Archives for posts with tag: transgender

LGBT: The ‘L’ Stands for ‘Linguistics’

Oct 14, 2018 //
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We all know what words mean, right? They mean whatever it says next to them in the dictionary. This definition is agreed upon by professional dictionary writers which must be the objective truth, because, as we all know, there is never any debate, disagreement, or human error within academic bodies. The divine wisdom of these truth-holders means that the dictionary definition is more infallible than the Pope. Dictionary writers are ordained by God to give the final decree on language, and that’s why language is static and unchanging.

Except words are just the socially agreed upon tags that we attribute to concepts. Like a “river” for instance, is still called a river whether it floods, dries out to a trickle, is polluted to the point where the H2O is barely detectable within it, or whether it changes course entirely. The make-up of a thing barely impacts what we call it, unless we possess an alternative concept like that of a canal, in which case a river just needs some specific minor changes (like some walls and human direction), and voila! It’s no longer a river. Or if it remained a trickle for too long, we might start calling it a stream because we have a word for that concept too. We might use adjectives to convey the connection between multiple concepts, a “flooded” “river” is still not a “lake.” Our history with a concept will alter our viewpoints as well. An old timer who remembers the stream when it once was a river might still have an understanding of it as a river, while a newcomer might think the old timer is simply delusional. A stream is a stream!

literally

Until enough people decide that it means “figuratively“, and then it means “figuratively,” and there is literally nothing you can do about it.

This brings us to language as it is applied within the LGBT community. Wouldn’t you know it, there just so happens to be a debate around the definition of words: like marriage! If you believe that “marriage” is defined as being between a man and a woman, then gay marriage becomes a nonsensical concept. A triangle is defined as having three sides, and along comes these degenerates who think that it can have four? Linguist Willard Quine tells us that human language in a community is like a collection of sculpted plants. Even if they all look the same on the outside, the branches and twigs on the inside that make up the sculpture will be different in every instance. How we learn our language shapes our understanding of that language, and even if we have a pragmatic functionality that allows us to get by in day to day conversation, those differences can create problems.

If marriage is defined not as between a man and a woman, but instead as being a loving relationship between two people that is recognized as legitimate by its having legal validation, then not only is gay marriage entirely reasonable, it is positively oppressive for them not to be able to access it. Of course, this definition eliminates polyamorous relationships from being recognized as legitimate, as well as defining legitimacy as something that the state applies through legal policy. Do I really need the government to tell me that my love is real???? How we define things has real world social implications beyond just conversational understanding.

dreamstime_s_18882968

I asked him, “when?” and he told me, “After the midterm elections, baby. I promise!”

When I have a concept, and you have a concept, and we use the same word to describe both our contradictory concepts, then yeah, there are going to be problems. This can be solved by either changing the socially accepted definition of the word, which involves changing society around the word, or it involves inventing a new word (like “canal”) to accommodate the minor changes in concept. I have actually heard an argument saying that gays should have the same legal relational rights as straights, but that their relationships should just be called something else. Unfortunately, the history of a concept and its legitimacy can’t just be erased like that. If there was “married” and “gay married,” you can guess it would follow the same “separate but equal” treatment of water fountains. There are certainly instances where new terms are required for new concepts (it is unlikely there was any controversy when the term “canal” was introduced), but when it comes to forcing whole categories of people into a term they never agreed to, then you’re creating bigger problems than semantics.

Another perfect example is gender. What is a “woman”? Is a woman someone who was born with the XX chromosome? Is a woman someone who looks and behaves like a woman? Is a woman someone who feels like a woman, regardless of how she was born or how she looks and behaves? Two people can be talking about women and may never discover that their definitions are incompatible. Branches within a sculpted plant, remember. How we define “woman”, however, is going to have a distinct social impact on transgendered human beings. Cisgender, the term, was coined only recently because there was seen a need for a new concept. For those who believe that gender is related to birth sex, the term is unnecessary, or even offensive because they do not see the need for a conceptual distinction. This shows the difficulty of introducing new terms because all of society needs to accept the distinction.

canal

I’m sorry, but this is a RIVER because even if you dress it up, it’s still made up of H2O! Facts don’t care about your feelings, libtards.

What is a woman? We could always have a distinction between “woman” and “transwoman,” right? Who cares? We’re just hashing out concepts, and in the end, the definition doesn’t really matter all that much because human society can just adapt. The problem is that there are casualties to this debate. Transgender people are dying while this linguistic nitpicking rages on. Why don’t we choose a definition where nobody gets hurt?

They’re just words, folks. Remember: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are the foundation of my ideological system, and any fluctuation in their social acceptance means that that ideological system is in peril. Meanwhile, others are enduring sticks and stones, so maybe hurry the fuck up with your existential crisis, k?

