun of it. We've all either been raped or know someone close to us who's been raped. That's not surprising when you know that 25% of all women are victims of sexual assault. To put it in perspective, next time you're in a public place, try to imagine every 4th woman you see having been raped. Now throw in stalking, etc. It kind of boggles the mind, which is one reason it's not discussed much, even amongst women. I remember one conversation where one woman flat-out refused to believe that it was so common - "I don;t know anyone who was raped." Her best friend said "Yes, you do. I don't talk about it because I'm ashamed." And 25% is the lower bounds - it may be much higher - even 50%. Fortunately, the stigma is disappearing as we learn to name it and shame it - that it's the perps, not the victims, who are shameful.
But why did it take so long for something that is so logical as not blaming the woman for being raped? It wasn't because women wanted to be sexually assaulted (despite mens' claims that "she really wanted it" or "she's a c***tease so she deserved it", or "she was dressed for it" or "it'll straighten her out"), but
If you find it confusing, can you imagine how confusing it is to us trying to sort it out in our own minds in a society that really hasn't come to grips with it? It's one of the reasons why, unaddressed, people will mutilate or even kill Society and the system of logic you've been taught both say you're the a particular gender, and when you look in a mirror, or at your body, something's not right. But there's so much pressure not to acknowledge this, to talk about it, to try to "work around it", to "man up" (now that's one concept that's doomed from the start), to deny it rather than admit it.
Still, it leaks out to others in various ways. Growing up, I was the target of all the local bullies, but probably the worst bully was my best friend, who turning on me for no reason, harassing me for months, then beating me up in the schoolyard after class in front of everyone. The girls finally stepped in and stopped it. Then you have the dynamics in the family, which I won't go into here, except to say that fathers tend to punish what they see as a "sissy".
So you go through life developing a very good cover, because you've literally had it beaten into you that otherwise, there will be painful consequences. You learn to blend in, you learn to mimic, even to exaggerate, your biological gender ... and that just leads to even more inner conflict. In the wee still hours of the night, or at random times during the day, you see what you're doing to yourself, you know you're a traitor to who you really are, but what to do? And of course, since you really aren't that person, you can't express those parts of your personality that show the real you. You can be nice to someone, but not too nice - that might give things away. You can be upset - but not too upset, or you'll look like a sissy. Or you can express anger as a guy would, and then afterward think "This is sooo f*ed up. I don't want to do this. I hate it! I don't want to be angry at this person - I just want them to understand that they really hurt me." But that's not "gender-appropriate." And neither is getting teary-eyed during certain scenes in a movie. Or not being able to watch stuff like Silence of the Lambs because just the thought makes my skin crawl. Or trying not to have a good cry, even though sometimes that's the only thing that works.
Eventually what happens is the inevitable - it becomes too much to sustain, and the prospect of the rest of you life like that is too bleak to accept. You've done everything to try to conform, you've squished it down into a little box in a far-away locked up area of your mind, thrown away the key, walled it off, and yet, like an Edger Allen Poe story, you can still hear it. You can still see it. It's you.
It's hard for people who haven't gone through it to relate, and that's understandable. Words really cannot capture that sinking chest-clenching fear and despair of having to continue to live like that. Being so up-tight about it that you don't even dare hug anyone because it might be seen as gender-inappropriate. That's not a healthy way to live. That's why we transition, why seek gender reassignment, and why it really isn't appropriate to refer to a woman with a "gender-challenged past" (that's one way to look at it) as a guy, and what the original poster was trying to say.
We live in a society that is supposed to value who you are, not what you are. That's why it's more appropriate to refer to a transsexual in their current gender, even when referring to pre-transition events. The mind never changed. If the person is a woman now, it's because she was always, as a person and a human being, a woman.
Thank you. I always enjoy an intelligent con
I'm the TG poster from elsewhere in the thread
Still, it leaks out to others in various ways. Growing up, I was the target of all the local bullies, but probably the worst bully was my best friend, who turning on me for no reason, harassing me for months, then beating me up in the schoolyard after class in front of everyone. The girls finally stepped in and stopped it. Then you have the dynamics in the family, which I won't go into here, except to say that fathers tend to punish what they see as a "sissy".
