Sir, can you help me with this? | Hacker News Reader

Sir, can you help me with this?

goodmenproject.com

98 pointssprout55 comments

Although I expect this will be downvoted for being insensitive (unless the reverse psychology of saying so prevents it), I'm going to call bs on this person's experiences. In fact, it sounds more like what a woman planning to "transition" or who has transitioned toward being a man would fantasize things are like. I'm an all-American looking US male, approachable and probably in the 90th percentile with regard to looks, and woman (especially flirtatious, pouty ones) do not ask me for mechanical or technical advice unless they specifically know that I'm a programmer. Neither do men.

The people that DO know me know not to ask for mechanical help or advice because they know that I'm not mechanically inclined. If it were true that people who knew him as a woman started asking him for mechanical help because he became a man, even though they knew he wasn't mechanically inclined, then people who know me would behave the same, regardless of past information, and that doesn't happen.

If you take into account bone structure and facial recognition, he/she might be more approachable by women for having a friendlier face.

FYI, the correct pronoun to use here would be "he," as Mr. Forrister identifies as male, not female.

I'm sorry but I simply do not agree and I doubt this is the place to delve any further.

You don't agree with referring to people as the gender that they consider themselves?

There's a lot of people out there that don't like their first names, so they go by their middle names. I don't see how calling a female-to-male transgendered person "she" or "he/she" is any different from calling someone that prefers their middle name by their first name. In both cases, you're shoehorning them into a way of identifying themselves that works fine for most people (Most people go by their first names; most people go by the gender they were biologically born as.) but does not work for them. In both cases you're being an asshole.

Thank you for calling me an asshole for not agreeing with you.

Thank you for calling me an asshole for not subscribing to the same set of morals that you have.

Thank you for calling me an asshole for thinking that drugs and cosmetic surgery do not make the person, the person just is.

Thank you for calling me an asshole.

> the person just is

Exactly. Transsexuals were born with the incorrect genitals. The drugs and cosmetic surgery do not correct their gender--just the physical expression of it.

Referring to them as the incorrect gender is no different than referring to a cisgendered person as the incorrect gender--worse, actually, because transsexuals likely struggle with identity issues and bigotry much more so than cisgendered people, and by referring to a transgendered person by the incorrect gender, you're only making that problem worse.

So what would this person be 100 years ago? Without these options of drugs and cosmetics, that person would have to deal with they way that they were born. They would have to live life as the person that they were born. They are not fixing anything by taking drugs or cosmetics, they are hiding from the underlying problems of self-identity. You going along with the charade only complicates the problem of the person not actualizing the situation that they are in and dealing with it.

I offered no bigotry, but I sure received it.

Bigotry? What is your definition of bigotry that you think any response you've received is bigoted?

As to what they would've done 100 years ago, how is that in any way relevant? This isn't "hiding" any issues--transsexuality is a medically diagnosable condition, not just a "self-identity" problem that they are "hiding from," and to imply otherwise is a huge insult to transsexuals.

down-voted for what exactly? this seems to be as civil a debate as any other.

This person would have been a man just as much, regardless of whether he would have had to live his life in a woman's body. Your argument is that drugs and cosmetic surgery change nothing about a person's true identity, and that's true. The thing is, he can fix some of his self-identity problems by undergoing a sex change. Like jackowayed says, the reality is that there are transgendered people who are not happy with their sex at birth, just as there are gays who love men instead of women and bisexuals who are attracted to people of both sexes. Your perception of what's normal and acceptable doesn't change who people really are.

If you can't be who you are now, what hope do you have to be anything else later? And once you become fine with who you are, why do you need to change?

A couple hundred years ago, you probably would've had to live with the childhood infection that would lead to your untimely demise. Why did you insist on taking drugs to avoid your destiny?

You seem to think that it's in this person's best interests to refer to him using whatever gender correlates most closely with his chromosomes, but I'm not sure what makes you think you know what the best way to handle such self-identity issues is. Are you a psychologist?

