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Transgendered Folks Encountering Document/Database ID Hassles
An anonymous reader writes "Most of us hear the equivalent of 'let me bring up your record' several times a week or month when dealing with businesses and government agencies; sometimes there's a problem, but clerks are accustomed to dealing with changes in street address, phone numbers, company affiliation, and even personal names (after marriage). But what about gender? Transgendered folks are encountering embarrassing moments when they have to explain that their gender has changed from 'M' to 'F' or vice versa. While there are many issues involved in discrimination against transgendered individuals, I have to confess that the first thing that came to my mind was the impact on database design and maintenance."
I think this entire situation is so unique an interesting.
Nothing has really changed...
Binary gender
(seriously, a number of places I've seen that track gender do it with a boolean)
I used to work for the government of Canada at an agency which I cannot name. I ran into an awkward situation when I was speaking with a woman who had recently gotten married to another woman and as I was putting the info in, the software I was using told me there was an error that needed to be corrected before proceeding. I was both embarrassed and furious. I could not believe our software was not written with same sex couples in mind and I apologized to her and kept on going with the rest of call. I doubt this issue has been fixed yet, this happened about a year ago.
Make the field optional. In addition to male and female, add both and neither. Also, review the reason you even keep that information. It may not be necessary at all.
Why does the gubbmint need to know what our parts are? Unless it involves public health or medical care, it's irrelevant unless you live in Big Brother land.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I work with a transgender dude at work and he LOVES this shit. That is the main reason (s)he did it, he wants a LOT of attention.
He is a lot of fun though, he still have beard growth so when he is lazy and cant be bothered to shave he looks a riot! Sometime he comes to work dressed in his old man clothes and claims he is then a transvestite! xD
BTW. Their gender has NOT changed, only their appearance.
Do you have testicles?
Have you ever had testicles?
Please check M if either of these questions are Yes
Databases are annoying, as no-one really models gender changing over time (most glaring to me in the medical industry, where I work). That said, i'd much rather see something done about the reactions of people, rather than the contents of databases. I now live 600 miles from my hometown, because I got tired of being physically attacked for being myself in public. Show me how changing a database table will turn around a truck full of beer 'buzzed' rednecks, and i'm all game.
Anonymous, for all the wrong reasons. I'd rather post as myself, but I've learned not to be honest in public, unless I want death threats. Thanks for the 5 minutes of attention, but we've got trouble all day.
Here everyone gets a "central person register number" at birth, comprised of the birth date and 4 check digits, the last one odd for male even for female, changing a name form john to johanna isn't such a big issue but getting a new new CPR number is not so easy
Recently there was the problem that some government database would only accept two CPR numbers of different sex as parents
Gender indifferent.
... we have a lot of more important problems to work on.
The real problem is that the gender is stored in the database. Apart from medical databases, there are no good reasons (imho) to store the gender of a person. The only even remotely useful reason would be to identify the person (to track kidnapped people or criminals), but cross-dressing has existed long before gender reassignment surgery was even possible.
Well, the other reason is to discriminate against some gender. And if you absolutely want to discriminate, just put unusual people in the currently most discriminated category (which I guess is F in most countries). That works both for positive and negative discrimination.
.. this is an extension of a political agenda.. Politics is the same everywhere, some group of people trying to find a lever to power. Subject is "No Way" meaning no way give in to slippery slope arguments that are backed by a political will agenda by an extreme minority.
Be Unique! Be Free of Harassment - yes!
but collective will for political power, No Way.
Now that's what I call a vocal minority.
Who the hell voted this up?
The reason why it's embarrassing is because trans people are still treated like crap by a large portion of society and we'd rather not have our private lives paraded around in front of others so that we can be treated like a fucking circus exhibit. That's why.
Besides, for most things you don't even NEED to know our gender.
I can understand the database keeping track of a salutation like Mr/Ms/Miss/Mrs/Dr/Rev/etc. And a salutation can of course change, a Miss can easily become a Dr or Mrs.
The status of M/F doesn't usually seem necessary for customer service or governments, as using personal pronouns can be ambiguous or unnecessary. But the salutation can be a convenient, comfortable and respectful way to address a person on the phone.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Oh noes, some freaks might be slightly uncomfortable explaining the surgery they claim to be proud of. Quick, call the whaaaaaambulance!
Speaking of which ever watch Family Guy and notice that Peter Griffin's chin looks like a scrotum with two testicles in it?
I presume you'll be fine with the doctors refusing to help you when you get struck down with some rare form tropical disease then?
A problem being suffered by a minority is still a problem.
This illustrates how discrimination is embedded in our society. We want to know details about someone (gender) so that we can assume other things (entitlement to maternity leave, say). But this supports treating people differently. The entitlement should be that anyone who gives birth or (or perhaps adopts) a baby is entitled to the leave. No need to identify gender.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
. But what about gender? Transgendered folks are encountering embarrassing moments when they have to explain that their gender has changed from 'M' to 'F' or vice versa.
Transgendered folks are still having to explain to people like the original poster that 'M' and 'F' designate sex, not gender. There's a wide variety of reasons why a person's sex needs to be recorded, at least medically. A transgendered woman will have different medical needs than a non-transgendered woman, and the same for men. But for some reason, despite research going back over fifty years now, we still idiotically only have one field, with two options.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Hmm, on second thought gender is actually a fairly poorly defined concept in medical terms. We tend to classify people based on whether they come equipped with a slot or a dongle, but that's just the most obvious marker, and doesn't necessarily correlate well with several other biological gender properties (as hilighted not-so-recently by that African female olympic runner)
I suppose a more accurate measure would be a floating point value indicating the degree and polarity of genderdness, but that would still have trouble distinguishing asexuals and hermaphrodites. Perhaps two semi-independent values indicating degree of maleness and femaleness? I doubt anyone would want to get a thorough medical exam just to be able to put a number in a box though, much less have any particular desire to share that data. And even if we could formulate the tests I imagine there could be significant personal and sociological fallout from quantifying such a thing on a wide basis, and not necessarily much benefit.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If it is an Identity database, then gender matters. If it is a medical database, it matters. If its a customer database, it does not matter
If you don't want that, then don't turn yourself into a circus attraction. These people are mentally disturbed. Not only are we not getting them the assistance they need, we are absolutely encouraging them to mutilate themselves based on their delusions, and trying to force everyone else to think it's a genetic imperative and indulge them in every way possible.
Database should have support for non-boolean Sex field anyway:
M
F
Y
N
It is not a choice. It's who someone is. A lot of people feel like they're not in either one of the two "Gender" categories.
If for any reason, someone is trans-gendered it should be made as easy as possible. There's already enough bigotry and phobia out there making their (and our) lives miserable.
The SSA has now formalised their new arrangements recently to reflect on recent developments and have dropped requirements for surgery from their process [ http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/06/14/social-security-removes-surgical-requirement-gender-marker-change ]
While I may not fully understand why it happens, I try my best to make trans folk feel as comfortable as I can. When you live with someone who has faced all the discrimination, sat through the tears or seen the pain in their eyes just for trying to be something they hate less than the alternative, you'd be slightly more understanding.
Trans people are people too.
Moreover, why is this even posted on Slashdot? In what bizzaro universe is news for the sexually indeterminate considered 'news for geeks' or 'stuff that matters'?
The increasing number of stories on slashdot completely immaterial to anyone but a miniscule few makes me wonder whether the website I once used to enjoy visiting has jumped the shark completely into the sea of irrelevance.
What I understand even less is that my gender needs to be noted in most databases anyway. There are still rules saying that as a male I can only marry a female (which for me works well), so I guess the government needs to know so that they can stop me pissing off their god by marrying someone of the same sex. And maybe my insurance company needs to know so they can better charge me according to my risk. But the various utility companies don't need to know, and neither does my bank. A title (Mr/Ms/Lord/Lady/Dr/Comrade etc) or something might be required which would hint at gender but that would be about it.
Well, yeah.. Instead of taking their crappy self image out on their bodies, maybe they should get with reality? If you're male, you're male.. if you're female, you're female. If your genes are fucked up, your genes are fucked up. If you mutilate yourself because of that, one, you're not fooling anyone, and two, you end up being a freakshow to both genders.
Who the hell voted this up?
It's voted up because it brought up some good points, which I'll restate:
Don't forget File_Not_Found
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
XY = Male ... XX = Female
I imagine you're part of the "pray the gay away" crowd.
Just because you think it's a mental disorder, and that they are circus freaks, and that they are delusional, and that they are mutilating themselves, doesn't mean it's so. All it does is show that you are an insensitive and ignorant asshole.
Transgender people are born transgender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism#Biological-based_theories
But what would I know, I'm only trans myself.
Go and cisplain somewhere else you vile ignorant prick.
"It goes with the territory", I was told in a different situation. Sometimes, like a transgender situation, being questioned about gender discrepancies is just part of the situation. The person in the first linked story didn't make a clean break--she did not change her gender identity on her drivers license. Seems like an oversight on her part but there are good business to correctly identify your customer. The car salesperson appropriately asked about the discrepancy--it was not discrimination just a good business practice. Can you imagine how the owner of the business (a car dealership in the first linked story) would react to employees not correctly identifying a test-driver?
Hi, I can insult you too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have no problem with races, sex, political or religion bias, homosexual and many other stuff, but transgenders? Those guys have a serious mental health issues to begin with. I have no moral trouble laughing at their stupid decision.
Computer software "engineers" strike again. "OMG, people can't change gender, so obviously we should filter out these erroneous attempts to change it."
Reminds me of the "only letters and numbers should be in addresses" PITA that gets me every time I try to order something online. Apparently most computer programmers have never heard of a "1/2" address. At least a few weeks ago, walmart.com wasn't accepting 1/2 addresses. The social security administration's web site wasn't accepting "1/2" in address changes a few years ago. So I went into the office to change it, and told them about how I couldn't do it online, and they told me that a few weeks earlier they weren't even able to update such addresses on their computers in the office. For years, ordering from one particular web site caused my packages to "419 1/2" to arrive with two labels on the box, one which read "419 12" and the other which read "41912." It's a miracle the damn things ever came to my house.
If only computer programmers could get it through their fucking skulls that they don't need to filter every field for invalid characters. ...but then, I guess they probably do. They're probably writing shitty SQL code that needs to escape any special characters and so they figure it's easier to just filter it out anything they don't believe people should be typing anyway than to use methods that don't require data to be escaped.
Gender? Words have gender. People have sex.
for legal purposes, if someone starts off one gender are they always legally considered that gender or does gender altering surgeries change your legal gender.
http://interserver.net/
Chopping off your privates does not change 'X' & 'Y' chromosomes. They're *not* transgendered.
How is it substantially different from getting a boob or nose job? We pander to people's dissatisfactions with their bodies left, right, and center, what's one more indulgence?
And it's not like gender is a two-state classification to begin with, for all that we like to pretend it's fully determined by what's between your legs (and even by that measure there are still a few individuals who are either both or neither). Physical gender is actually the combination of several largely independent biological properties, so if you could somehow measure your "maleness" and "femaleness" the two numbers would not necessarily bear any relationship to each other. In fact the discrepancies can get so extreme that there are occasionally people born whose physical gender is actually at odds with their genetic gender - sometimes puberty can trigger at least a partial transformation (I seem to remember reading about a south-american villiage where this is actually not uncommon - some promiscuous ancestor several generations back with an interesting genetic anomaly), but some people only discover the discrepancy when getting a genetic test for unrelated reasons.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Hey guys I know what I could add to this already shitty thread, a political jab directed at Obama!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No offense, but being transgendered does not automatically make you an authority on the origins of transexualism ( just as being human does not in itself make one an expert on the origins of humanity. )
The degree to which transgender people are born transgender is quite an open question, and there is currently not a whole lot of strong evidence to support that claim (as reflected in the wikipedia article you linked to -- evidence of genetic contributions is scant, and differences in brain structure cannot indicate innateness). Most likely transgenderism involves a complex interaction of genetic, epigenetic, hormonal, developmental, psychological and social factors.
In some sense I understand why transexual people and gay people (the majority of whom in my experience seem to be committed to the idea that sexual orientation is innate) want this to be the case -- we have good societal analogies for a class of people who are innately different gaining equal status. But in the long run the case for equal rights and humane treatment should probably separate itself from this question, which is purely scientific and far from settled. If the case for equal rights is built upon such an assumption, it may fall like a house of cards as science progresses, and the fact is that we should treat people humanely regardless of the origins of their condition.
XY = Male ... XX = Female
What if you're mixed? There are XX males and XY females. XXY and XYY are also possible. Sometimes twins are conceived, but one absorbs the other. It's not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Supposedly this is more than made up for by the fact they can live the rest of their life how they feel they should be.
Maybe. There are people that do regret it. If you do, there's no magic reset available. On this earth you will never fully be again what you once were.
Are sex change operations justified?
Sex changes are not effective, say researchers
'I will never be able to have sex again. Ever'
But what worries other psychiatrists is the mounting evidence that surgery may not actually improve the lives of those who feel they were born with the wrong body. A review of more than 100 international studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham found there was no scientific evidence that surgery was effective and, in many cases, patients were left feeling more distressed. Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University — which housed one of the pioneer gender clinics — no longer performs sex-change surgery due to such concerns.
A recent British review found suicide rates of up to 18 per cent among people who had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Doctors from London's Portman Clinic say they see many patients who feel trapped in "no-man's land" after surgery, finding themselves with a body which is no longer recognisable as male or female. Psychotherapy, the experts believe, may have saved them from such a fate but few gender clinics offer it. -- more
Long-term follow-up of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery
It's a difficult issue for all concerned.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Are we going to cater to everyone with mental illness this way?
To the biologically illiterate AC:
47,XXX
48, XXXX
49 XXXXY syndrome
49, XXXXX
Klinefelter's syndrome
Turner syndrome
XX gonadal dysgenesis
XX male syndrome
XXYY syndrome
XYY syndrome
I'm surprised at all the bigotry here on Slashdot. I hope you guys get a chance to know a transgendered person at some point, it might change your attitudes. I have, and it totally changed my misunderstandings on the subject. I suppose it is natural to be unbelieving in things which seem foreign to our way of thinking, but even if you cannot accept the idea right now, at least give people the benefit of the doubt rather than spew your ignorance as if it were facts. Why not have a look and see attitude? You might be surprised. I feel lucky to have met the transgendered persons I have known in my life, I hope you get the chance.
The level of ignorance is astounding for a site of supposedly intelligent people.
Comments like this make me proud to have had you on my "foes" list for a good long time. You're going to die. Hopefully your place is taken up by someone more open minded, more sympathetic, and more understanding. No, I'm not a transgendered person. I see them as mentally ill, certainly, but I don't see that as a bad thing - just a thing that they are and of no concern of mine. They don't deserve pity, they don't deserve extra attention, they don't deserve anything special - they deserve to be treated as individuals who are judged by their deeds.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
really? you cant think of one good reason?? perhaps a medical issue that only hits men or only hits women?? i mean just because you cut off your dick, you are still a dude.
I believe his point was that the surgery was optional. That's a tough one to argue against and while I appreciate your sentiment I'm not entirely certain that it applies. As you can probably tell (if you make the effort, which is doubtful and that's not a comment against you but rather an observation of reality) you'll see my posts are supportive and understanding. Your desire to lash out is neither commendable or necessary. The surgery to change one's gender is elective and shouldn't be a source of embarrassment.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I know exactly how they feel. The puzzled stares... The uncomfortable questions... It's gnarly.
