The potential for this discussion to go horribly, horribly wrong is painfully high, so let me start by saying that I mean no one any offense, have enjoyed the company of transgendered people in the past, will enjoy the company of transgendered people in the future, and have zero interest in preventing anyone from seeking and finding their bliss. I met Bruce Jenner a couple times and he was an awesome dude. I'll bet Caitlin Jenner is an awesome lady. But we're talking about media here. We're talking about a giant irresponsible vampire squid made up entirely of people who didn't want to get a real job. And the media has the job of talking to "the people" and "the people..." Well, the people. Give this quaint little bulletin board three pages as they discover that one of the Big Brother contestants this year is transgender. But don't give it more than, oh, five. Nobody needs that much stupid in their life. Combine that with the fact that we're still getting all sorts of mixed messages: Remember when Philadelphia came out? and gave the AIDS message 1984 needed so badly... in 1993? In a way it was embarassing but holy fuck - as someone who grew up with GRID and arcade machines that could kill you with gay plague it was one hell of a moment to see Antonio Banderas and Tom Hanks play lovers to a Bruce Springsteen soundtrack. And I think we wouldn't have had that much earlier than '91 come hell or high water. Johns Hopkins? Johns Hopkins was the gold standard for gender reassignment surgery when I was growing up. They stopped doing it 20 years ago. Backlash is a thing. The idiots of the world are not cool with Caitlin Jenner, despite the fact that Walter became Wendy more than 40 years ago. We're at that awkward stage where people are still wondering stupidly about the plumbing - that "how do lesbians have sex" phase of the conversation. The media is going to "grapple" about how to talk about transgender people. The last thing anyone should do is scold someone trying to please multiple audiences. The end result will be silence.The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh, that studies show between 70% and 80% of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time. Also, for those who had sexual reassignment surgery, most said they were “satisfied” with the operation “but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery.”
“And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs,” said Dr. McHugh.
I agree, generally. The media has, at best, one of the most thankless and impossible jobs imaginable - communicating nuanced ideas to people and explaining complex subjects in 500 words or less. Oh, and make sure to lead with the most important information so that the editor knows where to cut out the minutiae and subtlety. The media has been avoiding dealing with how to talk about trans people for over 50 years because it's been so busy trying to figure out how to talk about a bunch of other topics like sexuality, and race, and green technology, and "what the fuck is a dot com?", and so on. I am a patient person, and a willing educator (or at least I try to be. I am not always my best self). I can see why some trans people are frustrated with the conversation, however. 50 years is a long time to be mostly ignored, and to be shown off as a sideshow freak when acknowledged. I will mention, however, that Dr. McHugh has generally been discredited on trans issues, not to mention the rest of the LGBT spectrum. Indeed, as mentioned in this article (admittedly not a scientific journal), he is at odds with the World Health Organization, and his own employer, Johns Hopkins University. He's also at odds with the APA(pdf warning) and the American Medical Association - who has come out recently to say that trans people shouldn't require surgery to have their documentation changed (including their birth certificate). He's got such a hate-boner for the LGBT community that GLAAD has a page dedicated to him, and how much of a fuckwad he is. ^ that one's some real gold right here. He also believe in reparative therapy (I.e. "Pray the gay away"). read this: and change "gender" into "sexual" and "transgender" into "homosexual" in the last line. Same shit, new brand name. You mentioned that Johns Hopkins stopped performing GRS. He's the reason, and he also commissioned the study which he then used to close down the program. Here is an article breaking down McHugh's WSJ Op-Ed. I know it's from TransAdvocate, which does little for credibility, but it was written by a genetics researcher so it's worth the time to read, along with this Slate article. The public is getting mixed messages about transgender people - it's tough to slog through the bullshit of dealing with someone of McHugh's caliber. On the plus side, at least the message is "mixed" these days, and not just "Hey look at the freak tranny."As part of the USCCB's Review Board, pushed the idea that the Catholic sex abuse scandal was not about pedophilia but about “homosexual predation on American Catholic youth.”
advocates for the transgendered have persuaded several states—including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts—to pass laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor.