This is where I see an odd tension between my quite-left-wing views on gender (at least, fitting with a portion of the left) and the views generally promoted by this portion of the LGBT universe. Since I don't really believe in the gender binary, it's quite strange to even talk about "correct" or "incorrect" genitals, except perhaps as shorthand for "physical sex characteristics that are in greater/lesser conformance to socially constructed gender norms for that sex". I can certainly see why someone who felt they better matched the A gender role but was born with B sex characteristics would want to switch, but I see that as more of a problem with rigid gender roles than with anything else.

It even a little uncomfortably feels like it perpetuates traditional gender/sex views, that there's something incorrect about someone with particular physical characteristics not fitting a particular gender role--- and that they need to correct it by changing their physical characteristics to match. That's certainly a choice people can legitimately make, but phrasing it as correct/incorrect comes uncomforatbly close to stigmatizing people who don't match traditional gender/sex conformance and yet don't feel that there's anything about that that needs "correcting".

(I agree in either case on calling people by whatever gender pronoun they prefer, though.)

It's not so much the gender role or social norms that matter--not all effeminate men feel that they should be women, and vice versa.

By saying "incorrect genitals," I was simply using a shorthand for "incorrect biological gender," or a biological gender which a person does not identify with.

That sentence could be rephrased as "Transsexuals were born with the biological gender, compared to their psychological gender."

(N.B. I'm not sure if "psychological gender" is the commonly used phrase, but I think it's adequate to communicate my meaning.)

Conversations like this make me wonder what is the nature of mental issues. Why do we decide that if a person is born completely as one gender but somehow has this feeling that they are actually the opposite one that their body just chose the wrong genitals while if someone is born with a mind predisposed toward murder they are insane. What is the criteria that decides it? Obviously feeling like a man when born a woman doesn't hurt anyone, but does washing my hands "too much" hurt anyone? Personally I just consider you all filthy.

First of all, there's a difference between "you're being an asshole" and "you're an asshole." "Being an asshole" is a transient state of doing something asshole-like. Even the best people do this at times. I chose the term "being an asshole" carefully.

> Thank you for calling me an asshole for not agreeing with you.

I don't think disagreeing with me makes someone an asshole. I think that some actions, which may or may not stem from differing beliefs, are asshole-like. If you believe that he's still a woman, fine. But if you refuse to respect him enough to call him "he" even though that's what he considers himself and wants to be called (whether or not you agree that he's male), you're being an asshole.

Especially because being transgendered is extremely hard. In most parts of the US, it's now socially acceptable to be gay. Some people will still have hangups, you'll still face some hostility, etc. but it's not where near as bad as it used to be. Transgendered people are still basically where gay people were 40 years ago. Calling them by one pronoun when they prefer the other just adds to their feeling that society doesn't accept them.

So you're not only disrespecting their preferences, you're disrespecting a preference that's related to an issue where they've faced a lot of strife.

> Thank you for calling me an asshole for thinking that drugs and cosmetic surgery do not make the person, the person just is.

Drugs and cosmetic surgery don't make the person. But neither does the body. If someone who physically is a woman in every way and hasn't even started taking testosterone yet tells you that he is transgendered and considers himself a man, use male pronouns to refer to him as well.

You can go ahead and start calling me black, then.

Also, you have to accept that I identify as blind. Just because I am sighted doesn't mean I can't identify as blind. And deaf. Sign everything you say to me, because although I hear perfectly, I identify as deaf.

Fuck political correctness. That's for retards. Oops, did I just say retards? That's not very politically correct of me.

People can do whatever the hell they want, that's fine, but they have no right to expect me to change my behavior. They do what pleases them, I do what pleases me. Neither of us may please each other, and that should be fine. Why do you care so much?

No .. you have no right to treat people according to your own closed-minded and bigoted views.

If we were all to follow your ugly example of what 'freedom' involves, racism and prejudice would be accepted blindly. It's only those who are part of the status quo, who can be as cavalier about the subject of 'political correctness' as you are.

You're an ass.