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Categories Gender and Sexuality, Social Criticism

Transgenderism as a Mental Illness

Feb 7, 2017 //
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Transgendered people are individuals who believe that their self-hood does not align with their sex at birth. So for example, someone who was born male but identifies as female would be called a transwoman. This apparently causes problems when it comes to bathrooms, but something I once read, but can now not find to cite, said, “If you care about the gender of the person in the stall next to you, you don’t have to pee badly enough.” That about sums up my feelings on that controversial topic.

Where does transgenderism come from? Well, some say that it is a mental illness. Transgendered people are delusional; their genitals ought to have precedence when determining their mental make-up, so if there is a discrepancy, a quick peak beneath the trousers should clear up any confusion. Let’s go with that for right now. For the sake of argument, being transgender means that you are suffering a mental illness.

I’m going to make a patently false assumption and say that when we consider someone with a mental illness, we want to help them get better. We wouldn’t want to abuse them, sexually assault them, murder them, or commit violence of any kind against them. We wouldn’t want to vocally condemn them as freaks. We would want them to get better. People who abuse the mentally ill are typically considered monsters.

Perhaps transgenderism is morally unacceptable. That certainly would make bullying and harassment a reasonable reaction, I’m sure. The Bible is quite clear in its endorsement of throwing stones. Except we can’t be morally responsible for things outside of our control. If someone declared you morally bankrupt for failing to save the life of a child trapped in a coal mine on the other end of the planet, that would be absurd. It is an impossibility. If you were local and had the skills available to rescue that child, then yes, some degree of culpability could be admonished, but in order for moral responsibility to be present, a measure of ability to perform that action must be present as well. Transgenderism, which research has shown develops concurrently to the overall identity development of the child, as a mental affectation is not a choice, and therefore moral culpability, whatever your argument against transgenderism might be, cannot apply.

What can we do to help transgendered people if judging them and abusing them is out of the question? If we compare their plight to another delusional and incurable mental illness, say, dementia, perhaps we can discover an appropriate treatment plan. Dementia patients frequently believe that they are living in the past, and mistake their adult children with their own siblings, and so on. As it turns out, if well-being and quality of life are our goals, the best treatment plan available to patients with dementia is to acknowledge their delusions and allow them to live in the reality within which they identify. In the context of transgenderism, this would mean that acknowledging the preferred identity is the superior treatment to… verbal abuse, I think is the predominant method today. Some might say that tolerance “encourages” transgenderism, the same way I suppose that treating schizophrenia to a degree that their lives become livable encourages people to become schizophrenics.

I want to take a bit of a detour here. What is an illness, especially a mental illness? If we wish to attribute illness to transgenderism, it’s important we know what we’re calling it. The initial thought could be, “an affectation of the mind or body that produces an uncomfortable feeling.” This is why we consider headaches and the flu to be illnesses, since they make us feel uncomfortable. This can’t be attributed to transgenderism though, because it is their assigned gender that makes them uncomfortable, which would mean that transgenderism is actually the cure to the illness of gender. We’re working under the assumption that transgenderism is the illness here, so this cannot be the case.

Perhaps a better definition might be, “an affectation that produces abnormalities.” The transgendered are a small minority of the population, which would make them technically abnormal, but this is unfortunately too inclusive. Left-handedness is abnormal, but certainly isn’t a mental illness. Nor are green eyes a physical disability. Just because something does not bear a likeness to the majority does not mean it is an illness.

The best definition of illness is something that prevents suitable integration into society. The flu prevents us from working or functioning properly at all. Bipolar disorder produces unpredictable behaviour which leads to social discord if left untreated. The destructive aspects of dementia lead to an inability to communicate with others, or participate in society, and ultimately the greatest alienation from society of all: death. If someone is compelled to deliver puns at every opportunity, this is not considered a mental illness despite how I might think because it only alienates them from people with taste. If someone is compelled to drink at every opportunity, this is considered an illness because they can become destructive, and the long-term physiological damage prevents future social function.

If we view illness as predicated on social ability, then this opens up a serious question. If someone is paralyzed from the waist down and is stuck in a wheelchair, we consider them disabled because they cannot function in our traditional, stair-filled world. However, if there are ramps, suitable desk jobs, household and work accommodations to allow general independence, then wouldn’t this person not be considered disabled at all? If there was a legless human commune somewhere that functioned autonomously without difficulty, then this detriment in our society would be considered the norm and conceiving of it as a disability would be impossible. Left-handedness was once considered a sinful mental affectation because the world was built for right-handed people. Illness, therefore, is not dependent on anything outside of society’s ability to allow it to adapt.