Not going to dispute a single point. Not my field of expertise by a long shot, and when you've got that one lone passionate voice vs. what's become standard practice everywhere else, one can usually guess he's howling in the woods. But he's howling in the woods in the Wall Street Journal. That's pretty much my point - when one wants to prompt culture change, rather than culture war, the sensitivities of the people who hate you count more than the people who are on your side. I think Matthew Shepard might as well have lived during the Stonewall Riots, as far as most 20somethings are concerned today. And yeah, I'm old enough to be their dad but there were no openly gay kids in my school. Beating someone up "because he looked like a fag" was perfectly acceptable. One of my teachers nearly lost her job for having a couple guys with HIV come to talk with us. GLBT rights are a long, long time coming, but they're also borderline miraculous. And I'm worried about clawback. 1973 - Poof! abortion is legal. End result? The knuckle-draggers have been eroding the practice of abortion ever since to the point where there are now fewer than seven abortion clinics in Texas and zero in many southern states. Your article pointed out some shamefully disrespectful coverage of transgender issues. That will go away slowly, I think. My worry is that hammering on the shamefully disrespectful coverage rather than the Holy shitballs amazing Caitlin Jenner in Vanity Fair coverage the media ends up covering the snooty, entitled trans movement rather than the noble, human trans movement.
I worry too, about clawback, about the "gentrification" of the trans movement. I count how lucky I am every day - supportive family, living in a place where surgery is covered and HRT is cheap, being white. There are so many trans people who don't have what I have, and I've got nothing compared to Caitlin Jenner. All i can do is try to amplify their voices as much as I can. However, one has to be careful to amplify the right things, and be critical of the right things (as you're pointing out, I think). I think your point's totally valid. I guess it was just nice to have the media pissing into someone else's face for once. Sounds like I need to temper my Schadenfreude.
And you shouldn't have to feel thankful for what you have. That you are required to is an injustice. Transsexuals are about as "other" as humans come, though and you tip easily into the uncanny valley. Humans are basically tribal; we align based on what we aren't and nearly all of us aren't transgender. It's a problem minorities will always face from majorities - majorities will be unwittingly prejudicial against minorities, minorities will complain about it, majorities will go "WTF we're just trying to live our lives" and now both sides are hostile rather than just one. There's no way to win, and nothing changes without the majority being made uncomfortable. This is just one of those things where I think the progressive corners of the country underestimate just how uncomfortable the rednecks already are.
This is actually one of the tools which I've used to explain to others why some people hate trans people, or find us somehow evil. I mean, the whole concept of the "Trap", or a trans woman who passes "too" well and is preying on unsuspecting men flows back to the idea of trans women being an "other", and people being unsure whether we are a threat or not. This is my favourite video on the uncanny valley (I love Vsauce) I think the worst part is that Trans people who do not "Pass" are the ones who have the hardest time, because they fall right into the trough of the uncanny valley. So much of this has to do with exposure, in my opinion. How many of these people have ever had to deal with a gay person for a few weeks? or met a trans woman? Or a trans MAN (who are so often completely invisible in this whole conversation)? How often do you hear of stories like this where the one black family in town were "the good kind of black people"? People fear what they don't understand, and that's often why people who are in the QUILTBAG fall into the Uncanny Valley. (side note, i'm going to use QUILTBAG instead of LGBT forever now because it's hilarious. well, probably not actually, but it is funny. Who doesn't love Acronyms over Initialisms, anyways?)you tip easily into the uncanny valley.
This is just one of those things where I think the progressive corners of the country underestimate just how uncomfortable the rednecks already are.
Oh but don't forget about abortion, gays in the military, racism and patriarchy! These important issues need to be bickered about for a few more decades at least.
::reads article posted by kleinbl00:: ::goes back and re-reads conversation with coffeesp00ns from the other day:: ::gives up and plays with dog::