Why? Because all of your comparisons assume that the author's reasoning is imagined and fabricated. You are totally negating something which is obviously vitally important to the author.

It's a fact that transgendered people's needs are real, and that not dealing with these needs causes a great deal of pain and disadvantage for those involved.

It's not politically correct to think this - it's simply part of being a decent human being.

I do have a right to treat people however I please, and they have the right to choose not to interact with me. If I want to make myself a pariah, by whatever means, then I damn well have the right to do so.

And if by insisting to be referred to as a man, someone else makes themselves a pariah, that was also their choice.

Live and let live, I say, but that does not mean you should acquiesce just because someone feels their views are right (i.e., agree with you, heh, what makes your views any more right than mine, or the people who upvoted me?).

Just because something is important to someone else doesn't mean I have to give a fuck about it. For example, I am not going to be a vegan just because other people think it's bad to eat meat.

Also, calling me an ass really strengthened your argument. Kudos.

That is the whole crux of it for me. I don't have any ill intent towards this person and wish none upon them. I simply do not agree with the choice and therefore will not participate in it by referring to them how they wish.

I can imagine that many people have uttered the very same sentiment in relation to black people and the n-word.

At the end of the day, we all deserve to be able to be referred to in whichever way we choose. It's about mutual respect, and I'm shocked that this kind of view is prevalent in 2010.

It will be prevalent long into the future, don't kid yourself. Opposing view points on all subjects will always exist and these arguments will always happen. Instead, you should be shocked when violence or vulgar language is still being used to exert opinion dominance.

The fact that many people might share your desire and tendancy to disrespect others doesn't mean that I should accept your nonsensical, prejudiced arguments as a necessary fact.

The base argument that you are using is the same that has been used to validate the chastisement of many minority groups .. in fact all minority groups have campaigned for the right to be referred to using terms that offer respect.

Making a 'stand' and arguing for the right to disrespect someone is far more dangerous than vulgar language will ever be - and I'd also argue that it's more disruptive than violence, as it has an effect which is longer lasting and is more likely to prevent lasting positive change.

Is the other person not disrespecting me when they ask me to refer or participate in their choices that I might not agree with? Why is it that when someone deviates from the norm, everyone else has to respect them while they do it?

Because sometimes the norm is unjust.

"Just because something is important to someone else doesn't mean I have to give a fuck about it. For example, I am not going to be a vegan just because other people think it's bad to eat meat."

You're not being asked to do anything other than offer respect to a fellow human being. You're certainly not being asked to change your eating habits.

No one is choosing to make themselves a pariah. In fact it's your insistence on singling out a transgendered person as 'other' which is creating outcast status.

The fact that so many people upvoted your comment, made me feel that expressing a response was all the more needed.

What you're choosing to do, is belittle someone's right to express themselves in an honest manner.

The fact that you choose to do so with so much vitriol and lack of empathy, only confirms I chose the correct term to identify you with.

John Middle Doe may ask to be called John, or Middle, or Doe. Nobody can deny that these names can all refer to the same person.

But if Mr. Doe asked to be addressed as the King of France surely he would be regarded as delusional. One could still say that calling him Mr. Doe "does not work for him" but I can't see how that makes it wrong.

Now, some of us are skeptical that a person born as a man can literally become a woman, or that there are women out there who just happened to be born "trapped" inside a man's body (and vice-versa). Note that this doesn't imply bigotry of any sort.

Personally I don't care strongly about the matter. I would address the OP as "he" if I was talking directly to him. But I wouldn't feel guilty at all of speaking of her outside that.

Apparently discussion on the matter isn't acceptable here. I don't know that I agree with you, but you were polite, and I definitely wouldn't have downvoted you for expressing your views.

That wasn't really discussion, though, was it? A flat "I don't agree, and I don't want to go into it further" doesn't contribute much except frustration. If there had been some argument, some reasoning to back it up, then that would have been fine. Discussion on the matter is acceptable here, as the ensuing discussion has shown. But simple drive-by contradiction? I would say, vote that to about 0.

It's about respect.