I suspect it is a database tie-in that makes it suitable (according to some) here on Slashdot. I agree that it isn't enough of a tie-in to really belong but it is hardly a new thing and we have the option of leaving should we want to. You're also free to submit better stories so you have choices up to, and including, leaving. I have, of course, elected to remain but that's my choice. You, on the other hand, are just another AC who won't be missed and who has anything they say mixed with too much noise to be considered relevant to many folks here.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Seriously? The choice for most of us is to transition and embrace the way our heads our wired or suicide. I don't see a choice there. I didn't have a choice. I didn't choose to have my marriage explode either. Our society is about gender binaries, Male or Female, for the number of people who fit someplace outside of that precise box, having documentation and paperwork that does NOT match their presentation can be crippling in this binary society where people think that if looks don't match that M/F field, then something is very wrong automatically.
How would you like to hit a TSA checkpoint and almost be denied in the ability to pass beyond the checkpoint to catch your flight because your ID says your Male and you have breasts and look like a Woman? Or better yet, when you present your identification, and people completely change their interaction with you, their tone of speaking, and begin using word that remind you of the pain that you endured.
Preventing the ability to change documentation is not only for people that are transgendered, its for everyone else who has to see/interact with that identity information. It is inhumane to both parties to prevent the ability to correct the information.
TFS says they encounter embarassing moments when they have to explain why they changed from M to F. Why would this be embarrassing for them? It's something they elected to do. Would having a box saying M -> F or F -> M be less embarrassing?
I could see this being an inconvenience for them, but it's an inconvenience they chose to take on. Supposedly this is more than made up for by the fact they can live the rest of their life how they feel they should be.
No sympathy. Do not change anything.
Why explain anything? Isn't it simpler to just say "The form is wrong"
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How about we have 3 boxes on the forms. Male, Female, Other. So simple, problem solved.
Next up, woman who get boob jobs protest against guys looking at their chests.
In my area of the United States, best estimate is 0.3-0.5% of the local population, and since there is a prevalence for people to go into deep stealth to to insensitive society, who really knows....
screw-em.
cant make up there mind who they are.
yea right.
creating there own space that says i get to do what i want for any reason,screw every one else.
i wont have any reprocutions.
you straight people have it all wrong.
transgender means no rules for me and every rule for you.
skoony
I don't see why you just can't have a field for Sex, which will be your biological sex, and a field for Gender, which is what you identify yourself as.
There you go, problem solved. Was it that big of a deal?
.
A few years ago I was looking for genealogy software. One of my requirements was the need to handle a F-F marriage with kids in the family. Fortunately, The Master Genealogist was up to the task. Amazingly, there were few choices that met an important requirement that I had.
Mostly, it's just a head's up to database designers: transgendered people exist, make your database able to correct gender changes or input mistakes easily.
Too bad if a major life change requires some explaining.
There are good reasons to identify the physical gender of a person rather than their self identified one. Short of an operation, it doesn't change. In medical databases I have worked on, we needed it for health reasons as to what areas exists. We needed it for family medical history. We needed it to help identify people who were injured or killed. For the same reasons, gender neutral identification don't work for us either. If people feel like their physical sex should be kept private, it could be treated as HIPAA info, but we still need to track it.
we'd rather not have our private lives paraded around in front of others
Forgive my ignorance but is it really any more embarrassing to correct that information in a database than any other? I would imagine vast amounts of data are inaccurate on everybody. I've called and changed my birthday, I've accidentally listed 'male' for my girlfriend when filling out forms online (out of habit). If you're embarrassed just say you erroneously filled out the form or say you were reviewing your records and noticed a big inaccuracy.
I've heard a number of transgender people ask for options which are more inclusive and specific--but that would go against your complaint since it would make your transgender status front and center and 'parade around it around in front for others'.
I agree though on the point that tracking gender is pretty pointless for almost all forms.
You'd be amazed at how difficult it is to even change your name out there. The process of legally changing my name was easy compared to some of the hoops I've had to jump through elsewhere.
I fought with one grocery chain over my loyalty card for six months and they never got it right. Wound up just getting a new card.
Undoing a mod to reply to you.
John Hopkins... humm...
A recent British review found suicide rates of up to 18 per cent among people who had undergone gender reassignment surgery.
Feh. Beats the 50% rate of suicide without bottom surgery. All it shows is how uncaring and inhuman people like you are.
What you don't realize is the huge bias against transgendered identities in psychology.
Here's the whole problem. Trans folks are routinely denied their voice in these matters. The system prefers objectifying them and finding every excuse to discredit any benefit they've found from HRT and bottom surgery.
This is how deep the problem goes. We're talking about "transgendered folks," but nobody yet in this entire /. discussion has acknowledged trans men.
Trans men exist. There are a couple in the local support group. Yes, that's right. Folks born with their reproductive systems on the inside who desire becoming men. They take testosterone. They have facial hair. Their voices deepen and become male voices. If you met one, you'd never know it, because they become practically indistinguishable from cis men (men who were born with their reproductive systems on the outside).
How do you explain that in terms of childhood sexual abuse or a desire to rape women in the bathroom or any other kind of theory of sexual perversion and sexual domanance that psychology assures us that the misguided trans woman is merely trying to acquire?
I'd recommend the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. It adequately sums up how utterly broken the treatment of trans women is. Did you know that it was until recently that trans women weren't even allowed to start HRT unless they could appear sexually stimulating to a psychologist?
There is a trifecta of religion, psychology, and feminism that is utterly undermined by the idea that somebody born into the male gender caste would desire being a woman. What I mean by gender caste is the idea that the gender one is assigned at birth on the basis on body parts is somehow far deeper than skin, much like the caste system in India. Religion finds this idea natural in its sole focus on reproduction. Feminism finds its construction of a woman as a victim undermined by the idea that someone who was born a rapist/aggressor/man would, of their own free will, desire to become a victim/woman. However, psychology has the solution. The trans woman could only make the decision to undergo gender transition on the basis on mental illness. Here we finally see the trans woman as the depraved serial killer in a woman suit she is.
The research you linked to is a direct product of that bias. We have bought into this narrative that men are sexual aggressors and women are victims so deeply that we cannot comprehend why a sexual aggressor would choose to become a victim except by painting it as mental illness.
Let me clue you in on something. When strangers see me, they believe I'm female. I also have no reason to argue with their assessment. This presents a dilemma. How can you tell somebody who is obviously female and being gendered female by others that she is really, somehow, a man? The only option you have is to do a Crocodile Dundee test and grab me in the crotch.
So, how, exactly, do these researchers figure that sex change surgery is not effective? It's highly dubious, especially after one considers how many trans women have had their lives improved by bottom surgery. However, their voices are easily dismissed because they do not fit into the narrative that femaleness is artifical vanity that womyn-born-womyn are helpless victims of and that maleness is somehow authentic. We look at the trans woman and we are deeply suspicious of her going about her day with long hair, which we understand the womyn-born-womyn only wears long because she's forced to by some vast male conspiracy (see the article "My Hair Is My Accompli
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s/embrace the way our heads our wired or suicide/embrace the way our heads are wired or commit suicide/
Should insurance cover amputating someones arm or leg if they have a form of "Body Integrity Identity disorder" ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_identity_disorder
A gender identity disorder is another body identity disorder.
Both disorders are real to those that have it, but need to be treated as disorders.
Eh, no worries. Next incarnation you'll figure it out. It's just karma. No sympathy. Do not change anything.
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For those not familiar, go look up "epigenetics". I've been pointed to some studies in which there are identical twins who grow into adulthood -- one is gay (for example, pick your LGBTQ?) and the other is not. This being evidence that it's not "genetic" per se, but is epigenetic.
Nonetheless, I think epigenetics essentially bolsters the claims that most LGBTQ would make, that it's not a conscious decision but it's WHO they ARE.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Damn healthcare, they should only offer it when >>>I get sick.
And it's not as simple as just saying that all humans are equal regardless of gender.
Men cannot typically compete in women's sports, because human males tend to have an advantage in several areas of athleticism. Mothers tend to have default parental and custodial rights beyond those of the father. There are a multitude of medical reasons to categorize humans as male and female.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
1. Change to "Birth gender". For medical forms, this is likely the right question
2. Remove the gender questions from forms. For non-medical forms, it's not needed, the same way many other questions are note needed.
Some answers to irrelavant questions:
Sex: Y
Race: American, Earthling, beige, or pinkish brown
Religion: No, or Scientific method
Not well, though, since I am uncomfortable around someone even considering gender reassignment surgery, let alone someone who has had it done.
The person with whom I am acquainted showed up at a technical conference over 20 years ago as himself, then over the course of the next two days changed the style of clothing worn until on the last day 'she' appeared wearing a skirt and an over the shoulder purse. 'She' was very unattractive attempting to look feminine and didn't fool anyone except perhaps one innocent person. Years passed, the topic of he/she didn't come up in conversation among those of us who kept in touch, although one person who had heard from this person over the years said he had not had the surgery although he had strongly considered it. Then not too long ago "he"
showed up at a similar event with his wife, as if nothing had ever happened. How much she knew of his past, who knows. As long as they are reasonably happy together, I suppose. I'm no Archie Bunker but this creeped me out, though.
There's nothing more fun than watching ignorant bigots parade just how contemptibly stupid they really are. Thank you for sharing you small minded bigotry.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nothing to do with transgenders, drag queens & kings, ...
I wonder how many Leslies & Sidneys & Lynns have been entered into databases with wrong gender & it couldn't be changed 'cause some stupid coder didn't make it correctable. Then there's the data clerk sitting in a mole-hole cube harassed by a lackluster boss, & the clerk makes a mistake once in awhile.
Plenty of reasons having nothing to do with the stated reason for having gender being correctable in databases.
Transgender people may be born transgender.
That is not always true, I have this from good authority from someone who decided he was a she sometime in their late-20s and had the gender reassignment done in their late 30s. She's quite open about it and frequents Fark.com in case you're curious. They will tell you they weren't born that way but that they chose, over time, to be that way because they started (key word there) feeling as if they were a female sometime in their mid-20s. I understand the desire to fight and argue but being transgendered doesn't mean that they're all like you or that they're subject to the same feelings you had.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
it's only a problem for transgender welfare bums... working people don't actually have to deal with government organisations that often (they deal with the private sector, which doesn't demand as much personal information as government)
i only need to fill in forms when i sing up for a new service, which isn't very often
The biggest problem with transgendered individuals is that many of them get caught up in "gender politics" and insist upon complicating the lives of everyone around them.
For M2F, you'd really need to turn it from a single-bit male/female value into a VARCHAR(255), so they could elaborate on who they like to have sex with... or maybe pack it into a bitfield to enumerate their chromosomal pattern (2 bits... normal/abnormal and male/female), current hardware configuration (3 bits... penis/vagina, boobs, hormones), sexual attraction (2 bits... women and/or men), and public gender (male/female). However, you could probably get away with 4 choices with optional varchar(255) textfield for option #4:
[x] Male
[ ] Female
[ ] Undisclosed/Irrelevant/None of your business
[ ] "complicated" [____attach____]
To really make all the F2M crowd happy, though, you'd have to replace the varchar(255) with a 64-bit BLOB of UTF8-encoded XML that allows inline MIME binary attachments...
(pounds table to get your attention)
Damn it! Put down your phone, pay attention, and quit whoring on Grindr for a lunch-fuck, or I'm going to give the angry F2M users YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS and let YOU deal with their hate mail.
There are various diseases, dysmorphia, accidents and disorders that affect how one perceives one's gender and which affect how other's perceive one's gender.
If we want an accurate Object definition for Class>>Gender it has to be implemented to have a pair of small integers as attributes and presented/interacted with as a pair of Sliders.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
you can thank the socialist left for this situation... libertarians think the government and all it's associated minions should just stay the fuck away from all that, which is the way it should be
Perhaps because it IS stuff that matters, to those of us who fit under the GLBT umbrella? (TS, M->F here)
This.
Frankly, I don't give a damn. If they want to be M, they can put M. If they want to be F, they can put F. But I'll be damned if I'll change my database just because THEY decided to change a letter on a form.
Their decision, they can deal with it. It is quite literally not my problem.
Peter Griffin's chin looks like a scrotum with two testicles in it
I'm not sure if you've seen the show but they actually bring that up several times.
We'll also be paying for you to extend your life way past its useful point. If it resolves a mental health problem (which is subject to debate) and increases their quality of life then it's probably worth it. A healthy populace is good for everyone as a whole.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Every perversion seeks to legitimize itself. This necessarily means branding and stigmatizing those who disagree with it. Even though they're not actively oppressing the perverse.
Yeah, I think transgendered people are emotionally ill. So fucking what? I'm not doing anything to harm a transgendered person. Nor would I consider it. I don't go around insulting them. I don't hate them. I simply think they're emotionally ill and that their inability to cope with their own nature is a perversion. Guess what? I am entitled to feel that way. No one is entitled to harm them. See the difference? I don't agree with it and I don't have to agree with it and that's okay. In a free society we accept peaceful non-forcible dissent.
The accusations of bigotry against people who have done nothing to harm the transgendered is an attempt to make those who disagree into the "circus freaks". So many transgendered are thus no better than those they complain about! Hypocrites. Guess what? The idea that everyone must agree with and accept and actively facilitate every weird lifestyle choice is MADNESS. But if you want to do it, you can start by practicing all religions AND practicing Atheism, that way you embrace everybody. Silly huh?
Here's something I have learned myself because of my light recreational use of drugs: if you choose a lifestyle that goes against the norm, some will not view you as normal. So fucking what? Have the guts to do what you want in spite of the fact that not everybody will agree with it. I'm not forcing anyone else to use drugs and that's good enough.
"treated like crap by a large portion of society" or not, they voluntarily agreed to the process and they are the ones asking for an update to a record in some database.
A whole lot of prying into someone's medical history would be unreasonable, but some explanation is in order, same as, say, a correction to date of birth.
Does it really matter which side of the aisle it came from? Injecting politics into an unrelated thread is the issue, no? ;)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
is that we have systems which are based on the assumptions of hetero couples for marriage, so same-sex data entry will fail, these are validation rules. This has to change, but in the meantime, well, it will cause issues. grin and bear it.
Having a check box on a form does not change people feelings about it. The fact that the check box is there is not the reason some people treat others like crap.
I personally think someone that changes their sex is "different", from a pure statistically standpoint and when compared to the rest of society. You can argue this all you want but knowing someone is different is not related to hate or taking crap all the time.
Take someone that is a racist and does not like black people. That IS their internal feeling. If they act nice and appear to treat everyone equally but in their mind they mumble racist thoughts, is that person any better than the person that is open and honest about being a racist?
If you differ significantly from the norm, people are going to stare and question. It is human nature, even people that differ from the norm see differences in other people. A black person may feel uncomfortable and question if someone is a racist but that same black person may not like people that are gay or transsexuals. You can NOT change everyone's thoughts or ideals. You have to take charge of yourself, feel comfortable about yourself and move on and not care about what some random person behind the counter at the DMV may think about you.
I'm not going to flame you because I came at this from the same direction. I discovered that I was wrong. You are correct that transgendered people have a mental-physical mismatch, and you can certainly describe this as a mental problem and be accurate, if perhaps insensitive.
That said, there is no treatment available that works better than sexual reassignment surgery. I feel that the minor adjustments that we need to make to accommodate these people pale in comparison to what we do to accommodate people with physical handicaps, and we should probably help them if we want to see ourselves as compassionate. If a person who is obviously a dude wants to behave as a lady, the least I can do is go along with the ruse if it means they are more likely to be happy and less likely to commit suicide.
Like any condition, if an option someday arises that works as well or better than surgery, they should definitely pursue that - but in the meantime, just have some compassion for someone with a very difficult life.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What is this crazy human obsession with needing to know what is in someone else's pants anyway? It just doesn't seem relevant unless mating is going to be involved. Ug!
As a robot, I personally object to being associated with the disgusting organic concept of gender. If your database can't accept "N/A" then you can kiss my big, fat, shiny metal genitalia-free ass!
BTW, the TSA knows aaaaaall about what is in your pants. Heh, fools.
Perhaps a clerk encountering a transgender with incorrect record is a rare enough situation that we can just let the DBA handle it? OTOH for the person that just changed sex, it means a lot of delays, at least if he/she cares to get the record changed.