So yes, of course transgendered people are mentally ill because they are indeed unable to adapt in a society that hates them. A society filled with intolerance would not allow a transgendered individual to flourish in the way that a more tolerant society would. I invite you to wonder, then, as to a possible cure.

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Categories Gender and Sexuality

All your arguments against Rachel Dolezal are wrong.

Jun 29, 2015 //
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There has been an enormous backlash against Rachel Dolezal ever since she came out and identified as a black woman. Both as a condemnation towards her for having the audacity to don a modern day blackface in order to appropriate black culture, as well as a harsh denial that identifying as a different race is the same as identifying as a different gender.

I’m going to be using the adopted “transracial” term throughout this blog post because despite its original meaning of crossing racial boundaries, it’s really the best we’ve got. Plus, it gives me a good opportunity to address the first critique of Rachel Dolezal’s identifying as a black woman: people claim that because there is no word for “transracial”, Rachel Dolezal must be lying. This of course would mean that before the early 1970s when transgender was added to the English lexicon, it was impossible for people to identify as a different gender. Not having an English word for something does not automatically discard it as impossible.

Rachel Dolezal must also be lying because you can’t feel a race, whereas you can feel a gender. Those who are transgendered typically are aware of the ‘wrongness’ of their body in relation to their identity as early as childhood. What does it mean to feel a gender though? It seems just as ludicrous as feeling a race. As a cis-man, I feel I should be adequately qualified to say what it feels like to be a man, and I am 100% certain that a trans-male would not feel their gender the same as I do. I am told, time and again, that there is no way for me to understand what it’s like to be trans, and that is fair, there’s not. I don’t claim to. But that lack of understanding works both ways. Being a man is not just the hormonal urges and biological make-up; chromosomes dictate gender just as much as genetics dictate race, and both have physiological effects on our selves, but any transgendered person will tell you there’s more to gender identity than your chromosomes. Why can’t it be the same with genetics? Yes, there’s also the social conditioning and cultural attitudes that affect gender as well, and this is precisely why gender is considered a social construct, much like, hey you guessed it, race!

Which leads me to my next point: Rachel Dolezal is merely a white woman appropriating black culture because that’s what white people do. White people wear Native American tribal feathers like party hats, and are shocked when they learn that trivializing sacred traditions for the sake of looking exotic at a rave is considered offensive. But by all accounts, Rachel Dolezal was not trivializing black culture, but was embracing it, thriving within it, and helping progress it. If becoming an embodiment of a member of a culture is by definition appropriation, why is it not appropriation when a man becomes a woman or vice versa? There are gender cultures. We each have our separate hairstyles and modes of dress; we have our own belief sets (for example with regards to sexuality); we have our own rituals, etc. Yes, not all men and women fall into those cultural boundaries, just as not all black and white people fit into their own respective cultural stereotypes. I say again, THEY ARE BOTH EQUALLY SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS. If Rachel Dolezal was indeed trivializing black culture, rather than fully immersing herself into it, then it would be appropriation. However, since she clearly is not, then there is no more appropriating than when someone identifies as a separate gender.

But of course, black culture has a long, sordid history of oppression by white people, so that makes it worse. Black people weren’t given the vote in America until 1965, and the Jim Crow One-Drop law forced even those with the most minute of black ancestry to face terrible oppression. The argument is that when black people are treated like white people, then white people can identify as black. But women only got the vote 45 years earlier in 1920, and if I want to get catty about it, women weren’t allowed to wear pants in school until 1972, and now men want to wear skirts? Women still receive a fraction of the pay that men make for the same amount of work, and there are still disturbing amounts of incidents of violence against women. So if we have to wait until black people have equality for a white person to be able to identify as one, why was gender allowed to jump the gun?

My favourite argument that I’ve come across thus far was that Rachel Dolezal was seeking to gain socially by becoming a black woman. Which is hilarious to me because since when has a BLACK WOMAN been the top of the social totem pole? White privilege and male privilege are no longer the accepted norm? Black women have taken the top spot? Please. And even if Rachel Dolezal benefited from identifying as a black woman, this trans-man wrote an entire article about how sweet being recognized as a dude is, and no one is asking him to hand back his penis card:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/05/male-privilege-trans-men/

Speaking of privilege, Rachel Dolezal is also condemned because she can just remove her shoe polish or whatever and do her hair like a proper white woman whenever she gets tired of playing dress up, and she can reclaim her white privilege; no harm, no foul. Just like a trans-woman could take off her dress and wig any time she wanted to get back that sweet male privilege, right?