If someone feels more aligned with a gender they weren't born with - and they feel the need to do something about it, then they deserve to be have their needs respected.

That experience probably also has to do with context. I'm willing to bet the female-male ratio at a community college generates difference experiences & expectations as opposed to the experiences a lot of us nerds live in heavily-male technical programs & professions.

You're not in a position to be able to judge the difference - because you've never been a woman. We don't notice the things which have always been true.

Just because your own unique experience of life, doesn't match up to someone else's, it doesn't mean that person's experience is bullshit.

It's just an expression of arrogance to expect otherwise.

You can't believe it but it's true. Have you seen straight biological women around transgender people? Women exaggerate their observance of gender roles around transgender people; they treat butch lesbians like they're Arnold Schwartzenneger, and shemales/trannies like they're some kind of Marilyn Monroe.

Some men do that too, buy trannies free drinks in clubs and kissing their hands (yeah, like they do that with biological women) while female to male transgender guys just get away with being rude and confrontational.

I hope this doesn't offend anyone.

Disregarding your slurs ("shemales," "trannies," and "butch lesbians"), you seem to be acting as though it is somehow trivial to tell if someone is transsexual, or that all transsexuals tell everyone they know or have just met that they are transsexual. Are you just referring to transsexuals whose friends know that they are transsexual, or do you claim that people can somehow always tell if a person they've met is transsexual? Or some other option, and my interpretation of your post was a bad one?

I'd like to see some evidence that what you claim about behaviors around transsexuals is true more than anecdotally.

Additionally, you are disregarding the vast amounts of transphobia and violence targeted at transsexuals. You are painting the picture that transsexuals have a great, wonderful life post-op. That is patently not true. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_trans... for a short list of some people who have been killed purely for being transsexual.)

1) You cherry-picked my "misuse" of a few words that I am certain are endonyms used by transgender people to describe themselves.

2) You ignored my conscious use of gender neutral language, including the much derided (by the transphobes) "biological" adjective.

3) You can't always tell if someone is transgendered, but there is that funny word, "passable". Yeah, I might be a hairy, straight Arab brute but I know my queer culture. Well, there are some non-passable transgendered people who, for some reason, garner the extraordinary treatment I described above.

4) God bless their souls, my fallen angels, my transgender brothers and sisters (in the most specific, "flesh of my flesh" humane sense of the word.) I feel their pain. I mean no disrespect, and my original post carried the apology without edit. But that still doesn't change my experience; maybe because I have always lived in tolerant, non-dipshit societies. In fact, I would say I have seen Free, happy and socially accepted transgender people in Pakistan, of all places.

[Edit:

5) What I wrote above was lamenting what I perceive to be unique treatment of transgender people. It might not be universal, but it's something I have witnessed, and I don't think it's right. FWIW. I don't kiss ass to biological women or take BS from biological men, so why should I with transgender men and women? Humanity, as a whole, can go fuck itself :-]

"But they use those words themselves" leads to treading on pretty dangerous ground. There are many words which have a history of being used as slurs to a particular minority - those words might be 'reclaimed' by the minority and more or less acceptable to use if you're within that community, but would almost certainly be read as a slur if used by someone outside it.

Over-sensitive? Perhaps, but (as a gay guy) if you've grown up with those words being shouted at you, you quickly learn to associate them with hostility.

This whole discussion is anecdotal.

I don't think he is necessarily lying. I can see the computer room story playing out as described. There were five people apparently in the room, all female except for one male. The female with the printer problem saw the "worker" female was busy helping another female, so it was down to a choice between one male and one female working independently at their computers. With that 50/50 choice I can certainly see her gravitating to the male, and possibly for more than one reason.

Next, notice all the other assistance requests came from people he already knew -- co-workers and friends who should all be knowledgeable of the transition. I imagine these people might actually be more inclined to ask for "man job" assistance from their friend who now models being a man in a serious way.

Based on the picture at the top of the article, my interpretation is that the putative computer-room woman perceived him as the type of dorky, non-manly man ("herb") who is easily manipulable by feminine wiles.