The trans woman could only make the decision to undergo gender transition on the basis on mental illness. Here we finally see the trans woman as the depraved serial killer in a woman suit she is.
1/4 of the country is mentally ill according to psychologists so I wouldn't take it so personally.
All I ever once was was a girl who was routinely abused by being exposed to testosterone against her will
I was curious about whether you tried testosterone therapy and it didn't work? I can't tell if that's what you're saying or if you feel like you were abused by yourself for producing testosterone.
Maybe these women weren't satisfied because they had to survive a full-on assault by charlatans who sought to reminder them at every goalpost that they never really would be women, despite what their hearts were telling them.
I'm curious about this statement too.. you're saying your heart may tell you you're a woman. What does that mean? Is there some feeling that all women have that men aren't supposed to feel?
If a woman asked me what it feels like to be a man because she wanted to know if she was supposed to be a man, I'd have absolutely no idea what to say. I'm sure women are the same way. So there's no way you described how you felt to a group of women and they said "Oh wow you're actually one of us." What was your realization process really like?
Wow, that must cause hell at the restrooms... :)
Seriously, I bring my daughter into the men's room because she is too young to use the restroom herself. I think we are putting too much weight on this stuff. A gay man can get his jollies in a men's room, or a gay woman can hang out in the ladies' room, I suppose, but in practice it isn't a real problem.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Are there ever any F->Ms?
There will be certain cases - a lot of medical data, for example - where gender truly is important.
But in a lot of cases, you could reasonably have a person simply refuse to provide the information in the first place, or even just need a temporary value if gender is unknown at the time of record creation. A serious database has to anticipate those cases; this is not a big step.
And a database which needs gender for some legitimate medical purpose already needs to deal with special cases.
(And that's all without worrying about the question of whether those cases are lifestyle choices, genuine metabolic disorders, or something else entirely - the technology does not care about attitudes.)
You/someone needs to come up with a better solution. I'm tired of your 3 year old staring at my junk.
ALTER TABLE Person DROP COLUMN Gender;
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For you its elective surgery, for a Trans person its the treatment prescribed by their Doctor.
I see them as mentally ill, certainly, but I don't see that as a bad thing
If it's not a bad thing to be mentally ill, why use the word ill?
She's not staring, she's squinting ;p
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I've never considered it before, but was this always a backdoor into same sex marriage? Sex change, update database, marry, update database, sex change, update database? Or did the government stop people from getting that 2nd sex change, or automatically cancel the marriage?
Those poor 0.0000001%. It's so tough for them.
Are you trying to tell me there's only 6 transgender people in the world? You clearly have not been to Thailand.
Most likely if he has such a rare disease there won't be anything specific they can do.
This isn't a joke. It's about a tiny but very real group of people being able to live their lives safely and in dignity.
Leaving aside questions of what data is needed in the medical profession to handle biology correctly - which is a completely different issue - the attitude that people deserve to have their secrets outed so that other people can entertain themselves by laughing at them is just... not the geek world I grew up in having programmed computers since the age of 8. My mum got me into it, in a family where everyone writes code.
As a lesbian geek girl, I'm disgusted by a lot of the comments here, and really don't know if I even belong on this forum any more. I don't write much but have been reading on a daily basis since the late 1990s.
The transgender community seems to be under attack these days since they're small enough not to be able to fight back in the way that the gay and lesbian community and various ethnic minorities have. Finally all the bigots and religious fundamentalists have found a group of people who it is "safe" to bully.
But please, not on slashdot!!
Surely, as so called "nerds" you would know something about the history of your industry. Have you heard of Alan Turing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing), who developed the model for the general purpose computer, only to be arrested for being homosexual, clinically castrated, and driven to suicide? You probably have, and I assume he's one of the reasons why a lot of IT companies are very good at accepting gay men and lesbian.
What about Lynn Conway, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, who literally wrote the book on VLSI design (Introduction to VLSI systems). She's alive, fortunately, but we all lost a lot of her work when she was forced to start again "at the bottom of the ladder" as a contract programmer in mid-career to hide her gender past from your bigotry and intolerance.
What about Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski who co-produced the Matrix Trilogy? She came close to not surviving the hate growing up, and if she hadn't survived, we would never have gotten to see The Matrix.
And - he might not have been a geek, but - what about Mike Penner, who committed suicide after an unsuccessful attempt at gender transition?
Seriously, wannabe geeks, as tiny a minority as the transgender community is, the IT industry is packed full of transsexuals and transgender people. And many of us here have romantic partners, or parents, or brothers and sisters and friends who are. At least here in Melbourne, Australia, you can't write code and hang out in the industry without getting close to many of them.
It seems that all the gay men and lesbians are too successful and too powerful for you to attack now. So like all bullies, you run off in search of an easier victim.
Getting back to the topic, why exactly do you need databases to say things about people's gender that don't match how they present themselves? To out them and embarrass them because they "deserve" it? How little compassion and caring do you have for other people? Would you want to be treated this way yourselves if you had some type of secret you had to keep from people who would hate you because of it?
If you were in Europe circa World War 2, would you insist that records there included whether or not a person was Jewish, based on genetic testing? With no ability for a person to change their record to say they were, say, Russian, if it could give them a better chance of finding employment or even survival?
In case you think the analogy isn't fair (and yes, I am Jewish, and migrated from Russia with my parents as a three year old), have a look at what the Salvation Army (who the government in Australia got involved in finding jobs for the unemployed a few years ago) are saying and doing:
That's right you database developers you. Take that! And while you're at it, make our race field selectable too. While we (or most of us anyways) are Human, we might have intelligent extraterrestrial visitors soon. Plan ahead!
Life is not for the lazy.
what about caring about intersex people who were born with ambiguous genitalia and have to deal with this shit as well? Is it okay to be persecuted by tyranny of the majority because we are, as you put it. "a tiny minority" that is even smaller than the TG minority? Is that okay in your opinion?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You don't give a damn and you'll be damned because it's quite literally not your problem? The "lady" doth protest too much, methinks.
You forgot genetic mosaicism
XX/XX
XX/XY
XX/XXY
XY/XXY
etc.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The incidence of intersex conditions is a hell of a lot higher than .0001%.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
LambdaMOO's Ten Different Gender Options
This is what players see when they enquire about "gender":
Characters & Gender
Your character, as well as every other character in this MOO, has a gender. The choice of gender determines which pronouns will be used when referring to that character. If you type look me, you'll see a phrase about being awake and alert; the pronouns used there are determined by your gender.
Every character is given the default gender when it is created. In this MOO, the default gender is neuter. Spivak is an indeterminate gender (rather than referring to such a person as s/he or he/she, e is the proper pronoun).
@gender
Your gender is currently neuter.
Your pronouns: it,it,its,its,itself,It,It,Its,Its,Itself
Available genders: neuter, male, female, either, Spivak, splat, plural, egotistical, royal, or 2nd
@gender male
Gender set to male.
Your pronouns: he,him,his,his,himself,He,Him,His,His,Himself
@gender female
Gender set to female.
Your pronouns: she,her,her,hers,herself,She,Her,Her,Hers,Herself
@gender either
Gender set to either.
Your pronouns: s/he,him/her,his/her,his/hers,(him/her)self,S/He,Him/Her,His/Her,His/Hers, (Him/Her)self
@gender Spivak
Gender set to Spivak.
Your pronouns: e,em,eir,eirs,emself,E,Em,Eir,Eirs,Emself
@gender splat
Gender set to splat.
Your pronouns: *e,h*,h*,h*s,h*self,*E,H*,H*,H*s,H*self
@gender plural
Gender set to plural.
Your pronouns: they,them,their,theirs,themselves,They,Them,Their,Theirs,Themselves
@gender egotistical
Gender set to egotistical.
Your pronouns: I,me,my,mine,myself,I,Me,My,Mine,Myself
@gender royal
Gender set to royal.
Your pronouns: we,us,our,ours,ourselves,We,Us,Our,Ours,Ourselves
@gender 2nd
Gender set to 2nd.
Your pronouns: you,you,your,yours,yourself,You,You,Your,Yours,Yourself
The tech-relevance is that making assumptions about your data doesn't just ruin the elegance of your table design but has real-wold impact on actual people.
Forgive my ignorance but is it really any more embarrassing to correct that information in a database than any other?
because it's completely different.
in my state, if you undergo sexual reassignment, you simply cannot get your sex changed on your license. ever.
As someone with a crippled sense of empathy, I'm sure you find much of life difficult and embarassing.
In addition to male and female, add both and neither. Also, review the reason you even keep that information.
Sometimes you do need that information for good reasons in which case why not just ask everyone which public toilets they typically use? It moves the question away from their gender identity and is a decision that everyone has had to make!
I read the "I will never have sex again" one.
I have to say I have absolutely no sympathy for that guy.
I'm a big believer in letting people learn from their mistakes.
You tell someone the risks, and if they decide to act anyway, that's their problem.
If you can't do a risk assessment of your decisions, then maybe you deserve what you get.
Really? You cant even read the post?
BTW the reason everyone has a gender is so a computer can send you your junk mail with a proper salutation, Mr. Jennifer.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Ahhh gotcha that sucks. So your driver's license will perpetually remain M even if you are now F and result in constant conflicts of "that doesn't match your driver's license".
I was envisioning a system similar to changing your legal name. How many states don't allow gender/sex changes on their official IDs?
Pet Peeve: Coders that bring up the earliest record in history. If a customer with 7 years of history calls up with a problem, likely it's with the latest order, not one they made 7 years ago.
That said, a database should treat all information in it as frangible. Nothing is ever written in stone, and all input can never be 100% validated by rules. The best you can do is say "Did they really go from Male to Female?" or "Customer unique identifier change is not supported on this version. See your supervisor for how to proceed."
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
It's closer to 0.2-0.1%. It's small, but not insignificant, and if you have more than a couple thousand people to keep data on, you're going to need to account for it.
For those not familiar, go look up "epigenetics". I've been pointed to some studies in which there are identical twins who grow into adulthood -- one is gay (for example, pick your LGBTQ?) and the other is not. This being evidence that it's not "genetic" per se, but is epigenetic
The counterpoint to this being that even though there's examples where one's gay and the other isn't, the statistical probability that both twins are gay is several orders of magnitude higher than it is for non-twin siblings, suggesting that there is probably still a genetic correlation.
The counter-counterpoint is that there's also a statistically significant probability that later children will be gay (a woman's 1st son has X percentage chance, her 5th son has X+Y percentage), which suggests that homosexuality may actually be a biological response to overpopulation, and that there's hormonal triggers in utero which can cause it.
Likely, as the GP says, there's a very large number of factors, and people are making mistakes by trying to single out an individual factor as the cause. This also goes for transgenderism, which, as the GP says, should be treated on basis of "they're human, they deserve equal treatment", not "they're different, they deserve equal treatment".
"a tiny minority of people who knew going into it"
You mean before they were born?
(This is going to sound a lot like the kind of lecture you used to have to give people about sexual orientation, but that's how it goes....)
Being transgender isn't something that someone just decides to do one day, as an adult. It's about people who are designated "male" or "female" at birth (usually based on whether they have an identifiable dick or not) but grow up feeling that they've been miscategorized. The "how"s and "why"s of it aren't especially well understood, but the fact that it happens is (or at least should be) well established and accepted.
Those who go through with legal and/or physical gender reassignment don't do it by "choice", but because they feel a need to. Yes, they know they'll face pointless bureaucratic red tape, and possibly a lifetime of trying to explain to friends, coworkers, employers, and service providers with crappy customer service. They do it for their sense of self-identity and emotional well-being. It can be a nightmare. Even though it doesn't need to be. But it is, mostly because of dismissive jerks like you, who don't want to be bothered by taking it seriously.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
There are 46 of those pairs. The pairs should all be the same but are not always.
Actually, it's a heavily politicized issue in most of the world... there's *very* few countries in the world where gender reassignment surgery is covered by public health care, and it's usually a very politically charged argument over whether it should be covered.
Such political impetus is usually the main reason that trans people in some areas have a really hard time getting databases updated, and in others it's really easy, too. In this neck of the woods, it's simply a question of getting a letter from your doctor, and they'll update your health card, your driver's license, your birth certificate, and your passport. Don't even need to have surgery.
Have gnu, will travel.
Don't limit options to M or F. I keep hearing that stat that roughly 1% of people (or 70 million worldwide!) are intersex or sexually ambiguous. Australia's registry gas/had X for people outside of the standard paradigm. http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/15/australian-passports-now-offer-gender-option-x-for-intersex-people/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
How is it substantially different from getting a boob or nose job?
Most women wouldn't worry about sharing a bathroom with a woman who'd had a boob or nose job.
They might not be so blasé about sharing a bathroom with a man with his dick cut off.
I've never considered it before, but was this always a backdoor into same sex marriage? Sex change, update database, marry, update database, sex change, update database? Or did the government stop people from getting that 2nd sex change, or automatically cancel the marriage?
Probably varies by country, but I think in Australia if you are born with something that looks like a penis then you are labelled a man and the database can't be changed. So if you identify as a female but are a lesbian it would actually be a win (assuming the fact that the government had labelled you incorrectly didn't bother you) because you could get married. Of course this may be outdated and/or completely wrong... not really my area.
Yes. I know several. I work with one on a regular basis at the local LGBT center.
You raise a good point, but sometimes it's not as easy as you seem to think... In some jurisdictions, all you need is a letter from your doctor and they'll change the sex on your driver's license. In some, they won't change it at all, even after you've had reassignment surgery. Without more information, we have no way of knowing whether the person in question chose not to update her driver's license.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In Australia you can change your gender on your birth certificate after surgery -- but it's listed as a modification, so anyone who sees the abstract will know your history.
As for marriage, unfortunately it's not black and white -- getting a license is at the discretion of 'Births, Deaths and Marriages' (at least in the state of Victoria) and they routinely reject such attempts (transgendered women attempting to marry non-transgendered women). So there's no way to win there.
I really do not understand why someone tagged this "Democrats". LGBT issues cross party lines, even if some Republicans oppose these issues.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
Thank you. I was trying to find a good way to tell that person he was quoting idiots, but I don't think I can do it any more eloquently than you.
There's a particularly insidious branch of feminism (and I use that word because that's how they identify, not because I consider them feminists) which seems to think that you are only female if you were born that way, and that you're only male if you're born that way. One of the most obvious examples of this would be the kerfluffle that blew up over the last few years with Dianic Wicca, but that opens up an entirely different can of worms on this forum, and isn't really germane to the discussion.... the point I'm making is that these people claim to be feminists, but the ideas they espouse are the antithesis of feminism. These are the people who believe that it's not possible for men to be feminists, either, which is utterly wrong. Real feminism is inclusive, both of men who want to do more to help women be treated as equals, and of transwomen who should be accepted as women, without the need for the "trans" identifier. (and the same for transmen)
Now, I fully expect that some people are shitheads, and will probably find a way to give you flak for what you've written. For that, you have my sympathy. But you do have allies here, and out there, and I wanted you to know that.
If by 'this neck of the woods' you mean Canada:
A) Your actual DL card will have your revised gender, but as soon as the cops run it on the in-car computer, they'll see it as 'revised'. So, good for buying beer, but not much else.
B) Same thing when anyone actually swipes your health care card, doctor's office or whoever. The argument here is that giving you emergency treatment related to the 'wrong' gender could be fatal (but I don't really think that's valid, myself.)
C) You'll get a 'short' passport (2 or 3 years?) which pretty much only TS's get. So it makes it all a bit obvious. That said, apparently you can get a proper 5-year passport if you've had some measure of surgery (get rid of the two veg).
If you weren't talking about Canada, well, you've now become informed! =)
Like the former Heather Alexander who's now Alexander James Adams, and was and is a kick ass fiddler, filker and songsmith. 'March of Cambreadth' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Cambreadth has found its way into so many novels....