A lot of transgendered people have been interviewed, as well as black people, as well as trans-black people, who all claim that Rachel Dolezal can’t be associated with them for a variety of reasons. So she must be lying, because intersectional identity politics teaches us that those from one group get to dictate how those from another group identify themselves. That was sarcasm. If you don’t get it, look up intersectionality. It’ll be good for you. I’m sure being transracial is quite different from being transgendered, or cisracial, but that doesn’t mean those groups have the right to denounce her identity just because it’s different from their own.

The final argument is, of course, she’s just lying. There’s no such thing as being transracial, so she can’t be one. She’s a big fat liar. Except, there’s kinda precedent. Given the fact that race is a social construct, it shouldn’t be that difficult to identify as a race separate from the one you were born with. We actually have names for those kinds of people, and given the seemingly natural transphobic nature of most people, they’re all slurs: Wiggers, for instance, or an Uncle Tom for the opposite. We have Bananas, and those white guys who are super into Japanese culture. I don’t know if they have a name, but most people just call them creeps. In Asia, there is that whole eye-widening craze. Hell, the one instance that I’m surprised NOBODY has mentioned in this clusterfuck of a media shitstorm is Michael God damn Jackson. You could argue that he had his skin disease and that’s why he bleached his skin, but his skin disease didn’t cause him to get facial reconstruction surgery to thin out his nose and lips, or straighten his hair, effectively erasing any remaining “blackness” he once possessed. Michael Jackson never openly identified as being white, but it is not a far stretch of the imagination to envision it as a distinct possibility.

It is possible Rachel Dolezal is lying. Sure. But people are arguing so vehemently about the strictest impossibility of anything similar ever even taking place that you have to question why transracial is different from transgender. Why is a white person identifying as being black so offensive while a man identifying as a woman is accepted (among progressives, anyway)?

My first guess was that white people are simply greater villains than men, but I don’t think that’s true. Slavery, the biggest divide between whites and blacks, didn’t occur just in America. Africa had its own share of slavery, and when white slavers came to the African continent to buy slaves, it was African tribesmen who sold them. I’m not trying to justify or condone anything, but I would like to point out that I can assume with almost 100% certainty that both individuals in every instance of those slave exchanges, for both races, were men. White people have done terrible things, but so have black people, so has every single race in existence, and again, in almost every instance, it was likely being perpetrated by a man.

Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex points out that it is much more difficult for woman to combat against men because gender pervades all the other divisions. Whites and blacks have a clear distinction, as do the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Most combative groups have distinct dividing lines between them. Men and women, however, permeate all those groups. It is almost impossible for men and women to strictly work against one another because of this, and also because quite frequently men and women love each other deeply. The biological connection that men and women share makes it much more difficult for us to hate one another, whereas there is no such courtesy among any other groups.

It’s also possible that people identify more with their race than they do with their gender, and that is why people are getting more anxious over someone identifying as transracial than transgender.

For the group that claims to be the critical thinkers of the modern world, I really feel like progressives have dropped the ball. If you want to argue with me that transracial isn’t a thing, go for it. I’m not married to the idea. I just need to see a better argument that can’t just be put up against transgendered people with just a few words switched out, like I’m going to do here with this Huffington Post article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/rachel-dolezal-caitlyn-jenner_n_7569160.html

Gender divisions may ultimately be a construct, Moore notes, but “sex is determined by your chromosomes.” And it’s secondary sex characteristics that primarily determines gender privilege, and the way others in the world interact with your gender identity.

Transgender identity is a concept that allows men to indulge in femininity as a commodity, without having to actually engage with every facet of what being a woman entails — discrimination, marginalization, oppression, and so on. It plays into gender stereotypes, and perpetuates the false idea that it is possible to “feel” a gender. As a man, Jenner retains his privilege; he can take off the wig and the nylons and navigate the world without the stigma tied to actually being a woman. His connection to gender oppression is something he has complete control over, a costume he can put on — and take off — as he pleases.

…

It’s unclear what Jenner believes his authentic gender identity to be — he has yet to comment publicly, and actively dodged the question when a reporter asked him what genitals he had under his skirt on June 10. “I don’t understand the question,” he answered, ending the interview abruptly.

Jenner’s delusion and commitment to living as a woman is profound. And it’s inherently wrong. The implications of a man, donning femininity and then using that femininity in order to navigate women’s washrooms is offensive. 

I won’t do the whole article because a lot of it is too specific to Dolezal’s case, and frankly it’s annoying to bold all those words, but you get the idea. If you want to call me transphobic for making the comparison between transgender and transracial, then I will call you transphobic for automatically assuming that someone who identifies as something they weren’t born as is a liar and a pretender, or worse, mentally ill.

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Categories Gender and Sexuality, Politics