Fights Break Out Over First Gender-Neutral Bathroom

[Pcdunn]

Intersexuality is another thing...

where do the hermaphrodytes go?

The proper term nowadays is "intersexuals", and they are people born with outward attributes of both sexes. In the old days, doctors chose a gender and assigned that to the infant, sometimes performing surgery to make the sex match the gender. This usually led to very unhappy adults.

But to answer your question-- I suppose to the restroom matching the gender they've been assigned.

[Ausgirl]

Transgender people have to spend half their time monopolising the bathroom, and the other half not being able to get into it.

As someone who once worked for years with, -and- lived among a large group of transgendered persons, I can attest to the factual nature of this comment.

Hold onto your eyebrow pencils for grim death, is my advice.

[Ausgirl]

What I think isn't taken into account by persons claiming that "gender reassignment doesn't fix all of the problems" of transgendered people is that a great many of these 'problems' are in fact rooted in the process of growing up transgendered, rather than being somehow rooted in the person via their transgender nature alone.

The following is anecdotal and I'm surely no authority on the subject. but since I have heard these things first-hand I feel there's merit to them. This applies only to transgendered males, as there were no trans females in the group I knew, which numbered.. gosh, maybe 40? 50? people, about a dozen of whom were close friends.

1. Boys who identify as female are massively prone to a wide range of abuses, including sexual abuse, horrific schoolyard and other bullying, parental abuses of several sorts, social isolation (particularly if 'out'), the incredible stress of hiding one's nature (if not 'out'), religious abuses, and a slew of other problems caused BY the general non-acceptance of transgenders as validly 'normal' human beings.

2. The above leaves many transgendered people with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other psychiatric issues related to the stress of experiencing abuse and rejection, in many cases from early childhood onward. Physical abuse also leaves some with scars, injuries and even disabilities - NONE of which any person with a modicum of reason could possibly blame on the state of "being transgendered" - unless they're among that wholly distasteful class who believed trans's "deserve what they get".

3. It is therefore completely unreasonable and yes, I'll say it, ignorant, to assume that reassignment surgery ought to be the "cure" for any, let alone all, of these things.

[Pcdunn]

Excellent post, Ausgirl!
I work at an inclusive community college, which supports LGBT people and issues, and while I had met a few gay people in the past, it wasn't until I attended an education panel of LGBT students, faculty, and staff, that I began to understand the problems facing these folks.
I have since identified myself as an Ally to the LGBT community on campus, begun educating myself on "the bathroom issue", and I have to say, this strikes me as a new civil rights movement, at least here in the United States. I think education is our greatest weapon against fear and misconceptions.

[Ginger]

If "doesn't fix all of the patient's problems" were considered a compelling argument against a course of treatment, we'd have very few treatments available indeed.

[Harry D]

With respect, I cannot agree that transgenders are not living under a delusion. I have no doubt that they feel like a man trapped in a woman's body or vice-versa, but this contradicts the physical reality. A transgender man who undergoes sex reassignment surgery doesn't biologically become a woman. He can't menstruate, or get pregnant, or give birth. In the same way that a 70lb girl with anorexia perceives herself to be overweight, we wouldn't advocate that she continue to starve herself until she felt better. Or that a paranoid schizophrenic should be encouraged to cover the house in aluminum foil because aliens are trying to control his mind. Therefore, why are we advocating that transgenders live out this delusional reality instead of being provided with the same kind of help? We are certainly not going to make the necessary advances in psychiatric care to better understand and treat this illness if we insist on recommending them to surgeons instead of mental health professionals.

Statistics show that a high number of transition patients are at greater risk of suicide, so I would certainly question the assertion that it provides "relief". That's why Johns Hopkins University, which was one of the pioneers of transition surgery back in the 60s, no longer performs the procedure because their studies showed that patients who underwent surgery were no better off psychologically than those who didn't.

[Ausgirl]

Harry - they tend to be suicidal anyway, for the reasons I gave in my last post, if you read it. Life is not easy for these people, at all, on any level, and for the majority (of all the trans's I've known) is not so from early childhood onward. Surgery doesn't fix emotional and psychological damage in other abuse survivors, does it? No. So why should anyone expect it to perform this miracle in cases of sexual reassignment surgery? Perhaps the patients' own expectations of relief from this lifetime of accumulated damage is factor in why surgery is not a "cure" for their depression. But perhaps if people (including trans's) quit thinking of surgery as a miracle cure for that, there'd be less death.

And my next point.. the overwhelming majority of trans's in my experience identified as female from the age of three or four onward, certainly by age eight or nine. The ones who had more parental support, or were from communities where trans kids are not particularly reviled, were the happier ones, more resilient to whatever society was throwing at them. I don't think that's a coincidence..

Perhaps if more people started thinking of trans's as flesh and blood, feeling, thinking people and not some abstract thing of which they feel compelled to disapprove, things might be better for the trans's. Perhaps if children weren't exposed to the kneejerk hatred and scorn of their parents and older peers toward anyone "different", there might be less damage inflicted in the playgrounds and classrooms. I have hope.

Harry, have you ever spent time with transsexuals? Even talked to one? Maybe you should, because I think you're not seeing them straight.

Pun intended.