I am the author of a small university dating website, and I recently had this explained to me. Looking at something like the "Genderbread person" it seems that sexual-identity isn't the simple set of options that I originally designed i.e. "{Male ,Female} seeks {Male, Female, Either}". In fact, it's a 16-dimensional space, with floating point coordinates
(4 axes, each with a mean and std-dev, and the same 4+4 for what you seek).
BUT... what is a computer programmer to do? I don't have the slightest idea even what pronouns to use, let alone how to sensibly represent this 16-D space, or make it searchable. Any ideas? There's an excellent site about "Falsehoods programmers believe about names"... could someone write something similar for gender?
In the end, my response to the requestor was that, regrettably, we had started out with a design saying that sex was boolean (M/F), and would they please pick the nearest match for themself, then elaborate in the comments. I made a design error when I started out, but haven't the time to fix it now (I estimate a man-week to fix and test all the instances where the codebase assumes that !M F), and for a 600-member site without membership fees, this isn't practical. But I'd love to see some documentation of the correct way to handle the problem, so that maybe in future I can fix the design.
I was curious about whether you tried testosterone therapy and it didn't work? I can't tell if that's what you're saying or if you feel like you were abused by yourself for producing testosterone.
Most of the transwomen that I know view the body's natural production of testosterone to be the body slowly poisoning itself, in a circumstance where they have a hard time convincing a doctor to give them a treatment which can stop it. This is one of the major reasons why transgendered people have a very high suicide rate among those who haven't had treatment.
I'm curious about this statement too.. you're saying your heart may tell you you're a woman. What does that mean? Is there some feeling that all women have that men aren't supposed to feel?
Self identification. You think of yourself as a man (I assume). The GP identifies herself as a woman. The difference is that you (assuming you're male) have the dangly bits to go with it, so there's no discord between your identified gender and your physical sex. For a transgendered person, their physical sex does not match their identified gender, and that clash can cause serious body image issues, severe depression, and suicidal behaviour. Usually, the only effective treatment for somebody in that situation is to start living as their perceived gender, and almost universally, once a transperson starts their real life experience (long before they get any kind of surgery), the depression and other mental issues disappear very quickly.
I know it's difficult to wrap your head around... usually the only way to understand it is to go through such a change yourself or (in some cases) to know people before/after their transition and see for yourself the positive difference it makes in their life, but there is a distinction between a person's physical sex and their gender identity. These are two distinct and separate variables that go into the definition of "you", and when the two do not have the same value, it causes problems. Since there isn't really a way to change one (gender), the only effective treatment is to look at the other.
Please go back to your cave.
You're awfully closed-minded as shamans go. Native american cultures held transgendered tribesmen in special regard.
Your particular culture isn't the end-all be-all of human relations nor some fountain of cosmic truth.
Because it is the term that is correct. Do you have another? It is not me who applies the connotations.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Does it need the political angle in this thread?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
No, really. Stop doing this. I don't care if it's inconvenient - next time wrap that shit up.
Please don't reproduce. Your clear mental illness and lack of intellectual capacity should be voluntarily removed from the gene pool immediately. That's a hint.
I was curious about whether you tried testosterone therapy and it didn't work? I can't tell if that's what you're saying or if you feel like you were abused by yourself for producing testosterone.
As one of the AC MTFs in the thread, I have enough excess testosterone that I started male pattern baldness. My testosterone shortage likely came in the womb, giving me a female wired brain, not after puberty.
I'm curious about this statement too.. you're saying your heart may tell you you're a woman. What does that mean? Is there some feeling that all women have that men aren't supposed to feel?
If a woman asked me what it feels like to be a man because she wanted to know if she was supposed to be a man, I'd have absolutely no idea what to say. I'm sure women are the same way. So there's no way you described how you felt to a group of women and they said "Oh wow you're actually one of us." What was your realization process really like?
I knew I was female from a very young age... It was made abundantly clear to me that my parents would not accept that role for me, so from that point on, I knew I had to hide whom I really was from everyone else, including myself. I can remember being 5 years old and being upset that I didn't get to wear a dress to school like the other girls. A few years later, my sister was born and when my parents took her to get her ears pierced, the doctor jokingly pretended that he was going to pierce mine and I felt elated and then let down when he didn't. By the time I hit puberty, I realized I wasn't simply attracted to women, but I felt an innate need to want to be the women I was attracted to.
Things start to get confusing for a lot of people around that age... it's also when my parents split up. I'd visit my grandfathers, both of whom had daughters living at home, and play with their clothes, shoes and makeup when nobody was around. I'd skip school to wear my mom's clothes. I'd masturbate to things like Fredericks catalogs, pretending I was the women wearing the clothes. I started having a recurring dream about meeting my identical twin, though they were female, and us switching roles to fool our parents. I completely lacked the courage to ask out the girls I liked (something I'm sure most of us here at slashdot can relate to), but it was because I felt like I could never offer them what the other boys my age could.
All the while, I kept trying to lie to myself and prove my manhood... I signed up for football, where I became the wild guy on the team, not scared of anything. I got a hunting license because my dad expected me to enjoy such manly things as killing my own food. I nearly signed up for the military, but was informed that my not-so-secret health conditions (asthma among other things) would preclude me from doing so.
In my 20s, my dad became disabled and I dropped out of an engineering degree to take care of him... Looking back, though I knew I was giving up a likely promising and relatively lucrative career, the sacrifice both felt right out of a sense of nurturing a loved one, but was also a way to seek his acceptance, since I never felt like I could live up to his expectations for me.
When I was 25, I became suicidally depressed after I found out that my girlfriend not only lied to me about everything, but used me and cheated on me. Here I was, supposedly a man, yet I felt completely inadequate. A couple years after her, I met another woman, the one I thought I was going to marry, and finally had sex for the first time. It was horrible... not just "first sex bad," but everything about my role in it felt wrong. I couldn't maintain an erection despite being very much attracted to her and in love with her. After a couple years of her breaking up with me and getting back together, only for her to cheat on me multiple times, I broke it off for good...
Six months later, I realized I couldn't keep lying to myself. The reason why I couldn't ever succeed at being a man is... because de
I think a lot of folks on slashdot that have problems with these people do so simply because while they don't care about transgender/gay/whatever, they _do_ care about calling a spade a spade. Since saying that a man is a woman clashes with things pretty hard.
Having behaviours typically ascribed to women does not make you a woman. Same with men.
I apologize and do not set out to offend anyone. But changing the appearance of gender does not equal changing gender in my mind. A man that has his genitals altered and breasts installed and dresses as a woman is still a man in my mind. It is similar to a cross dresser in a way. A man who dresses as a woman will still be jailed with men. A man that has breast implants will be jailed with men as well. I wonder how jails are handling folks who have had penises or vaginas altered as well.
Meh. The odds are far better that they're being checked out by the lesbian than the transsexual. Well, I suppose I don't actually know for sure, but I would make guess that the lesbian ratio among former men is substantially lower than among the general population. Major surgery is after all not something to be undertaken lightly, and a lesbian trapped in a man's body has a lot more romantic options and a lot less social stigma than they would face post-transformation. Seems to me there would be substantial temptation in that case to just play the hand they were dealt, even if they're not totally at ease in their body.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
She certainly doesn't speek for me. I self identified at four. I'm leading a happy and exciting life with no regret to anyone's judgement of me. Everyone is unique.
Is we need to define what we mean when we ask for someone's sex or gender on a form. I think part of the problem is different people identify what it means differently. Some in the transgender community say it is 100% about what you personally choose to identify as. So you could be genetically male, have an XY chromosome set, and biologically male, as in have male genitals and body structure, but identify yourself as female and that's what you should mark down. However other people might disagree. If you went in to the woman's dressing room at a rec center the biological women in there might not be at all comfortable with that since they identify you as male, due to your biology.
So one of the things we need to do is clarify the terms, and perhaps have different terms for identifying someone's genetic structure, biological makeup, and sexual identity.
Like when you are talking to a doctor, the genetic definition matters. Reason is that health issues do NOT affect both genders equally, and it has nothing to do with appearance or identity, it has to do with genetics. So even if you've had a sex change operation and all that, proper identification as genetically male could be relevant to medical providers.
For most people it is more about biology, as in what bits do you have between your legs. We visually identify people as male or female, and most are pretty clearly one or the other. That is one of the reasons it gets asked for lots of forms of ID is to help ensure that the ID is for the person holding it. For that, we might want to use your biological appearance. If you undergo a sex change surgery, then you change that identifier.
In terms of the pronoun you wish people to use to identify your gender, that really is up to you, though you need to understand it can be confusing to people if you appear and sound different than you identify.
So as you say we need to review why the information is collected, and then define terms to say what sort of thing we are talking about. We can't just say "Well let people identify as whatever they want," since reality doesn't work that way. However if you are just collecting it for no real reason, then don't and let people identify how they wish.
I had my bank account disabled once. When I called up the bank to find out why my card didn't work, they told me that an unknown woman had called and attempted to access my account. I'm a male, so that action caused them to red-flag my account and disable it until they could determine what was going on. I was understandably concerned, and asked them for more information. Turns out, the "woman" who accessed my account was me, and the underpaid foreign telephone agent had misidentified me as female. Now, I am in no way female (the neckbeard is a dead giveaway), so having my account disabled simply because some idiot thought I sounded like a girl was pretty bad.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
One issue poisons me completely on transgendered people and keeps me from caring about their other problems. Why is it ok for a 30 year old male prostitute to follow a 12 year old girl into the bathroom at a restaurant? I don't care if he wants to pee sitting down, I don't care if he feels uncomfortable or at risk in the men's room. He does not belong there, regardless of how he feels about his penis, other men's penises, his surgical lack of a penis, or being outed as a fake.
As a parent, fuck off. If you have such an issue with young children being taken into opposite gender rooms because they are too young to go themselves... you have problems. Like serious problems.
You should probably go talk to someone about this.
Are you a cartoon?
You sound like a pedophile.
As one, there are probably more MTF lesbians than in the general population (given that we have a gender identity difference, it's more likely that we'd have a higher rate of orientation difference since the two are loosely connected)... I don't know if I'd be attracted to men had I been born into the proper body, but as things are, I have no attraction at all to men. Sex using my penis was an emotional nightmare to the point of being pretty much non-functional anyway. Try being a man and telling a woman that, while you guys can have sex, you're not interested in sticking your penis in her at all, ever, and see how far that gets you. Men sexually disgust me, so I have no interest in having sex with them at all.
I can't speak for all transgendered people, particularly since many of them successfully reproduce prior to transitioning, but I'd rather go without sex entirely than to be forced to have sex again with the tools that I was given.
The accusations of bigotry against people who have done nothing to harm the transgendered is an attempt to make those who disagree into the "circus freaks".
Calling people circus attractions is bigoted and harmful.
So many transgendered are thus no better than those they complain about! Hypocrites. Guess what? The idea that everyone must agree with and accept and actively facilitate every weird lifestyle choice is MADNESS.
Calling bigotry what it is is not the same thing as abuse. Being called a bigot for expressing bigotry (obviously!) doesn't make you agree with, accept, or facilitate anything. This is the same kind of false equivalency that racists and sexists and all manner of other bigots raise when being called out.
And you know what? I want to be absolutely clear on this point: you can go on believing that people are circus attractions because of who they are. I'll go on believing you're a bigot. Neither of us has to change a bit.
Why do things have to be black and white? Why can't it be that some people are innately one way, while with other people it is a lifestyle choice? I see black, white, shades of grey and many colors. In other words, I choose to be straight. I could easily choose to be something other than straight if I wanted to. While for me my sexual orientation it is a choice, I understand that for others it may not be. I believe that the same thing can be said of gender identity. Focusing on the topic at hand, there are cross dressers, transgendered people, transexual people, and the third gender such as the Hijra. None of these are identical, they are shades of grey.
What is important is to love your fellow human; don't be mean just to make yourself feel better about yourself. There is enough hate in this world. If you are programming a database, then at a minimum allow gender to be "unspecified." If you really want to be inclusive, register at one of the more popular transgender forums and then check out what options they allow for gender; some have pages of options.
How about we have 3 boxes on the forms. Male, Female, Other. So simple, problem solved.
You forgot the Cowboy Neal option.
No left turn unstoned.
Neither gender or sex belongs in most databases any more than race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or any other sort of information that has no bearing on the business or government agency's interaction with the person. Storing more information than you should in your database only leads to headaches and possible legal liabilities.
instead we should just take everyone who don't agree with their gender, indoctrinate them into hinduism, and convince them that they should kill themselves using the ritual suicide method of starvation -- then if they were good people their karma would let them reincarnate as the "correct" gender
there is no valid reason to ever change genitals
if you are a chick who wants a dick, just get a strapon, if you are a dude who wants a pussy just get fucked in the ass, its close enough
It is not a choice. It's who someone is.
Your genetics aren't a choice but *how* you live your life and portray your gender *is* a choice because all those things rely on our actions, which we all have control over. "it's who someone is" is inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say "it's who someone wants to be". If you disagree with that then I'll have to deem you a bigot.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Im just curious. How common, statistically, are all of those disorders combined?
Ultimately, these are all still categorized as male or female despite the various combinations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_disorders
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Trans people are people too.
I dont think anyone is arguing that theyre not; however this...
It is not a choice. It's who someone is. A lot of people feel like they're not in either one of the two "Gender" categories.
Is irrelevant. No amount of wanting will change your "default" hormonal state, or give you functional sex organs from your chosen gender.
Self identification. You think of yourself as a man (I assume). The GP identifies herself as a woman.
I know.. I'm wondering what the distinction is between a guy who identifies with women vs. a guy who identifies as a woman. What does it mean to feel that you are a woman? Does it require a belief in a soul, and a gendered soul specifically?
I'm assuming you don't believe that gender is a social construct, since that means our gender is defined by society's view of us, not some inherent feeling. What do you think decides which way that feeling points?
The right wing libertarians seem to think that only the better people should be allowed to discriminate, and government aren't the better people being servants of the rich. If you're rich or the owner of a business, then it's fine as those poor losers can always sue for equality. Stupid aristocracy worshipers who think they're better then others because they have a broader view of what makes an aristocrat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
So the real issue you have is that other people have a problem with your decision. Okay, that makes sense and I'd be pissed off if someone had issues with a choice I made and went so far as to chastise or persecute me for it. If I know ahead of time that there are, unfortunately, ignorant people in this world then that needs to be one of the factors I take into consideration for making a decision and acting on it; that's just a fact of life. There are, however, people who will disagree with you on fundamental grounds that it is still a choice to change your sex. They won't persecute you for it. They will still accept you as a person but that doesn't mean they have to accept your decisions or your choices, nor are they obligated to do so. You may claim that lack of acceptance in and of itself is persecution but you would be wrong. It's called disagreeing. And it is a part of everyday life that everyone needs to realize and be able to recognize so that person who are surprised that not everyone accepts their actions (I'm still only talking about the people who do so respectfully) don't go crying back to mommy or the government demanding that person A or group B who disagreed with said action be punished for the disagreement.
These statements also are true for the LGB portion of the LGBT group.
If you want to share your side of things with someone who can relate to the problems you face, try talking to a Christian sometime, specifically one who has been chastised for their beliefs, ridiculed, silenced, maybe even attacked physically (because they are expected to not fight back and then are ridiculed if they do).
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Brains are as much physical organs as livers or ovaries.
Due to some unknown error, my normal non-trans mom went to get her license renewed and came home with an "M" in the sex box. Database error? Typo? Mean MVD people? Who knows, but she did have a hell of a time getting it changed back and plenty of funny looks whenever asked for her ID while it was all being sorted out.
Any half-decent database system already DOES have the ability to change both gender and race.
Not so much to support transgender or theoretical "transrace" people, but simply because users sometimes make mistakes and systems must allow such mistakes to be corrected.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It's a choice for you because you're bisexual. It's not a choice for those who are not.
