[mikema63]

Are you joking? Crochet isn't a systemic interest in a large body of activities and choices that are associated with the alternate gender.

Transgendered people like to cross dress, it's not their transsexualism that makes them want to cross dress, it's the desire to cross dress that makes people wish they were the other sex.

[Rainbow Crow]

I'm not following you because the activities just aren't an issue. Name a single activity that requires a man to dress like a woman besides being a model.

Having lived in Los Angeles, I've known men who did things like run a hair salon, do makeup and sell women's clothes and not one of them insisted on being referred to as a she.

[mikema63]

If someone has a systematic enjoyment of a plethora of things they are told are for the opposite sex, and in many cases forced away from them by parents, why would this not plant seeds for gender identity problems?

[Rainbow Crow]

You're missing the point, adults don't need to care what their parents or really anyone else thinks about their activities, but it is another thing entirely for a man to require people at his workplace to refer to him as a her and come in wearing lipstick, skirts and fake boobs.

[mikema63]

adults don't need to care what their parents or really anyone else thinks about their activities, but it is another thing entirely for a man to require people at his workplace to refer to him as a her and come in wearing lipstick, skirts and fake boobs.

Which is it, adults don't need to care about what others think about heir activities or do they have to care if other adults care about a specific activity they patake in?

[Rainbow Crow]

You are still avoiding the point, obviously it depends on what the activity is as well as when and where one does it. The point is that you seem to be arguing that "male" and "female" activities require dressing like a man or a woman and demanding that people refer to you as being of the opposite gender but that isn't the case.

[Takkon]

Rainbow Crow, you acknowledge in your first post that gender is not a choice. I think that most transsexuals would agree with your assessment, since they believe that the gender that they were assigned at birth because of their sex is not correct. It's not that they are choosing to change genders, they are choosing to reconstruct their body so that it matches their gender. The nature of this decision is not choice, even though the procedure is elective. If anything the argument is environmental determinism. To me it is much the same as the homosexuality argument: whether or not you think it's biological and not psychological in nature does not affect the fact that it is not a choice, even though certain aspects of both lifestyles are "chosen". If someone is forced to have a sex change operation or forced to have anal sex, it doesn't make them become trans or gay, precisely because these are state of minds that emerge, not choices inorganically forced onto someone.

adults don't need to care what their parents or really anyone else thinks about their activities,

Oh sure, no one needs to care what any adult says to them until they want to do almost everything you could possibly do. This part you just put in so you could follow it up with your condemnation of the transsexual lifestyle. By the way, when you say that it's unnecessary for a man to do that I agree. If a man did that it would be distracting, vulgar, and inappropriate for school. However, if a woman does it, it's fine, correct? So really your problem with it seems to be that it was out in the open and public. There is nothing that you have said that would convince someone that getting a sex change operation is a bad idea, and you have not offered any counter to the argument that it seems to empirically improve the quality of lives of the people who receive gender reassignment therapy/surgery. The only argument you have is that you don't want to be a woman even though you knit (so no one else should try to become one for any reason for some reason?), that it makes people uncomfortable (which isn't much of an argument, just a statement of truth), and that gender is static and unchanging (LOL). Is there anything you could clarify that might strengthen your arguments?

My point is that you seem to be saying that "male" and "female" activities require dressing like a man or a woman and demanding that people refer to you as being of the opposite gender but that isn't the case.

My history teacher taught me that you can find truth in any writing if you look at the societal context. When you say that crocheting is a female activity, you're not making a true statement, but you are revealing a truth about our society: we think that knitting is for girls, not for men. We all acknowledge the division between male and female activities. You shouldn't be surprised when a person spends their whole life wanting to be someone else so that the activities that they want to perform every day are acceptable, that they actually pursue that goal to some extent. You also should not come back with "well they just shouldn't care what other people think and do what they want", because this goes against the very principle of what you're saying, which is that other people should care of what others think in this particular instance.

[Rainbow Crow]

There is nothing that you have said that would convince someone that getting a sex change operation is a bad idea, and you have not offered any counter to the argument that it seems to empirically improve the quality of lives of the people who receive gender reassignment therapy/surgery. The only argument you have is that you don't want to be a woman even though you knit (so no one else should try to become one for any reason for some reason?), that it makes people uncomfortable (which isn't much of an argument, just a statement of truth), and that gender is static and unchanging (LOL). Is there anything you could clarify that might strengthen your arguments?

