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Comment by joshzayin | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.)

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.

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?

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?

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.

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