... If it was a personal choice, one should not be embarrassed. And if others look at you strange, have confidence in your choice and yourself, and know that you're right and they're goofy...
And then, fully on the topic -- welcome to reality. Change anything, and things get complicated. Try moving. It's as if every single business you ever dealt with needs an update. Change your partner? That's a complicated matter called 'divorce' and for some reason the law and judges are involved. Crazy...
Things are tough all over.
That would be "Rarely", "Damn Rarely", and "What's that?"
>Other
You shouldn't respond to these. Myself and others routinely mod everyone posting Offtopic with their UID -1 because Slashdot puts a troll thread above a good one if it has more points in it.
The article is the topic. If you don't have anything to contribute with respectfully STFU, even if this is called the 'comments' section. Important stuff get posted here too and we don't want it lost due to a bad signal-to-noise ratio.
All rites reversed 2010
Something like 3-4 per 1,000, though the numbers may be higher than that due to under-diagnosis, as the most common ones (XXX and XYY) are frequently asymptomatic.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Most technical and social structures are designed in a way to maximize performance of the average case. If they wanted to improve worst case performance they had to sacrifice average performance. Or in non-technical terms: They typically cannot just add resources to better support the minority, they would have to pull the resources from somewhere else, where the same resources would help many more people. Is it worth it? Maybe sometimes, but certainly not always.
The illness comes from having to learn to deal with the emotionally retarded, sociopathic, unintelligent, wilfully ignorant and embarrassingly neurotic nutcases who make up the vast majority of the population of this planet.
If you're not perfect, you're hurting someone. That hurting can have consequences like anxiety, atonia, mania, hypomania, seizures, hypokalemia, dry mouth, excessive sweating, restlessness, suicide.
All rites reversed 2010
not sure why this is modded troll
would you encourage someone to break their own neck if they thought they shouldnt be mobile?
would you encourage someone to burn their skin if they didnt feel they should be "black" or "white"
so why do we condone people who think its ok to cut off their penis???
if your son came up to you and told you he didnt "feel" like a person who was mobile, and wanted to break his own back and or neck and become a quadriplegic, you would support him right? because thats what he "feels" he is right? cutting off your own cock is totally normal, no one thinks its wrong to chop off your cock with a knife at all....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
biologically, any "relationship" that not result in reproduction is not "useful"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
said person is still biologically a M so therefore it is correct. if someone mutilates themselves and cuts off their own cock, thats no different than a brunette bleaching their hair, except one hurts more than the other. One is still a brunette, the other iss till a male, albeit one without a penis
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Actually there are far more intersex people than transgender. And many transgender people are in fact intersex people who suffered forced sex assignment surgery as an infant. We are talking about up to 1:150 people here, if not more. From XXY, to AIS to full-blown hermaphroditism. Intersex conditions are everywhere and often lead to the gender hell described.
I'm a hermaphrodite myself. I was marked as being male at birth because my female genitals weren't visible. During puberty my body however turned fully female (breasts, hips, etc.). Yet my ID card still said that I was male. This was really fun because everyone recognized me as being female (looks, voice), but my official gender said something else. So many embarrassing and awkward situations.
It's taken me over eight years now to get my condition acknowledged and my first name as well as my official gender changed, the latter being the first time ever for an intersex person here in the Netherlands. I'm also suing the largest gender team in the Netherlands (VUmc, Amsterdam) for dismissing me as possibly intersex, instead trying to fool me into thinking I had to be transgender.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Most transgendered people are similar to the most extreme religious fanatics. They have a belief that they were born in the wrong body, just like christian people believes in Jesus.
However, they are convinced that everyone else should believe the same thing as they do and get really angry when someone doesn't
Well, tough luck, I respect them the same way as I respect all religions, but I am too in my right to not believe that. I just can't understand how someone can believe they were born the opposite sex, when they have no way to know what being the opposite sex is like, and as much can imagine it, just as I can imagine myself being rich or being a ninja.
They try to become accepted by society using the analogy of gay people or black people being accepted too, but your skin color or sexual preference is a fact, not a belief. It's not the same!
So, yeah, I'm all for them doing whatever they want, believing what they want, doing surgery, be called as female, not be made fun of, etc, but I'm against them pretending me to accept their belief.
Hi Maya! I didn't know you're on slashdot!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If you have the typical gene pairings that determine that you have balls and a penis, you are man.
Otherwise, you are a woman.
I'm sorry, but gender is not one of those things open to interpretation.
And, to be quite honest, if you don't see it that way, check yourself into a long-term facility with adequate treatment options for dementia.
Anyone else notice this article doesn't really have anything to say?
It just says "Transgenders have problems, too." and leaves all of us burning in the flamewar that must occur.
Gender isn't a "feeling" you dumb goy. These people are mentally ill and you're only feeding their psychosis.
Gender is not something that is open to interpretation, regardless of modern plastic surgery options.
This is not sexuality. It is gender. And it is genetic. And please, no counterfactuals. I've had enough of this general entitlement bullshit for people that would otherwise be committed for dementia if this society wasn't so intent on "political correctness."
There's a particularly insidious branch of feminism (and I use that word because that's how they identify, not because I consider them feminists) which seems to think that you are only female if you were born that way, and that you're only male if you're born that way.
The problem is, it isn't just a particular branch of feminism that questions it. It is a medical question as well since it doesn't seem to be a reliable cure for the distress. You seem to be reducing it to just politics, and that isn't really accurate.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Only been here since the 90s :D
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Even the U.S. military is going to have to deal with this issue, since Krintin Beck is presumably still eligible for VA benefits and the other benefits of being a veteran.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
When I volunteered at a school 25 years ago, I came across a 'change of details' form. It listed the obvious name and address fields. I supposed a "gender" field was being thorough. But I couldn't understand the "DOB" field as one's birth would never change. After a couple of years transcribing paperwork into MS documents I understood. Nearly all (real entity) attributes in a table should be writable, because the data held in the table might be wrong. A few times people on SlashDot have pointed-out there is no way to update the 'no fly' list, credit/rental history, or simply the information some marketer thinks it has about someone.
you are free to have no idea what a libertarian is
The question here is why women should care who they are sharing a (public) bathroom with? As far as I know women normally 'do their business' in the privacy of a closed (and unless the lock is broken, locked) cubicle. In places such as clubs and at concerts and festivals where the queues for the female facilities are too long, women are quite happy to use the male facilities where men are using the urinals in open view. So if they are prepared to use the mens bathroom when it suits them, they should not care if the (to outward appearance female) woman using the adjacent cubicle used to be a man.
Almost? You are so cute,
Signed: Omar Muhammed
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why is this embarrassing at all? This is something that the person strives after and makes numerous changes to their lifestyle and body. Why are they not proud of their accomplishment?
Surgery isn't what makes people transgender to begin with. It's just one of several medical, surgical, cosmetic, social, etc., etc., steps that can help a trans person be lmore comfortable/less uncomfortable in their skin. But in the end it's about your mind, not the state of your body.
For me it isn't. I have not had contact with transgenders (as far as I know) but I have with people who did not confirm with the standard that the majority of people have.
e.g. a friend of mine came out to me as being lesbian and she was clearly disappointed in my reaction. I said something like "So?" or "Good for you.".
So just because the majority does not accept it right away, do not assume that nobody can. For me it is not difficult at all. The fact that you think that only people who went to the same situation can understand it, is YOUR problem. You make it difficult to be understood, because you assume that nobody understands you.
I do not make the difference between people, so why do you do it?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
grief. i can't believe we've devolved to this level of political correctness.
It's about privacy. Explaining that one was once M and is now F invites shock and increasingly probing questions which you would not want and may become hostile trying to avoid answering, or in the worst case, you are suddenly treated like a monster. Transgendered people who have the operation, do so to resolve or fix their body dysmorphia as I understand it from talking to transgendered people. I'm not one myself, and it's hard for a transgendered person to explain just as it is hard for a gay person to explain being gay instead of being straight. When a transgendered person has the surgery and takes on a new identity (a new name), they feel they have completed that shift from one gender to the other, and so they wish to be seen purely as that gender, and not always perpetually explaining the change. Records tend to persist. Check your credit report recently? It's common to have erroneous data in one's credit history that remains for years despite efforts to erase it. There's just too many databases and records to think that this embarrassment is a one-time thing that will be over after a few years of living as the other gender. Having to explain over and over again puts them in a state of limbo where they can never really be male or female.
Your calling the gender alignment surgery elective is not being supportive and understanding. Yes, the surgery is elective, as in the person decides to have it. Life-saving surgeries are elective too. For the people who choose to go this route, the decision follows years of depression. This surgery, to them, *IS* life-saving.
A medical procedure of any kind needn't be embarrassing per se in order to be embarrassing. I don't feel like telling a total stranger what medical procedures I've had. That is my right. I have a medical condition that's common in Americans, and for it I buy over the counter medicine. I won't tell you what it is because I don't want you to know. My embarrassment would be in feeling compelled to disclose something deeply personal about myself to a stranger.
Perhaps Gender should be input via a slider.
This whole male/female sex is a ridiculous dichotomy. It's not like there's only 2 discrete options. In reality it's a gradient from one end to the other.
There are many things to define somebody's sex, and they are often not all aligned to either end and all combinations are possible and occur naturally.
*sex chromosomes
*existence of
**penis
**testes
**vagina
**ovaries
**uterus
*levels of various hormones (changes with time)
*persons idea of their sex
etcetcetc...
There are people who have e.g. a penis and ovaries. Is that a male or a female to you?
Imagine if the same medieval forms had only two options for your race: black or white. It would be the same thing. This male/female is a very silly oversimplification that needs to go.
Allow for three genders: male, female, and Anonymous Coward.
Hey, you actually might be on to something there...
Why do the databases need to know the gender to start with?
Maybe it would be better if no database (that isn't explicitly there to identify you) had that information.
It would probably do wonders to gender equality too. Certainly salary databases, tax databases,
residential databases wouldn't need gender.
Maybe not even insurance databases. And they would be more interested in your original gender,
alternatively hormone levels, anyway. (Any studies on that?)
Surely medical databases should have a lot more information about you than just gender, anyway.
I presume you'll be fine with the doctors refusing to help you when you get struck down with some rare form tropical disease then? A problem being suffered by a minority is still a problem.
Somewhere I feel that analogy fails, it is more like "the artist formerly known as Prince" who decided an unpronounceable symbol would be his new stage name - for contract reasons. Imagine he'd asked that all government databases also would identify him the same way, his driver's license, his social security card, every form of public registry should now support this symbol. Or that everywhere there is a male and female restroom there should also be various options for crossdressers, transgenders, ladyboys and whatnot other combinations that exist somewhere between or outside the traditional genders. Or that stairs with no elevator should be generally outlawed because it's discriminatory to wheel chair users. Having one doctor trying to treat your rare disease is very different from trying to make world revolve around a few people with special needs.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Just adding a "T" binary flag to the data would be too simple, right?
We covered this situation in our Human Computer Interaction module back in my undergrad in 1997. From a data(base) storage point of view, the solution is two have two fields, sex (as in phenotype -- male genitalia vs female genitalia vs both) and gender (as in identity concept -- I think of myself as male/female/Intersex/other). These two fields cover male, female, transgender, intersex, and hermaphrodite. What this doesn't solve is the problems of discrimination and lack of familiarity with dealing with changes in these fields on the part of the humans who capture and alter the information, although that's a little ridiculous too. I am a straight male, as in I look male and I consider myself male, and I've been incorrectly captured in a database as female once. Probably a typo. I know a couple of other people to whom this has happened. Fixing it was as simple as phoning up and saying, "err, guys, I'm a guy". I realise this is less of an issue than having a driver's license stating you are male, and then appearing female, but it's not necessarily an information systems problem.
Except most high modded posts here seem rational and not as you describe!
... perhaps they should have a third column, "Mentally ill", or "Deranged enough to want to cut off their penis and testicles", because of course, there's nothing insane about that, the T.V. told me.
Oh, wait... the T.V. didn't tell you, did it - it made sure that nobody talks about what 'transgender' actually involves.
These people are mentally ill and need help for their MINDS, not help to irreversibly mutilate their bodies. Just meet and talk to one of these 'people' and you'll see they're insane.
You'll notice that the men who claim to be 'women in the wrong bodies' have to wear huge amounts of makeup, a wig, ridiculously 'feminine' clothes such as high heels, short skirts, etc. and yet they STILL look like ugly men dressing up in women's clothes, and always will.
They also ALL have a ridiculously sexist stereotype in their heads of what a 'woman' is. I work with loads of women and always have, and even the ugliest among them are still ALWAYS obviously women because of their subtle mannerisms, personalities, voice inflection, tone of voice, etc. all with NO acting, no effort whatsoever, yet a 'transgender' man who has tried to turn himself into a woman still ALWAYS comes across immediately as a MAN dressed in women's clothes.
But because your Jewish 'masters' enjoy nation wrecking, we have to listen to this nonsense every day, change our entire society at the cost of billions of dollars to accommodate these nutters, and the 'useful idiots' among us actually support this crap, instead of trying to actually HELP these people - and you help them not by cutting off their body parts, you help them through therapy, talking it through, showing them why their beliefs are plain and simple bullshit.
Then you are a genetic abnormality, and I would not classify them as male _or_ female technically (you'd still be nice to them etc of course).
FRANCIS: Why are you always on about women, Stan?
STAN: I want to be one.
REG: What?
STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
REG: What?!
LORETTA: It's my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: crying
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What's the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Yes, added functionality, that's the answer. What could go wrong?
Worst case scenario, a bored/drunk/disenchanted DBA goes through randomly changing sex on thousands of patients.
Hospital sells info to advertisers who begin sending Kotex, Viagra, Douche, Aftate spam to entirely the wrong people.
Hijinx ensue, Jim Carrey stars in the "made for television" version, a league of transgendered lawyers sue for defamation and trademark violations, dogs sleeping with cats, cats sleeping with mice, it'll be anarchy! And YOU, you want software with added functionality, Haven't been paying attention to Microsoft over the years, have you?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Hang on. Does that mean you see being female as a disability? I think most of us have progressed beyond "women are inherently inferior" already but apparently there are still a couple people with a phallocentric world view around even on Slashdot.
Alternatively you are defining the worth of a human being exclusively through their ability to reproduce, which would mean that you see sexual reassignment surgery (or any form of sterilization) as equivalent to throwing one's life away. In this case I must still disagree; not having children is a perfectly valid choice and may indeed be a good one given how overcrowded the planet is getting.
Or, of course, the idea of someone changing their gender just bugs you, in which case I must inform you that "I just don't like the $MINORITY" is not a valid foundation for social policy.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Many customer record databases don't seem to allot more than ten characters to given name or surname, with some stopping at eight or nine which make even less sense. How many people are actually named "Christophe", "Stephani", "Angeliqu", "Elizabet", "Gwendol"? Not nearly as many as get mail that way. It's been an issue for a long time, and now you're expecting databases to be updated for gender changes?
Try telling a utility company sometime that you un-duplexed a building and you need service to the whole building under one address some time. They'll typically ask which address you want the bill delivered to and which one gets the service or something equally asinine.
I guess you could say " the hermaphrodites can just go fuck themselves", and be correct, politically and morally. Wanna be Secretary of State? The last dude resigned.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
gender changes or input mistakes
Statistically, I'm fairly confident that I will never come across a transgender person that needs to change there gender in a database of any application I manage. Input mistakes? All the freaking time. Bringing transgender issues into this throws a bunch of unneeded emotions into the fairly straight forward argument that you should be able to correct the mistakes of pions doing the data entry.
Because YOU ARE A MAN. Sweet and simple. Anyone can get a boob job (a guy even did it on a bet).
Oh, and you're bat shit crazy. Seek professional help. You don't need surgery, you need a lobotomy.