So you go through life developing a very good cover, because you've literally had it beaten into you that otherwise, there will be painful consequences. You learn to blend in, you learn to mimic, even to exaggerate, your biological gender ... and that just leads to even more inner conflict. In the wee still hours of the night, or at random times during the day, you see what you're doing to yourself, you know you're a traitor to who you really are, but what to do? And of course, since you really aren't that person, you can't express those parts of your personality that show the real you. You can be nice to someone, but not too nice - that might give things away. You can be upset - but not too upset, or you'll look like a sissy. Or you can express anger as a guy would, and then afterward think "This is sooo f*ed up. I don't want to do this. I hate it! I don't want to be angry at this person - I just want them to understand that they really hurt me." But that's not "gender-appropriate." And neither is getting teary-eyed during certain scenes in a movie. Or not being able to watch stuff like Silence of the Lambs because just the thought makes my skin crawl. Or trying not to have a good cry, even though sometimes that's the only thing that works.
All very true, though some of our particulars are different... I was beat up as a kid; I heard the "walk it off" type speeches; even in my 30s, I still have a hard time talking to women I'm interested in while my real guy friends, even the nerdy ones, shed their trepidation years ago; I have a hard time with any type of physical intimacy, even casual hugs or pats on the back; I've studied human interaction so I could learn to mimic the things I was generally supposed to do so as to not give myself away; I did very alpha male things to masquerade who I am, like playing football, cliff diving, hunting, and even less intense stuff that are still male dominated like automotive repair, home remodeling, etc. My every instinct is to mask myself from society for the sake of self preservation, though, as you also express, I can't hide from who I am... and, like the Tell-Tale Heart, I can't escape from her... she constantly beckons to be let out. Sometimes, in ways that I can control, like piercing my ears, and other times, in ways that I can't, like my nurturing personality.
Thank you. I always enjoy an intelligent conversation. However, it's actually not that easy - it's like what writers say - "It's easy to write. You sit down at the keyboard and open a vein ..." You might not believe it, but the woman who posted the original comment, even anonymously, did so with a sense of trepidation. Any time you expose yourself, you take a risk. There's the risk that someone could have seen her use the computer, then seen the post; the risk that someone who knows her but not her past will look at the information and put 2 and 2 together, the risk that the "post anonymously" checkbox gets accidentally unclicked after hitting "Preview", the risk that a copy will be in the cache.
I've posted to this thread from a computer I rarely use, using a browser and OS that have never logged into slashdot precisely so I don't make that type of slip. Someone at slashdot could look up my IP address and correlate it to my account, but I hope that they wouldn't. Likewise, I hope someone doesn't see some type of correla
It's easier now than it was, but I don't know if it will ever be seen by the general public as "no big deal." A lot depends on individual interactions. If they see you're at ease with yourself, then they're more likely to be accepting, even if there are incongruities. As an example, we'll always see fund-raisers for cancer and heart disease, but I don't see the public ever going for a fund-raiser for people who need help with gender reassignment or all the other concomitant "stuff" that goes along with it.
Still ... that might be a way to change a few ignorant people's minds (I'm thinking of two in particular, nobody on slashdot, who both trivialize and don't "get it"). Maybe I should give it some thought. Oops, make it 4 or 5. No, actually, now that I think of it it's more like 10 ... shoot, make that 15. Okay, I'm going to stop counting - it's too depressing :-) (the smiley is because, while it is depressing and disappointing, I refuse to buy into their views.)
I would have to agree with the poster who suggested you get into contact with someone locally, just to talk. It doesn't have to be a health-care professional, and it doesn't have to cost anything (I know how hard things are financially in this economy). There are community-based services, and they have to keep things confidential or they will lose both their funding and their credibility, never mind the lawsuits.
To take Churchill out of context - "Jaw, jaw is better than war, war." Finding someone to talk to is a lot better than being constantly at war with yourself.
It's easier now than it was, but I don't know if it will ever be seen by the general public as "no big deal." A lot depends on individual interactions. If they see you're at ease with yourself, then they're more likely to be accepting, even if there are incongruities.