I wasn't really trying to get into the deeper argument, since God knows I have had it and many similar arguments on Pofo before... I was just trying to point out that Mike's argument about activities has no bearing on this. But since you took the time to write all of that I will try and respond.

The way I see it, a man doesn't need to get a sex change operation to do all the things he wants to do in life. Yes, I do crochet (it's not knitting! There's a difference! Yes, I actually know this ) and I've been made fun of for doing crochet before. It's not a big deal though. I've almost finished making a set of gloves for myself. My goal is to eventually make my own mittens custom-sized for my own hands.

Really, a man can even have sex with other men without getting a sex change operation. But at the end of the day, as you said, a man is a man and a woman is a woman and people in the workplace will think it's weird if you blur this line solely to draw attention to yourself since there are no real activities that necessitate it and that is a valid reason to not get a sex change operation or dress like a woman at work. You aren't supposed to draw attention to yourself and confuse people, you're supposed to be working in a team and getting something done.

[Takkon]

The way I see it, a man doesn't need to get a sex change operation to do all the things he wants to do in life. Yes, I do crochet (it's not knitting! There's a difference! Yes, I actually know this) and I've been made fun of for doing crochet before. It's not a big deal though. I've almost finished making a set of gloves for myself. My goal is to eventually make my own mittens custom-sized for my own hands.

I have a counter-example. What if, in a co-ed production of the Wizard of Oz, a man would like to try out for the role of Dorothy? In order for them to make that character believable, they either have to change the name of the lead character to Theodore, change all the costumes, and completely re-write the dialogue for a male. That is, if you don't want anyone to notice that you changed the gender of the star character.

Notice, this has nothing to do with sex, it's a very feasible activity to picture someone doing, and yet you lose a lot by translating this activity into a form society would accept and be able to process for a male. Basically what I'm saying is that if you want to be Dorothy, you have to dress like Dorothy, and it wouldn't hurt to have a vagina and put on makeup.

All the world's a stage and we are merely players, RC.

...at the end of the day, as you said, a man is a man and a woman is a woman and people in the workplace will think it's weird if you blur this line solely to draw attention to yourself since there are no real activities that necessitate it and that is a valid reason to not get a sex change operation or dress like a woman at work. You aren't supposed to draw attention to yourself and confuse people, you're supposed to be working in a team and getting something done.

My problem here, and I think I failed to clarify this in my original post, is that this works just as well as an argument for reassigning genders earlier in life as it does for an argument against getting gender reassignment while you're employed.

[Rainbow Crow]

Well as to your first point, Dorothy is a biological female, so I really can't work up any sympathy as to men who don't get to play a woman. Yet at the same time, it's actually the historical norm in many cultures (most of Europe and Japan, for example) to have effeminate-looking men play female characters on the stage without them expecting people to refer to them as women in real life.

On your second point, I'm afraid I still don't follow. I'm against assigning genders early in life because people can change their mind and the overwhelming majority choose to identify with the gender they're born with. This majority is so large in fact that it actually includes the majority of "transgendered" children and teenagers according to some studies that came out of Sweden I think it was. Even among young people who identify as transgendered, something like 70% end up sticking with their biological gender.

I am against transgender-ism (obviously) because I think that gender roles are necessary and productive, as well as what I've mentioned here, that changing one's "gender role" seems to be about seeking attention and not about actually performing a role connected to any fungible activity.

More to the point, I think the Daily Mail and other publications should not publish stories like this, but then press censorship is not an easy standard to make or follow.

[KlassWar]

Unless they're politicians, businesspeople, or some sort of celebrity/media personality, press witch-hunts on people should be off-limits. Private citizens ain't got no need to put up with that bullshit.

Freedom of speech is not the freedom to target and harass random people. Unless people are actually notorious (and merely being queer don't make nobody notorious), they should be left the Hell alone by the press. Fuck the Daily Fail and fuck media McCarthyism. And don't give me no hypocritical human interest bullshit: It ain't no human interest story when it's designed to start a moral panic against some random member of the public.