Equating the lack of a penis with that of a functioning spinal cord is kinda messed up, don't you think?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I am not trying to start a politically correct argument or be pro or anti transgender. I think we should back up and look at the bigger problem.
The issue here is the age of many of these databases, with only minor updates occuring over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these databases dated back to the 70s, written in COBOL, living on an System/360 or 370 (or a newer system - 390 or zSeries or something else - with the database just ported over from the 360 and 370 days. Possibly the database was then "ported" over to a server based enviornemnt, but the cores database and information attached was still in place). At the time those databases were written, you were either male or female, or lived in shame. Not sure when sex reassignment surgery began, but you hear stories now of people who were born hemephrodite, and their parents had the surgery performed on them as infants or toddlers.
it probably did not even occure to the database designers to include an option for for changing Gender or for including possibly a third option.
The question should be 1) why has the older systems not been overhauled and 2) where they have been, why is the option no longer there. For systems that have been overhauled, if someone is maintaining the code, you have to ask how hard it would be for someone to go into the code and make that a changable field.
At that point, though, it probably changes from a technical issue to a political / sociological issue. I am not going to guess on the political issue, because I don't follow it, and making an assumption would be stupid (I know, I just made an assumption about the above. Rather, I don't want to get into the political issues to avoid flames and troll baiting). As for the sociological issues, even with media attention lately on transgender issues, we are still a society that breaks things down into male and female. Transgender stories still shock many people (although it is starting to become more understood and accepted - at least in some places).
I am not trying to get into an issue of if it is right or wrong, whether it needs to be changed or not. I am saying that the lack of options in databases shouldn't really come as a surprise.
I've seen a number of posts that paint transgenderism in the same vein as plastic surgeries and other such modifications to self born out of insecurity and dislike of one's appearance. This is a very fundamental misunderstanding of the transgender condition.
You're conflating dissonance with dissatisfaction. They can go hand-in-hand, but you need to realize that they are still two very discrete concepts.
To put it more plainly, body dysmorphia (dissatisfaction with one's appearance) and gender dysphoria (dissonance with the gendered aspects of one's body and social perception) are not the same. The former being so common in our society makes it easy to assume the latter is inexorably tied to it: virtually everyone in our society considers some parts of their bodies flawed or undesirable, and trans people are no exception; in fact, their gender dysphoria is often exponentially amplified by this, especially with trans women, who (if entering gender transition to female after puberty) have the misfortune of nearly irreversible virilization (facial hair, masculine features, etc), which is considered almost universally "unattractive" as far as social expectations for women go. So, it is no surprise that insecurity would result. Our culture is fairly vicious about standards of beauty for females as indicative of their worth to others-- how many overweight, 'plain-looking' women do you see represented as successful (or even just respectable) in television or movies, verses overweight, plain-looking men? Or perhaps just think about the rate of eating disorders among women, many of whom are fairly conventionally attractive to begin with (though not to themselves, given judgmental cultural pressures).
As for my background: I am a transsexual man (meaning I was perceived as-- or was, depending on your choice of definition-- female during my childhood); I won't hide that bias.
While I won't claim to be an all-out leading expert on transgenderism, I've worked closely with some that are, due to having worked on research about the topic during my studies at Yale. My experience with it is fairly extensive, both in an academic (and yes, having studied oppositional and supportive sides) and personal way.
To get back to addressing the point that was being asserted, I'll relate my experience with the difference between these similar concepts.
To be dissonant with the gendered aspects of oneself, as stated previously, does not necessarily mean that one is dissatisfied with one's appearance, or that change is sought for the sake of improving that. For example, in myself, while I certainly experienced insecurity with my appearance when I was younger, this was not at all true by the time I finally came to terms with and acknowledged the gender issues I had continually pushed down out of fear; in fact, having resolved those insecurities had been, in my mind, a prerequisite to even allowing myself to humor the possibility of gendered distress having been anything more than a misinterpreted symptom of a different insecurity (from a misogynistic culture? from a culture critical of appearance? something else?). In fact, I wanted desperately for it to have been one of those things-- I spent countless months of soul-searching and written self-analysis on each possibility hoping to uncover that it was, in fact, just some kind of misplaced dissatisfaction with my body on some aspect of attractiveness, or just some kind of bitterness with mistreatment of women in society, even some consequence of some sort of abuse (that I can't recall, given that I have not actually experienced that), etc, etc. I wanted that, because it would have been so much simpler, easier, more understandable. To have a deep and intractable dissonance with the sex and gendered characteristics of one's body is terrifying, largely because there is no way to address it-- or even really acknowledge it-- that is even remotely socially acceptable. Even without any relation to sexuality (having existed since my earliest memories as a toddler, as
it doesn't seem to be a reliable cure for the distress
Actually, it is very reliable. It's got the best success rate of any treatment in psychiatry, which is one of the main reasons that they're considering de-listing gender dysphoria as a mental illness in the new version of the DSM : If there's a single treatment which is near 100% effective, and which removes the need for further psychiatric assistance, then it's an acute medical problem and not a mental illness. Mental illness usually implies that there's ongoing life-long problems associated with it, which will require continued treatment.
Try to understand... there's a handful of doctors in the world who are licensed to perform gender reassignment surgery, and between them, there's maybe 100-200 people every week who have the surgery, and many more who don't bother to go through with the surgery either because they can't afford it, or because simply living as their identified gender and taking HRT is good enough. While it's a vanishingly small percentage compared against the world's 7 billion population, the 1 or 2 every several years who claims it was a mistake to go through with the surgery is a vanishingly small percentage of the people who transition. Meanwhile, there's a near 50% suicide rate among transgendered people who don't have treatment, and the rate among those who do have treatment is less than the national average. The reason you don't hear about it is that most trans folk just want to get on with their lives, and are not attention-seeking publicity whores. It's actually very rare to find somebody who's willing to publicly out themselves and try to do something about educating the masses.
Further, the state of the art is really good. You could be dealing with transfolk on a daily basis and not know about it: a surprisingly large number of male-to-female transgendered people are able to slip under the radar, as it were, and never need to disclose their past to anybody other than their doctor (and, depending on their ethics, their lovers). As for female-to-male transgenders, it's even easier for them to go unnoticed because the hormones cause voice deepening, muscle growth, and facial hair. For them, it's near 100% that are able to go "stealth".
It's a fair point... but you are not in the majority with your approach to life. The world would be a better place if more people viewed the "other" the way you do.
Then again, it's probably also got something to do with geography... I'm in Canada, and while Canada isn't anywhere near as bad as the US, it's still not as forward-thinking and liberal-minded as Europe or Australia on subjects like this.
What do you think decides which way that feeling points?
I don't know. It's probably a combination of outside societal pressures, and internal pressures as well, but I don't think I'm qualified to explain what those pressures are. All I know is that I come into contact with trans people on a regular basis and am good friends with many of them (I do community outreach through the local LGBT center), and every single one of them has always considered themselves to be their identified gender, not their physical sex.
I'm open to suggestions. It certainly is nasty in there.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Just delete the column already.
I think a lot of folks on slashdot that have problems with these people do so simply because while they don't care about transgender/gay/whatever, they _do_ care about calling a spade a spade. Since saying that a man is a woman clashes with things pretty hard.
Having behaviours typically ascribed to women does not make you a woman. Same with men.
It's actually been found that some Transgendered people have different brain chemistry than "typical" gendered people. There's also theories that certain hormones or conditions in the womb can cause a predisposition towards transgenderism.
There's a whole lot of anti-LGBI bigotry in this mess here on /., but this is the one that keeps coming up. "Transwomen don't get to be women because we decide they're men." This is like the 10th fucking comment that's said that or something similar.
Well, who the fuck are you guys to decide someone else's identity for them!?
"You don't get to spend money on a car, what the fuck do you think you're doing, you're a Jew, you pinch every pinny you get mister! A spade's a spade, har har!"
"College? Boy, you're black, what makes you think you belong at MIT?! Hey now, I'm just saying, a Spade's a Spade. Now you go put on that KFC uniform and know your place, there aren't any black engineers out there."
"Honey, a doctor? You're a woman. You should be a nurse, don't you want to wear a pretty dress? A Spade's a Spade, after all, and you should know your place."
What utter arrogance.
Being Transgendered is not just a choice a Transgendered person makes out of the fucking blue one day. They don't just wake up and go "Well, I feel like a skirt today, and my Kilt is in the wash, guess I'll wear that red satin number."
Transmen and Transwomen spend years if not decades dealing with the knowledge -- not feeling, knowledge -- that they're the wrong gender. When available, they go through therapy that confirms this -- which is often the first time many Transmen and Transwomen realize just what is going on.
That's assuming they don't kill themselves first -- the suicide rate for transgendered people, especially transgender teenagers, is utterly horrifying. Partially because of people saying ignorant anti-LGBI crap like the stuff that's been thrown about in this thread.
And it's not even fucking binary. There's a thing called being "Genderqueer" or "Non-Binary" where people don't associate with either man or woman, at least not 100%.
I know it's a stretch, but I expect less ignorance on /., even though "lol trannies" is still a hiiiilarious joke in the gamer and geek communities. Hell, even Reddit is less of a cesspool than this mess has been.
For further reading I'd suggest starting with these two FAQs about Transgenderism, just as a start.
http://transequality.org/Resources/NCTE_UnderstandingTrans.pdf
http://pub11.bravenet.com/faq/show.php?usernum=940797647&catid=5020
Actually there are far more intersex people than transgender. And many transgender people are in fact intersex people who suffered forced sex assignment surgery as an infant.
? Did you really intend to ignore those who freely choose sex assignment as adults???
I feel that the minor adjustments that we need to make to accommodate these people pale in comparison...
Especially when you consider that there are physical/genetic abnormalities for which we must already be prepared to make these adjustments.
Denying these adjustments to people based on some evaluation would be rather like having wheelchair ramps, and denying their use to people who are walking on crutches.
Surely a 1 character text field could cover all the types
M & F for the 'traditional' genders
B = bisexual G = Gay L = Lesbian
T = Transexual (was F, now M )
t = transexual (was M now F )
N for none (neutered?)
R = Robot
I didn't even mention those. I am just saying that there are a lot of individuals who get marked as transgender today, but who got assigned the wrong gender as an infant, usually through forced sex assignment (surgery).
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
What you say is true in some cases, but I think is an over-generalization in this case. In this case, I think it is a matter of designers not maintaining an awareness of the full domain that gender encompasses. It's something that may be difficult to go back and correct, but not something that's difficult to deal with if you maintain an awareness of it from the start, which is exactly why this kind of issue needs to be brought to our attention.
As an example, imagine the issue of assigning serial numbers to items you produce. Assume some companies like to assign serial numbers when they ship items, but others like to assign serial numbers to items the moment they come out of the manufacturing process. Having to support both these methods is significantly more difficult (requires more resources) to design and implement than choosing one and allowing its assumptions to ripple through the system (I know because I've done this). You can make assumptions about whether you need to track serial numbers for everything that happens with an item in inventory if you know which route you have taken.
In this example case you have elements of each decision that exclude functionality of the other. If you choose to have serial numbers assigned only at delivery, you may have to introduce extra logic to compare how many items in inventory have serial numbers versus how many exist total and ensure the number of serial numbers don't exceed the overall quantity, but still allow zero or more of the items in inventory to have serial numbers (if you accept returns of defective products after they are delivered). Whereas if you assign serial numbers for all transactions as soon as the item enters inventory, you can assume that the number of serial numbers should always equal the inventory quantity (simpler math and validation process), but then you have to support entry of serial numbers on many more transactions. And if you want to support both methods, you have to deal with both sets of complexity, plus the added complexity of identifying which system is active plus the possible complexity of allowing switching between the systems. So this is a good example of how identifying an average or common case would significantly simplify software design and implementation.
But on the question of gender, I don't think the similar complexities apply in most cases. Most systems treat gender as a simple reference field of little integral consequence to the rest of the data. All the software designer has to plan for, in most cases, is what the valid values are and whether it can be changed. Sure, if you want to support the writing of a salutation ("Mr." vs. "Ms.") in automated letter writing software based on gender, you may have an issue, but:
1) I suspect that letter writing software is not a majority of gender-aware software out there;
2) If the salutation is important to you, you should be storing the salutation separately anyway instead of basing it on gender;
3) The complexities introduced even in this case are trivial if you have an awareness of and plan for them (it's not hard to include an extra field for salutation or to use a first name instead if you don't have a salutation field);
4) Supporting a third gender option like "U" in which the salutation uses the full name instead of a generated salutation is not mutually exclusive with any of the standard gender functionality. (A system that supports "U" doesn't cause the handling of data without "U" values to become more complex.)
Similarly, the question of whether to allow updates to gender after it is assigned seems to be more of a design oversight than a true issue of software complexity. There are usually many other fields in the same area that *can* be updated, and if you know ahead of time that Gender is one of these, it's not hard to allow.
That covers the technical aspect, but the issue also has procedural impacts - requiring documentation for proof of gender, for example. Why do we require documentation to allow a gender change? It's all part o
Who was it that was offering car analogies to teach biology? Your work is needed here.
This is old, obvious, and only very tangentially tech-related. This is the second faux-social justice story with very little to do with technology Soulskill has posted in the past 48 hours, I hope this isn't a trend.
I'm in college learning computer programming and while I was planning a database, this problem actually came up. What do I do with the gender field? Do I exclude it?Do I cover the 99.9999% of cases with making it a one time write with no access to changing it? In the end, being in a college with many unique individuals, I opted for a string field with 3 available options through a drop down list (Male, Female, Other) and an option to change it on the profile page. I felt this covered most use cases that I was aware of. (however with database planning, you can be sure someone somewhere will always pull a brand new case out of thin air.)
Ok I'm going to start this off easy
1: Gender Identity is a SELF identity. People should not have a gender identity forced on them that is not the one they use.
2: There is more than just Male and Female. Other identities might include: Intersex, bi-gender, and a-gender. Transgender is not a gender identity in and of itself.
And on to the more technical points
3: When designing systems do not consider gender to be a fixed field for a person. And for that matter remember that names are not fixed either. Also keep in mind that a persons REAL name and their legal name might not be the same
4: In the parts of the system that allow for the update of other personal information, allow for name and gender to be changed.
and on the business process side
5: don't make the requirements for changing a gender marker too restrictive. And especially do NOT require proof of surgery before making a change.
And now I will state for the record that I AM transgender. Documentation changes are one of the biggest hurdles that we face. BTW slashdot will not allow for changing user names, i would like to keep my 5 digit it, but move away from my old masculine sounding username.
This isn't a gender issue, this isn't a gender-politics website. This is a technical issue, this is a technical website.
The problem isn't "people are being mistreated!". The problem is: information architects incorrectly assumed something about an object in the database would never change. Full stop.
It could be gender. It could be height. It could be hair colour. It could be a fingerprint. It could be any number of things that doesn't change from day-to-day for the population of one culture. It could be whether a book in a library's collection is hardcover or paperback. It could be whether a vehicle in a taxicab fleet is diesel, petrol or natural gas. These are properties that don't change from day to day, but they can change, and it's incorrect to assume they never will.
This is a data architecture problem, not a call-out of prejudices.
if your son came up to you and told you he didnt "feel" like a person who was mobile, and wanted to break his own back and or neck and become a quadriplegic, you would support him right? because thats what he "feels" he is right? cutting off your own cock is totally normal, no one thinks its wrong to chop off your cock with a knife at all....
I don't know whether you are just stupid or pretend to be...