Of the 8 people I've confided in, most didn't think it was that big of a deal. One friend, who knew someone else that had just come out as TG to his wife, in particular helped to push me down the road quite a bit, encouraging me to wear "male acceptable" earrings, helping me buy makeup and showing me how to apply it, etc... alas, she met a guy that was threatened with how much her and I talked, and to keep their relationship, he forced her to betray me, with her ultimately telling him I was "just a tranny" so he had nothing to worry about. Whether or not her and my friendship ever developed into more, the "just a tranny" bit exposed her true feelings on the matter, especially since she betrayed my friendship to placate some guy that was and continues to simply use her (he strings her along through her own insecurities and she complies because it's better to pretend to be loved than to feel alone).
My ex-gf, who after a couple years of separation, wanting to rekindle a relationship with me still doesn't seem to quite get how I said our relationship can't really work now that I've mostly accepted who I am so I can't live the lie forever... She wants me to move in with her to play husband and father, thinking that my inner self will always be happy if I'm allowed to be her when nobody else is home. I used to think I could do that and, in fact, it used to be the bargain I made with myself, but I can't keep lying to myself now that I've admitted to myself that I am what I am.
As far as acting at ease, it's very much true... I used to post on a forum dealing with men that wear heels in public and they said that, so long as you act like nothing is wrong and you aren't blatant, the vast majority of people won't even notice. It's true. The hard part is not being self-conscious, especially since I know it's a strong hint that there is something different about me that would cause others to examine me more closely (ditto for wearing a pair of diamond studs or clear polish in public). Needless to say, since my parents wouldn't be able to handle my secret, I keep it all far away from them. I'm honestly surprised my mom hasn't noticed something over the years though, since they do have a tendency to notice every little thing like that (and while my earring holes are deliberately kept small, they are out in the open and there are enough to be noticeable for anyone that is looking for them).
Still ... that might be a way to change a few ignorant people's minds (I'm thinking of two in particular, nobody on slashdot, who both trivialize and don't "get it"). Maybe I should give it some thought. Oops, make it 4 or 5. No, actually, now that I think of it it's more like 10 ... shoot, make that 15. Okay, I'm going to stop counting - it's too depressing :-) (the smiley is because, while it is depressing and disappointing, I refuse to buy into their views.)
It's a very complex issue that involves a lot of things which causes people to reevaluate their own self image and perceptions of the world. It's easier to deliberately not understand than it is for most people to want to wrap their head around it. Just the issues of gender and sexual orientation and how they aren't related can mix up even well meaning people, including some in our own GBLT community that you would think would know better...
I would have to agree with the poster who suggested you get into contact with someone locally, just to talk. It doesn't have to be a health-care professional, and it doesn't have to cost anything
I'm pretty good at psycho-analyzing myself to dig through my issues... I think most of us have to be in order to not
Check out the actress Tula, from the James Bond movie, "For Your Eyes Only". She is a typical XY woman who suffers from complete androgen insensitivity.
Again, there are a lot of people in the world. Women come in every shape size and appearance. Some transgendered women look rather masculine, the impact of testosterone can be truly difficult to hide. Those are the transgendered women you can clock. You have no idea about the ones you can't because you wouldn't notice the ones you can't. They would never show up on your radar.
As for voice. That's a much harder thing to hide, however, there are speech therapists and even surgical solutions. As I said above, the one's you clock are the one's who have been scarred by testosterone, and don't have the funds or resources to fix the mess.
Those with the resources, you aren't going to notice, because their appearance and sound won't be a clue to anything being out of the ordinary.
It was only a few of decades ago that rental signs in london would read "no cats, no dogs, no irish". It's not something of hundreds of years ago, plenty of living irish people experienced no shortage of racism and discrimination and the effects are still being felt.
Given that at least a quarter of the entire UK population (including non-caucasians) have some Irish ancestry, including myself, and a tenth are at least one quarter Irish I think that's probably not true. I've certainly never seen any evidence of it and searching for it in google doesn't bring up any references since the mid-19th century, a time when London would have seen a huge influx of Irish immigrants due to the famine and with it the friction that is often seen when one community is suddenly pushed together with another. Even then I wouldn't imagine it was widespread - just blown up to seem that way.
Sorry to post this 4 days too late, but unchecked statements like that spread bad feeling unnecessarily
http://xkcd.com/386/
yea, that's true - "transgender" is a rather big blanket, although among the people I know, ' trans woman' is usually short for ' transsexual woman' (non-op, pre-op, and post-op) rather than ' transgender woman'
The way I heard that quote was, "Gender is what is between your ears and sex is what is between your legs."