Since the author is new to being a man, here's some advice:

The reason the girl in the computer lab asked you wasn't because she thought you had any exceptional skill, or that none of the women in the lab could help. You were judged the only one supceptible to her charms.

They will either act cute/helpless, sexy/flirty, or they'll issue a challenge ("are you good at this? Do you know how to help with this?").

That's pretty much what the author describes, actually.

He mentions the flirty instance but seems to be pretty oblivious to the phenomenon described by johngalt:

>She has every confidence that I, the only male in the room, can solve her printer problem. (...) I am still the same person inside, with the same skills and abilities as before, but society’s expectations have dramatically changed based on my new gender.

I found this quote quite telling:

I size other guys up, thinking, Yeah, I could take him.

I think this helps explain Tom's experience, because that is a very "hollywood" view of how the male psyche works. I'm sure a portion of men think like that, but I'd posit not as many of us as some might expect.

So Tom has this fantasy of what it is like to be a strong, assertive, aggressive male. In my experience, though, such men (my second best friend is like this) often tend to be extremely sensitive and vulnerable. Whereas from my observation some of the sugar-sweet women I know can be whiplash when they need to be.

Which goes to show there is a lot more to this gender lark than meets the eye.

I think there is some expectation bias in Toms experience, he will notice these incidents a lot more. But I don't think this is a general observation of society, for example as a straight 23 year old male I am pretty much the go to guy in my friendship group when you feel a bit lousy and need some sympathy.

I'm sure there is still some bias, held over from the past century (even the past decade), especially in the realm of computers. But I think it is decreasing rapidly over the generations.

As interesting as it is that he concludes that he "can’t deny that testosterone has changed [his] behavior," I can't help but wonder how much of that personality change was due to his own gender stereotypes, societal expectations and generally just feeling like a man.

I've heard very similar things from pre-op transsexuals who aren't on hormones and are just dressing the part. Dressing like a man makes you feel like a man in much the same way wearing a suit instead of sweatpants reflects on your behavior, poise and how other people interpret you.

But then, I think gender stereotypes and social expectations shape the the way all men function.

I'd imagine that in this particular circumstance, without testosterone, being accepted as a man would be far more difficult for the author - because the physical changes wouldn't have occurred.

I have the belief, largely anecdotal, that transgendered people tend to adhere to stereotyped gender roles rather more than people in general.

Just me speculating here, but it makes sense to me that it would be that way. Men who are born men don't really worry about being "convincing," as they've never doubted it. They may worry about appearing homesexual, but that's still different than worrying about appearing female.

That could be so, but then - perhaps short men adhere to stereotyped gender roles more than people in general too? I think adherence to these rules relates to the way people counter perceived feeling of inadequacy.

eh, I don't know. I think testosterone does alter feelings and behavior in fairly shocking ways, far beyond what you see when you dress differently. Do you remember puberty? I went through puberty later than most of my peers, as far as I can tell (I didn't get shoulders until I was well out of high school, and the shoulders corresponded with developing a sex drive and other feelings one associates with puberty. Now, I don't know if it was a coincidence or not, but this was also around the time that I started eating meat.)

And yeah, the aggression was pretty shocking at first. I can remember feeling like the hulk. "my god, I'm huge!" I'd break things by accident because I was stronger than I expected. by that time, I considered myself an adult with a job and I was surrounded by people who were forty plus years old, so I didn't actually pick fights with people, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to.

As far as I can tell, this isn't particularly unusual for young men (except, maybe, for the timing)

Alternate explanation: he was asked to help because she thought he'd be the most willing to assist her, the tantalizing but remote possibility of sex hanging over his head...

Reminds me of this article about a scientist that underwent a sex change:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07...

From the article:

"After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's.""

I size other guys up, thinking, Yeah, I could take him.

As a lifelong nerdy ectomorph, I have never felt this way.

With me its been more like, "Yeah, I could launch that MVP faster than him."

Bubble sort? You just got your ass kicked.

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