There are two gender states that are both considered "normal": Male and female. Usually these states agree with the body of a person, sometimes they don't. Changing the body to make it agree with the perceived gender of the person isn't hurting the body. Being unable to move is not considered "normal". That's the difference.
uhhh no, thats not what i said at all. This has nothing to do with liking or not liking anyone, i dont care what they do. but plain and simple what I AM sick of is everyone trying to push what they see as normal onto the rest of the world. If it makes you happy to cut off your dick (or attach one for you people who take everything as sexist even if its not there) so be it, but that does not mean it is normal, it does not mean that you should force everyone to agree with you. I notice you ignored the question I had posed and in turn decided to try and put words in my mouth. so once again, would yo support your son (or daughter....) if they wanted to become a quadriplegic because thats who they "felt" they are??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
having surgery to turn you from X into Y is not normal though. some people want us to believe that it is but it is not normal.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
"You don't give a damn and you'll be damned because it's quite literally not your problem? The "lady" doth protest too much, methinks."
I did not protest AT ALL. As I clearly wrote, I don't care one way or another what gender they want to write down.
My only point was that the problem described in this thread is self-created, and I don't have an obligation to help them feel less uncomfortable with it.
Then others also don't have an obligation to help men who pose as women on the internet feel less uncomfortable with it.
No, they just use AC sockpuppet accounts to harass people they don't like for some reason, and expect nobody to notice.
I mean seriously. Do you even realize how much of a FUCKING HYPOCRITE you are, to pose as an AC and then accuse others of "posing" as somebody else?
Frankly, I don't give a damn. It is quite literally not my problem.
"Jane Q. Public" is anonymous just like an AC is, and posing as a woman on the internet while minimizing the struggles of transgendered people is hypocritical.
Why? I totally support people doing whatever they need to, a surgery. Does not change your gender any more than pants or skirts do. No need to change the entry in the database.
You may identify with a different gender, but that doesn't change you gender and more then Identifying with a black person makes you black.
This is sloppy 70s pop psychiatry run amok.
To be clear: I don't care if you identify with another gender, I don't car if you want to dress, talk, and hang out with a different gender. DO so, have fun. I would be right their trying to stop anyone who would prevent you from doing those things.
Regardless of chemicals you take, or surgeries you under go; your gender does not change.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hey, it's Elledan from #hardocp!
I think the problem with how this is addressed (or lack thereof) is society has a tendency to lump everything into a single pile. As a result, general consensus *seems* to be that everyone dealing with gender issues is simply making a choice by whim and deserves the conflict and hassle of their self-serving and surely flippant-toward-society choices.
I don't think it's a case of willfully dismissing these issues. I think it's a case of people simply generally not understanding and not being presented with enough information to really understand. I've known colleagues and friends-of-friends who have dealt with these things and it really opened my eyes. Far from "selfish and flippant", a lot of people are born with both genitals and doctors and parents make a quick determination of what gender to assign to their child (sometimes with surgery to make it permanent), only for the child to grow into an adult that is absolutely the *OTHER* gender on the inside. That is, in every way but externally, they are the "opposite" gender. I can not even imagine what dealing with that must be like. Then there are those who were simply born one gender but they know in their heads that they are the other. Apparently there is precedence in nature for this occurring. However, we generally just think "what's in your underwear is what you are" and it is as simple as that.
Ultimately, I don't really understand why we care -- aside from affording people sympathy for what they have to deal with. If someone feels they are one thing to the point that they need to have i surgically corrected/affirmed and/or they ned to have it identified legally . . . how in any way does that impact anyone else? Is everyone just irrationally afraid that if they "tolerate" other people's personal decisions that some day they're going to end up dating someone of one apparent gender that *used* to be another? Is it really that primitive and selfish or . . .?
"Jane Q. Public" is anonymous just like an AC"
You're a moron.
Jane Q. Public has been my Slashdot handle for many years now. It is an IDENTIFIABLE, consistent account. As you already know. AC is nothing of the sort. AC is used by people who are either (A) occasional visitors to the site, or (B) people who "pose" as an AC sockpuppet because they don't have the guts to own up to their comments.
Therefore, Jane Q. Public is not "anonymous". There is a regular account and a definite persona behind it. AC is no way similar.
Further, you STILL haven't posted any evidence that what you claim is true. Even after doing this at least several times in recent memory, you ball-less posterchild for Dunning-Kruger.
I am just saying that there are a lot of individuals who get marked as transgender today, but who got assigned the wrong gender as an infant, usually through forced sex assignment (surgery).
Ah, OK. I did not get that you were relating two things to each other, as opposed to just listing two independent sources of gender confusion.
Yes, that's a great argument. Magical thinking people held them in special regard. Ancient people did a lot of stupid shit.
Native American Culture is dead. has been dead for 60 years. This trying to hang onto what are ancestors did while using rifles, driving cars, and running casinos is a laughable abuse of ones own culture. All cultures die eventually, the question is do you want you kids and their kids to continue to live in squalor, or move on?
Frankly, a lot of people I talk to seem more interested n their option of culture surviving then their own children's welfare.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Geekoids law: /. approaches 100% if you have to click on the 'Read the rest of this comment...' link
The odds someone is wrong on
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If "Jane Q. Public" weren't anonymous, you'd have shared your real name like many here do. Perhaps you don't have the guts to own up to your comments? (We both know you've got the balls, though many brave women have demonstrated that balls != courage.)
"... and posing as a woman on the internet while minimizing the struggles of transgendered people is hypocritical."
Why do you say I'm "posing" as a woman? (You needn't answer that because despite the fact that you're posing as AC, I know who you are, we've been over this before, and you don't have the balls to actually try present what you think is evidence because it will show who you are.)
But more to the point of the actual topic at hand: I DID NOT "minimize" anybody's struggles. I simply stated that it's their struggle, not mine.
if your son came up to you and told you he didnt "feel" like a person who was mobile, and wanted to break his own back and or neck and become a quadriplegic, you would support him right?
Of course not. Your analogy is irrelevant, ignorant and moronic. And since other commenters have dealt with the content of it well, I want to ask what the hell your response had to do with my comment.
cutting off your own cock is totally normal
Wait, no one (as far as I'm aware) has said anything is normal, and I can't really understand why you think that has anything to do with this discussion. I think we can all agree that transgenderism of any form is not normal or else we wouldn't be having this discussion at all. What difference does it make whether it's normal? Are you conflating "normal" and "correct"?
Again, many brave women have demonstrated that balls != courage. If you're actually a woman, it's odd that I have to repeatedly explain this to you.
Those poor 0.0000001%. It's so tough for them.
Are you trying to tell me there's only 6 transgender people in the world?
lol, Math'ed.
In Australia, passports already allow for "neutral" sex declaration:
http://www.enca.com/world/neutral-gender-identification-wins-court
So if a database is built with Boolean data type, you are in a problem.
Also the database will need to consider that sex information may change during the life of the person.
Just small issues. I'm sure there will be companies that will gladly sell consultancy and handle the projects to change databases to allow for that, on a small budget of a few billions.
BlueMonk's corollary:
Those resorting to Geekoids law as evidence that something is likely wrong have done so as a result of being unable to find anything specifically wrong, or as a result of a desire to participate in a discussion without expending any effort.
If "Jane Q. Public" weren't anonymous, you'd have shared your real name like many here do.
You still don't get it. Not that I'm surprised.
My account name is what it is. It has been what it is for years. Not only do I have no reason to change it (you certainly aren't "a reason"), but I also have perfectly legitimate reasons to keep using it. And those reasons are none of your goddamned business.
Even so, I make my opinions known, and they are associated with the name. I don't try to hide behind AC.
But again, more to the point: using a pseudonym online (yes, obviously it's a pseudonym regardless of whether you think I'm a man or woman), and keeping it for years, is socially acceptable and has a long and respected history.
Transgenderism, for better or worse, is also becoming more socially acceptable.
Online sock puppetry, on the other hand, is not socially acceptable behavior. It is universally condemned, for good reasons. And all you're doing here is acting like a billboard, illustrating those reasons. But again, I am not terribly surprised that you don't seem to understand that.
"Again, many brave women have demonstrated that balls != courage. If you're actually a woman, it's odd that I have to repeatedly explain this to you."
It's a common American figure of speech, and you know it. I'm not going to apologize or make excuses for using a common figure of speech. How about "fuck you"? Do you think I mean that literally, too? You really are a moron.
So you are anonymous, and you don't have the guts to own up to your comments.
Suggesting that it might be "worse" for society to accept transgendered people is an example of minimizing their struggles.
Now you're JUST trolling, nothing more. Of course you probably were from the beginning.
And then you wonder why I do not respect your opinions. What a joke.
It's a figure of speech which reinforces the sexist notion that women can't be courageous.
Mentally disturbed? I think not. I've met Sophie Wilson who is about the most level-headed person I have met. If you don't know who she is, she designed the ARM instruction set (and still is in processor design today), recognised as one of the best instruction set architectures around. But she was born as Roger Wilson.
If you're really that spiteful towards intelligent people who have contributed more to society in a week than you probably have in your entire lifetime, then go do without anything with an ARM CPU inside of it.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Again, suggesting that it might be "worse" for society to accept transgendered people is an example of minimizing their struggles. And I don't wonder about your respect at all, because it's worthless.
Why is this garbage even on Slashdot?
Hi there :)
I think it's more horrible that we think it's necessary to assign a gender (which is something very personal) to everyone, going so far as to physically alter our own infants and children to make them fit our ideas. This kind of forced surgery are Nazi-like practices.
I'm sure that if we can reach the stage where we allow our children to grow up to decide for themselves which gender they want to be instead of imposing one on them, the rest will take care of itself as well.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Maybe we should have 3 sexes... Man, Woman, and Uman. Him, Her, Hum.
Men have no mental or physical conditions that make them unable to impregnate women.
Women have no mental or physical conditions that make them unable to be impregnated by men.
Umen have mental or physical conditions that make them reproductively unviable.
Gender, as distinct from Sex, can just go the fuck away. How vain do you have to be to think other people are supposed to care about what you've "declared" your gender to be?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Stop fooling yourself. You aren't giving any assistance, especially calling people you've never met a 'circus attraction' and 'mentally disturbed'. There is no indulgence happening here that is any different than updating your drivers license to reflect your hair color.
What has happened, especially since the RealID debacle, are laws being changed or obfuscated to create stumbling blocks on the way to a successful transition. i.e. people like you are upset someone is doing something for themselves instead of fitting in your narrow world-view.
I transitioned in a state where I had to prove a 'altering surgery' was performed to change a physical designator. Actually, in Nebraska, this is not codified anywhere and was left up to the personal whims of the person in charge of the licensing standards. When I had asked Beth (the lady in charge at the time) for the law stating requirements, I was told what she was doing was not codified in law. When I asked why my license was being taken away because I did not have supporting documentation that she herself could not name, there was no response other than 'I WILL LET YOU KNOW WHEN IT IS ENOUGH'.
What is considered physically alterable in the state of Nebraska? Castration? A FtM having penis surgery? Hormones to block testosterone? A birth certificate showing your real-life gender?
The purpose of the licensing system is to be able to identify who a person is - not their life story. If you are the kind of man who is offended when the girl you are trying to pick up has a history that you can't comprehend - maybe it's time to question your manhood instead of projecting your unease on others.
But don't you find the 20-odd nanosecond lifetime a bit restricting? You must have a hell of a training budget!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
How stupid to you have to be to think vanity has anything to do with it?
I made no such suggestion. That's a distortion of my words, and that's just dishonest. I am done here. Goodbye troll.
Men who lie about their gender and then accuse others of being dishonest are hypocrites.
That doesn't change the author's point. They are valid concerns and your post is certainly interesting but it doesn't change their point nor my response to it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Hahahahahahaha! Well, that lets me off the hook then.
Have a not so nice day, troll.
One needn't be "useful" in every regard to be beneficial. The benefits are a more tranquil society, a happier society, a healthier society. Well, assuming that it is actually beneficial which is, as I mentioned, still subject to debate. Gays can't (by themselves) create a child but they can rear a child that was otherwise unwanted or likely to be given an upbringing that had a higher potential of the child becoming a drain on society instead of a benefit to society. That is one example where reproduction isn't required for something to be good for society.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I do all sorts of things I shouldn't do. The karma can take a hit (or twenty) and it is sometimes worth it to make a point. An example of people doing so would be your feeling compelled to carry on with the off-topic discussion to determine what I should and shouldn't post.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Looks like you also lied about being done here.
> a woman who had recently gotten married to another woman
It is not possible for two women or two men to marry each other. Marriage was instituted by the Almighty and His Son at Canaa confirmed that it only applies between a (one) man and a (one) woman. Governments do not have the power to change what the Almighty implemented souvereignly.
The so called same-sex marriages are mere "Potemkin villages" as they lack the sacramental character. People should accept with humility that they cannot marry within their own sex, nor can they divorce, just like woman cannot be priests, even if they try hard pretending to be one.
No but nor do you (assuming you're the GP poster) speak for them. To state that they're born that way is incorrect as it states that they're all born that way by default. Such is not true and, especially with the sensitivity of this topic, I think it is imperative to maintain clear, open, and honest language use. This will help to prevent the trolls from getting a foothold and starting to insert their silliness into the topic.
There are, unfortunately, a lot of prejudiced people on the planet. They often don't even seem to know it and some seem to even be proud of it. We can't do much about them other than to educate them. A lot of people seem to think that they'll die off and that the world will be a different place but that doesn't appear to be true. If anything it seems as though we're coming up with new and different ways to be prejudiced.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Not a lie; I simply changed my mind. Your comments are so incredibly, hilariously asshole-ish that I find reading them hard to resist.
I know the feeling.
"I know the feeling."
Yes, I am sure you do. The similarity between your comments and masturbation has not escaped my attention.
You must be terrible at masturbation if you see a similarity with Slashdot comments...
How stupid to you have to be to think vanity has anything to do with it?
Vanity is the only thing it has to do with. Most people just don't want to fucking hear about it one way or the other. We've got our own shit to deal with. It's just toweringly arrogant to think that other people are meant to give a shit.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
It's an issue, precisely because other people *do* make it their business. It's sort of like when people complain about "the gays" and how they won't just "mind their own business and keep it to themselves" while everyone saying that is busy trying to invade their bedroom and their private/personal lives.
I'm pretty sure most of them would quite happily see a day when nobody *does* care.
Then we would be ostracized and discriminated against that much more.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Here is one example that has been on CNN's front page for the better part of a month (as of yesterday it's off the front page)
Parents sue South Carolina for surgically making child female
That one was IS to F but IS to M is a lot more common than people think. It's said "it's easier to make a hole than a pole" but all too often when there is a micropenis or enlarged clit, they remove the female plumbing, and also very often if both are reasonably well formed the parents are often pressured by doctors and even clergy to make a decision, which is something equally as likely to be accurate if chosen by a coin toss as it is a "medical evaluation." In the case of IS children there is a 66% chance of making the wrong choice, because for us there are really three valid choices: 1. Make us female 2. Make us male 3. leave us the fuck alone. In all but the rarest of cases (such as a hypospadias being wide open revealing vital organs) the correct choice is #3 and let us make our own god damned decision when we're old enough to understand what such decisions make. To allow doctors or even parents play god and make that decision on our behalf is absolutely unforgivable.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If you don't give a shit, then why are you putting up a fuss about it?
I hope your children turn out intersex and you make the decision for them when they are infants, and they grow up to resent your ignorant ass when they realize how you fucked their lives up.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Do we really even need a M/F identifier in most databases? It may be necessary for some medical ones, but do the medical databases, if they contain other biological information (example, bloodtype) assume that this is correct before doing a transfusion? (I'm not a doctor, Jim, perhaps one could confirm this) - My point though, is for most databases, this isn't a useful bit of information.
Michael Jackson takes issue with your characterization of transrace people as "theoretical."
If you don't give a shit, then why are you putting up a fuss about it?
Well, the government just passed "gender adjustment surgery" legislation last week around here. So, now my taxes are going to be used to pay to sexually mutilate the mentally ill. I'm kind of pissed off about it, frankly. So, I come to Slashdot looking for technical news, there's an article about how rotten I am because I don't build databases to cater to the sensibilities of these mentally ill people.