I see what you're saying, I just don't like to exclude as, among transvestites, there's a variety of different thoughts and attitudes. There are those that are perfectly fine with the way they are, and of course there are those who are afraid of or can't afford the hormones and operations and the like. I figure that since I'm not TG, I really have no say in it, so I just respect what the person prefers.
You know, it kind of bothers me that the comments by those bothered by the signature this thread refers to are all scored zero or lower. I can see how the first is labelled off-topic, but everyone else at least has a positive score. What the fuck, people? Sure, I defended the signature, but what's wrong with these other comments?
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
We don't need a "men's liberation movement". A large part of women's lib was about ending the legal restraints against women [...] Those legal restraints impeded women from having control of their own money. [...] Contrast that with the situation today. Women aren't in sole control of men's finances. Rape is still mostly a crime committed by men, against both men and women. It's not like women have some legal right to rape men, and men need to be "liberated." [...]
This is a stereotype that is typical for what is commonly accepted, that "men don't need liberation or equal rights since they already have equal rights in law and are much less victims than women". If you read about Men's rights and specifically Masculism (especially on the page of Masculism there are some very valid concerns listed that are often trivialized). In the legal system men are often discriminated against and contrary to their constitutional right assumed guilty until proven innocent. This happens especially in the case of divorce where men disproportionately get no custody, have say about their children basically lose both their children and their money. This is the reason for the existence of the Fathers' Rights Movement. Also interesting to note is that some lawyers will advise women to accuse their husbands of crimes like beating, child molestation or rape exactly because they know the men won't have a chance to defend themselves and will be presumed guilty. The statistics differ but indicate that a large percentage of women who accuse men of rape just lie and are almost always believed. Statistics from the FBI indicate at least 8% is obviously proven to be false in court, but when asked more than 40% admits to false accusations, in college this is even over 50%... (False Rape Accusations Are Not Rare, Prevalence of False Rape Claims). A reason for the shift in burden of proof to the man is that it's often the word of one person against the other, and some people (feminists) claimed that it was 2% false accusation at most so this is justified. I still believe men are more likely to rape another person, but a women who was raped is treated with respect, is taken seriously and gets help, while a man who is raped... well have you ever heard a man admit that he was raped? I know someone, he was raped by other men and people joke about it (I'm ashamed to admit that I have participated in this at one time)... But the thing people really joke about even to the point that people who do manage to put themselves over it and go the the police are sent home by laughing cops is men who are raped by women. It does happen, but rarely does a man tell and even more rarely does he file charges (Rape often isn't a crime when women do it - very interesting but shocking article). The idea that men can't be raped by women is ingrained in our culture, and it's extremely sexist. It trivializes a terrible crime... It's right up there with the argument formerly used by men that 'she said no, but actually wanted it'.
Equality of men and women only works if the same standards and definitions are applied equally to men and women, especially in law! Women made a stand for equal rights but the harsh battle they had to endure to get there resulted in an overzealous appr
The problem with custody is serious, but it also has its' roots in the patriarchal structure - men went to work and the only purpose of women was to cook the meals, raise the kids, and keep house. That being the case, when the couple splits, what do you do? It's getting better nowadays with women working, so that often custody is shared, and it should be the default. Just because a couple can't behave like adults with each other is no reason not to behave like adults with respect to the children.
As for the false rape claims, yes, there are unscrupulous lawyers, and one of the things we have to do is make no-fault divorce the ONLY grounds for divorce. This way, the judge doesn't want to hear about who slept with who, he just wants to hear that there's been a fair division of assets, and that the best interests of the children are reflected in any agreement. No-fault is the way to get rid of a lot of the man-baiting that goes on in court. Push for it. It works. It's been the only grounds for divorce here for decades. Critics say "it makes divorce too easy" - we have no-fault marriage, maybe we should make marriage harder (marriage IS the # 1 cause of divorce :-)
I would like to point out that for every woman who falsely cries rape, there's another who never says a thing. You'll only hear about it when there's a crisis involving the perp being charged with another rape, or something else, and even then they don't want to talk about it. And this applies equally to both sexes - it's not just women, even though women outnumber men as victims, and men are the offenders in many more cases, towards both sexes.
Yes, blacks are over-represented in jails as well. The justice system needs major reforms, including ending the war on the US Citizen. Decriminalizing behaviour that should be treated as a social, not criminal, concern would empty a lot of jails, save billions, not burden people with criminal records, remove a major source of funding for organized crime as well as a source of official corruption, and allow us to try to educate people (because prison is not about rehabilitation).
Yes, women are taken seriously ... when they come forward. But most of the time, any victim of a violent crime (of either sex) usually just wants it to go away. And of course if the perp is in the family, it gets really ugly, with all sorts of nasty accusations directed at the victim. As a thought experiment - being gay or lesbian is now socially acceptable - do you have the guts to pretend you are, and "come out" for just one day? How much more someone who is the victim of a violent crime. Most want it to go away, but they're also full of anger - at the perp, at themselves for not being able to avoid it or stop it, and at not having the courage to come forward. It can really eat you up inside.
On another topic - Yes, men and women can both be promiscuous - but the stats show that it's relatively fewer women. Experiments with prairie voles have proven that this behaviour is governed in mammals by one hormone. It's also been shown that men, when in long-term close contact with the same woman, have a change in t
So has any of this faux sensitivity gotten you laid yet?
Is it bigoted to point out the truth, or is it bigoted to willfully ignore the truth because it points out that men continue to do less than their fair share?
Is it bigoted to point out a biological basis for some of these stereotypes, such as men thinking about sex more often because of the influence of testosterone on the brain, as proven by cross-gender testosterone treatments for various diseases? Or that men are more likely to be promiscuous because of a specific hormone, and that prolonged presence around the same woman eventually reduces production of that hormone (so that there is a biological basis for the stereotypes of men who are away from their wives for prolonged periods being more likely to cheat, as well as the "pussy-whipped" label)? This is hard science. That it validates a stereotype that is uncomplimentary to men is not my fault. There are also true stereotypes about women, some of which I list below. Ignoring them, either because you are offended by the truth, or because it's not the "new PC", is silly. We should learn from them, and maybe learn to laugh at ourselves a bit more often.
Also, you outright lie when you state "Your attitude is akin to that of feminists who argue that men accused of rape don't deserve anonymity in even if they are actually innocent- you want your rights, you want people to treat you with respect, but you show absolutely no respect for others." Please get real. Nowhere have I given any indicator that I want people's civil rights abridged based on gender. Pointing out that common stereotypes exist, and that they often have either a cultural or biological basis, has nothing to do with your statement about any supposed "attitude" or "views" that you imagine I have. There is no connection, and to try to make one is dishonest.
As I said, other stereotypes cut the other way, and are equally valid. Women take more time in the bathroom, in part because we use the bathroom for more than just the obvious facilities. Womens bathrooms are more crowded in part because we bring the crowd with us. When's the last time you saw a man say "I'm going to the bathroom" and seen other guys go "Good idea. I'll go with you?" Women go to the bathroom in groups so we can talk without the guys around, and to leave the guys space to talk a bit more freely. It's a social convention that works to the advantage of both genders, but one that only women can trigger, because men are afraid that doing the same would look gay - many men are deathly afraid at some level that someone will identify them as gay, despite their protestations that they are gay-friendly. They say they're gay-friendly, but two guys kissing still creeps them out, even though two women kissing turns them on.
The same with body image. The stereotype that women are much more likely to be worried about weight ("Does this dress make me look fat?") has a basis in fact - it's mostly women who have anorexia nervosa or bulemia, not men. A woman of normal weight who gains 5 pounds is going to be more impacted than a man in the same situation - and not only because wonen's clothes are more sensitive to weight gain or loss.
Ditto for clothes. We do take up more than our share of closet space. Statistics show we have several times the number of shoes, so the stereotype of women going shoe-shopping has a basis in fact. Our dressers are bigger than mens because we have more "stuff", like bras, nylons, etc., than men do. We have more variety in clothes - example - men have pants and shirts and suits. We have pants, tops (in a much larger variety of styles), skirts, dresses, purses, etc. So the stereotype that "women hog the closet space