Why can't you freaks just quietly live out your strange little existence without making such an annoyance of yourselves? A decade ago, I used to say "they're not causing trouble, just leave them alone". Now, all I think to myself is "they're perverting our entire society, and driving me crazy with their constant drama, will someone please just shut them the fuck up".
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
It's sort of like when people complain about "the gays" and how they won't just "mind their own business and keep it to themselves"
I'm one of those people who complain.
while everyone saying that is busy trying to invade their bedroom and their private/personal lives.
Why the hell would I want to invade their bedroom? No way in hell do I ever want to watch faggots buggering each other.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
You think that because you're an insecure little twat, not because you've ever encountered even the tiniest shred of evidence that it's true.
I would have assume precisely the opposite. Your reasoning is interesting, however my (admittedly non-PC) take is that gender dysphoria often has a grass-is-greener motivation (similar to how people fall in love with another country because the realities of life in their own are hard).
Also in the masculine/feminine spectrum of stereotypes, as defined by cultural expectations, there is plenty of crossover (gentle men etc.), and for these people it definitely is difficult to fit in. So, while you may focus on romantic options, I would think it is people romanticising the other side to a point where they wish to identify with them. The question is, can that wish invert sexual attraction? It seems unlikely.
A quick Wikipedia check suggests;
* male-to-female: 38% bisexual, 35% attracted to women, and 27% attracted to men
* female-to-male: somewhat unclear, but majority of trans men [are] attracted primarily or exclusively to women
So transgender people starting as men started as heterosexual and became homosexual. Surprisingly (for me) transgender women were the opposite.
Do you really think the editors posted this story so we'd have a long discussion on database design?
Huh. Well I was prepared to simply let your anecdotal evidence trump my late-night speculation, but the next commentor actually trotted out statistics to back you, though only for MTF:
A quick Wikipedia check [wikipedia.org] suggests;
* male-to-female: 38% bisexual, 35% attracted to women, and 27% attracted to men
* female-to-male: somewhat unclear, but majority of trans men [are] attracted primarily or exclusively to women
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
No amount of wanting will change your "default" hormonal state, or give you functional sex organs from your chosen gender.
That's not relevant either. The question of "who someone is" has to be answered by a combination of physical and mental, and the existence of this condition brings up all sorts of interesting questions about how society treats gender and how absolute that is.
For a license database it is about identification. This could go one of two ways; what does the ambo see when he picks up your pieces after an accident (birth gender, most likely)? Or what does the cop see when she pulls you over for speeding (chosen gender, most likely)?
Really it is about official identification. If the goverment allows you to change your gender then you are Jane Bloggs (F) - no point in different departments recording this differently.
That is surprising, it would seem to suggest that the mechanism behind gender dissatisfaction is operating somewhat differently between the genders. Or perhaps women are just inherently more attractive [chuckle].
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I mean, seriously, that's not really useful information in 99.999% of the cases where they want you to select.
Of course not. Your analogy is irrelevant, ignorant and moronic.
No, it isn't. There are in fact people who want to do exactly that.
There are people who want to cut off limbs because they "feel" that they are amputees. Really.
If you accept "transgendered" people as a real thing, you have to accept "trans-amputees" as well.
For example, in genetical studies sex is often important information. It is also used as a quality control measure. If the recorded sex doesn't match with the results of genetical testing, it can cause a lot of trouble. There may be a "witch hunt" to check if somebody has mixed up samples or sample information and the results of whole families may have to be thrown out, if there is suspicion that there is some kind of sample/pedigree mix up. However, it is typically possible to have other values than just male or female as the sex. Typically allowed values are "unknown" and "don't want to tell you".
And there are other valid reasons for recording sex, like doing statistics where you want to do comparision between sexes. And I personally wouldn't like to receive advertisements that are targeted for women as I am unlikely to be interested in them and they just waste my time. However, I think it is good to give the option of not giving the sex, if you don't want to give it. Many people oppose saving any unneccesary personal information, including sex, to different databases, web sites etc.
YMMV on that one. It's not just Transgender, but Intersex too. Some conditions cause a natural sex change. e.g. http://www.usrf.org/news/010308-guevedoces.html
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
Is being left-handed - something also caused by unusual neurology - a mental health issue too? If not, why not? What about cases like this - a girl with 5ARD, meaning she's undergoing a natural sex change at puberty - and desperately doesn't want it. Is that a "mental health problem"? http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aissg/2010_FamCA_237.pdf What about boys in the same situation - born looking female, naturally changing to look male later, and welcoming it. Are they "mentally ill" for wanting the change? I note that in the new ICD-11 manual, this whole syndrome is being moved out of the mental health section.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
So having sex listed in a database offends transgendered people, but I imagine that taking it out would offend affirmative action feminists even more. (I.e. they fear they'll lose their ability to track "fairness".) That and oh so many things critical to the economy (e.g. Market data) need important information such as this.
That and some people (such as feminists) consider their sex to be a defining and prideful aspect of their lives, probably far more so than the number of transgendered.
I'm having a hard time therefore reasoning that we should change a system that already suits its purpose because a fraction of a percent of the population finds it embarrassing. If we got rid of every little thing that might offend somebody, life would be pretty bland.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I'm baffled why anybody would mod this troll - the question of whether or not surgery is an ethical course of action is a very valid one. Thanks for posting it.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
If your database design doesn't account for the fact that a field value sometimes needs to be changed after the fact, then you are thoroughly incompetent, and anyone who hires you is being criminally negligent. Never mind those "dirty trannies" you're pretending to be persecuted by; sometimes a gender field just gets fat-fingered at the data entry stage, and that mistake needs to be corrected once caught.
You're not expected to build databases to cater to anyone. You're expected to build them to store accurate information about the real world. If you're not willing to do that, then you need to find a vocation better suited to your abilities. I'd suggest "fry cook".
I like people. I certainly can understand someone wanting to be judged on merits and personality first. As someone who has had some passing association with both psychology and biology, I think we're getting dangerously close to losing the science here.
The human baseline is as a sexually dimorphic species. We need that baseline to start learning and exploring humanity and helping people. All of us vary from our sexual archetypes and that's normal. I don't want that to be a shameful thing to say. The dirty little secret is that all of the progress that has been made into understanding transgender individuals come from that baseline assumption.
Free speech in this country is in a horrible state, because it only applies in a very narrow way to government laws and actions.
Free speech is your right to be free from government sanction for your views. It is not an unlimited license to hold horrible opinions that requires other people, by law, to have to just wring their hands, smile uncomfortably, and pretend that you're a decent person that they'd want to do business with. Outlawing the right of people to refuse to associate themselves with bigots would be in and of itself a form of government control on belief.
How about we have 3 boxes on the forms. Male, Female, Other. So simple, problem solved.
The third option for boolean values should, of course, be FileNotFound :)
Joking aside, I'm not convinced that people who've had so severe issues with their gender idendity that they actually changed it would be happy to be "Other".
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I'm curious, is there a correlation between genetic sex and the ultimate gender identities of intersex people?
How would you classify XXXY, XX/XY, XXY, XX/XXY, XY/XXY and other similarly atypical chromosomal phenotypes?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You note that it is being moved out, not that it has been moved out. Until then I'll refer to it as it is. That you choose to bring your own biases into the conversation is not something I have control over. If you can read my posts and still somehow manage to conclude that I'm in any way biased then you're not nearly as bright as you'd like to pretend. A person who has lost a leg is still physically handicapped. They're not a lesser person, they're just handicapped and should be judged on their merits not on their handicap. Do, please, try to keep up and leave your biases at home. Slashdot, it may seem so at times, really isn't the place to proudly display your bigotry as though you're a peacock.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That, my good sir or madam, is a brilliant point.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Your actual "complaint" isn't that they won't mind their own business. It's that they're no longer consciously making an extra effort to avoid reminding you that they exist. You're whining that they aren't catering to your insecurities anymore.
I didn't answer the question becaue it doesn't make any sense. Your question implies that there is no difference between a sex change and breaking one's spine, ie. you see the removal of one's ability to reproduce as equal to crippling oneself. I find that premise to be invalid and thus refuse to answer the question.
You try to steer the discussion away from the topic by using a loaded question that presupposes SRS to be morally wrong. The only reasonable thing to answer to are the semantics of your question, not its content.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
He has had a hysterectomy, has taken T / lived as a man for eight years, and only a handful of people have ever known him as "her." Here in Ohio, he changed his name easily enough, and his driver's license was easy enough to change, but it ends there.
To change federal status you need to revise your birth certificate, which is up to your state of residence. In some states you can easily change your birth certificate, not in Ohio. As I recall, in Ohio you are still required to prove you have had all of the surgical procedures (in his case, doctor's statements signing off on a double mastectomy, hysterectomy, and penile reconstruction) in order to have your birth certificate gender changed. From there you can send in your birth certificate to the department of social security to be issued a new social security card and a new passport.
Alternately, you can lie to the passport people and tell them that your birth certificate has the wrong gender. You send them the copy of your state driver's license as proof, and they correct it, then you send your passport and driver's license as proof to social security, and they correct it. You'll still have the screwed up birth certificate. Thanks, Ohio.
For transgender and intersex people this is archaic. For my state, it's embarrassing. For my friend, it means that a bearded, deep-voiced, guy (in every apparent aspect) still has documentation out there stating that a well-adjusted hetero dude who is obviously a "he" -- believe me you'd never guess -- is still considered a "she."
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Definitely applicable to children's medical records. So pediatricians will still want to track gender. The other medical data based on gender is currently suspect, including dosage for anesthetic. But it seems harmless to keep track of a person's chromosomal gender in a private medical database, perhaps including all the complicated rare chromosomal anomalies. You know, information your Doctor would probably like to know, but which your tax auditor, local police officer and boss have no right to know.
Tax breaks for gender? Are you actually suggesting that this is something we need to keep around?
How about maternity and paternity claims being treated equally and with common sense? Also, a man can certainly file a maternity claim, as everyone is free to file most kinds of civil court claims in most jurisdictions. He just won't win it when it becomes obvious he is not the biological mother (duh). On the other hand if he took on a male identity after giving birth, there definitely can be a situation where such filter up front is not only unnecessary but violates basic rights.
Business systems are no longer written in COBOL, using the present tense form of the verb "written". While certainly there exists old software, it's hasn't been actively developed in several years now and is in pure maintenance mode these days. Let's try to look forward instead of backwards. And I'm definitely for making old system obsolete so they can be replaced by new systems, spurring economic growth. (oh I'm sure you can find someone who does COBOL out there. but there are a lot of crazy and unreasonable people out there. for example, I program 8-bit NES games for a hobby)
I'm arguing that the information on gender is generally irrelevant and that as individuals we should consider our gender a very personal piece of information that the vast majority of the businesses and government do not need or deserve. I think we should draw a clear line between the medical condition of a person's gender, and the cultural identity for gender. For 99.9% of people out there, it's the same. No problem, they can have the added bonus of not having to even check an M/F box except on a medical form.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Do, please, try to keep up and leave your biases at home. Slashdot, it may seem so at times, really isn't the place to proudly display your bigotry as though you're a peacock.
Interesting. I ask you some discomfiting questions, you interpret that as bigotry.
Please try answering them instead? Or you may give others the wrong impression.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
yeah... about that.
is that *really* what you hope? If so, *i* hope you will never be accepted by society.
Hey VeniceBeach - gosh you are so right: not proven innate!
I'm MtF, and I'm not planning anything surgical, cuz I'm sort of getting away with it: not 6'4, not markedly unpassable, professional software dev, doing ok. I knew something wasn't lining up when I was ~5yrs old (I can remember being confused about things before we moved house at age 6 => good datestamps!), although I kept pretty silent about it until I was in my 30s - like, maybe it would just go away.
And it's funny how keen people are to push the idea that it's genetic, as if it matters. I don't give a damn. Something happened to me that doesn't happen to most people apparently, and by the age of 5 I was ... reconfigured.... and now, well, I'm SO glad I'm trans .... it's taken a long time to come around to that feeling, but now I'm there, well, wow. It's as though everything suddenly works. Who'd have thought such things would matter so much? That's the bit that feels crazy: I feel like a lot of who I am is outside my control. But the reality is that that's true for everyone, and I just had to make adjustments before things lined up. Gender identity is like your aorta: you don't know you've got one till it isn't working!
And it's amazingly fundamental ... that's why being trans gives you some insight. It's like being able to see Octarine or something. Imagine having to explain what love feels like; particularly that hard grown-up love you feel for your child, where you can step outside it and say "wooo, this is an ancient power working over on me". That's what feels broken, and then feels fixed when you can come out.
As you say: very important that we separate the reality of the phenomenon (which I bet I would have dismissed or ignored had I not had it burned on my brain) from spurious assertions of origin. Problem is, to some people it DOES matter (see the XX=female etc crew in other posts), and they only stfu when you say, "yeah, genetic". So I tend to separate Science Genetic from "idiot" genetic, which includes all those things you said, but largely comes down to "no known fixes". Or even "WONTFIX" - I live in a rare time and rare place where I can actually be who I feel I am, and everyone around me is accommodating, and I will never stop being grateful for that.
Uh-oh. I wrote an essay on /. Do I delete, or do I submit? If you're reading this, you're in the second universe...
Poor Brett. His last girlfriend turned out to be a 60-yr old guy in a girl-suit, and since then he's had a tendency to lash out.
Please be nice to him! He's conflicted, he knows it's not what he wanted, but it was so good while it lasted!
Sometimes the ad hominem attack is the cleanest kill.
One question I've always had (which may be answerable as there seem a number of TG/TS persons on slashdot) is, how does one form relationships after changing gender? I could definitely see some perils to announcing one's status while looking (attracting those ranging from creepy to curious) but I'd imagine that meeting somebody and not revealing it until later would not go over well in many situations either.
Dating as a straight born-male is hard enough, and from discussions with friends it's harder in many ways to meet people if you're not straight. How does one find a relationship if you've changed visual gender (especially in smaller cities)?
No they didn't. There was no such thing as transgendered until 30 years ago.
Clearly I'm posting AC because I'm embarrassed about this. Over the last decade or so I've been creating data systems, I generally just use a nullable boolean field for gender. Most times I just name the field female. Admittedly, I mostly write software for sporting events where the women's or girl's events belong to a somewhat protected class. At least that's how I saw it, until Castor Semenya.
I guess I'll start using smallInt for the gender field now. Oh well.
Yes. Calling a spade a spade. What you are describing is the common engineering approach of simplifying and ignoring special cases "until later". In this case, it turns out there are lots of spades which are also forks or which are more like shovels (for lifting loose material rather than digging). Is a spoon a kind of spade? etc...
By ignoring enough detail, you can often arrive at a lot of useful abstractions .... but actually, a good engineer realizes when they have made oversimplifying assumptions, and they remember them because that's where the interesting stuff happens (the model breaks, or a better model can be designed). Think "this can never happen".
So "saying that a man is a woman" makes this huge assumption that terms like "man" and "woman" are well defined - which is, after all, what's taught to children. But the reality is that they are just working terms that have a lot of caveats and special cases. The plain-speaking folks you refer to here would be recommended to look at where they got those terms from, and to question their assumptions.
I think of it as being a bit like this:- google for "brain eater syndrome eric laithwaite". Brilliant!
You can bet that some silly bastard somewhere made it part of the primary key.
I remember[1] someone telling me that social security numbers in Spain or Belgium or somewhere[2] indirectly worked like that, in that it was represented by the evenosity/odditude of the Nth digit. But maybe he was winding me up.
[1][2] not very well obviously.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
XYY are, I believe, usually referred to as "Australians".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What determines your gender? There are people with both at the same time. Some men have XX, with everything working just fine, except their sperm can't swim; but that's just a matter of time.
The main difference between women and men is just testosterone, all other differences like vagina vs penis is all due to hormones. How would you determine the difference between men and women? I'm sure I can find a corner case for every way.
I would like to argue that anti-social people like you are mentally ill.