Is The Transgender Issue, The Latest In The Troubling Wave Of Political Correctness?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3520225/Call-old-fashioned-tend-think-people-penises-men-Author-Ian-McEwan-wades-transgender-row-warning-troubling-wave-political-correctness.html

[douglas9401]

I'd like to know what happened to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning.
Recently the inquisitive seem to have been sidelined.

Will no-one think of the non-binary!?

[RATTER15]

I really dont see an issue with Transgender people, they are just humans that wish to live the way they want and in the gender they feel most comfortable! Why should they be denied that right!!?

[jim360]

He's not old-fashioned, exactly. He's just wrong. The problem is that people have a tendency to mix up biological sex with social gender (not to mention overlooking the various genetic variations in the sex chromosomes, such that woman and XX don't actually overlap perfectly anyway).

In terms of his talk, why is the idea that "the self ...may be plucked from the shelves of a ... supermarket" so outrageous -- as opposed to the traditional approach where, it seems, the self is often what society tells you it has to be? When it comes to sex and gender, this idea is at least grounded in some amount of logic, although it's rather too dogmatically enforced at times and there is more to it than that even biologically. In many other cases, it extends even further than that (castes in India, etc), and people's entire life path is mapped out for them with minimal input from themselves.

What we're seeing these days, then, is a reaction against the older approach and a transition to a society where personal identity is far more up to the person than it is to anyone else. As with any transition, it's invariably going to be messy, with some people being "left behind", and others perhaps pushing the matter too far. At some point, things will settle down into some kind of balance, where people are who they choose to be and, more importantly, nobody actually cares.

At any rate, no matter your personal perceptions of who someone "actually" is, when it comes to their gender, it seems a matter of basic courtesy to respect their 'choice' of identity, even if you don't agree with it.

[ToraToraTora]

He's bang on, too much attention is given to this "syndrome".

[sp1814]

Well said RATTER15.

Very well put.

[RATTER15]

Well said Jim.

[sp1814]

And even better put jim360.

[ToraToraTora]

"I really dont see an issue with Transgender people, they are just humans that wish to live the way they want and in the gender they feel most comfortable! Why should they be denied that right!!? " yes ratter, if they just get on with it then fair enough but they demand special treatment, they demand the NHS pay for their "reassignment" etc etc. Look if a bloke wants to swap is bits about and dress up as a woman fine just don't ask me to pay for it and make allowances.

[Old_Geezer]

Hr clearly makes a lot of sense. It is one thing to have sympathy for those whose minds do not accept their gender and cause the individual to feel more like the other; quite another to pretend that mimicking the opposite gender, with or without surgery, is changing gender. Particularly deceitful when society insists on calling them by the wrong gender and pretending it is those who use the right pronouns who are in the wrong. Acceptance that folk are different is the correct way to go, not trying to fool others into believing the opposite of what is true. Of course those with an interest on continuing deception will cry him down but he is simply the little boy calling out that the Emperor has no clothes.

[jim360]

How clever of you, OG, to shoot down any possible attempt to disagree with you before it's even started by calling those who would people who "have an interest in continuing deception".

Sex is not gender. That is the claim being made. It's not a deception, it's an acknowledgement that who you are is not defined by what's inside your pants. Why the two should be forced to align, or why people who find that they don't should be treated with the sort of patronising sympathy that some people offer, isn't really obvious to me.

Why is it wrong, then, to separate biological sex from social gender? I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually offer a convincing reason, or even half of one.

[Zacs-Master]

Firstly you have to believe social gender is a 'thing'. Personally I don't even know what the term means. Do you mean the social,construction of gender?

[jim360]

Yes, that. Even societies that regarded men as men, and women as women, and had nothing in between, what men and women did or were expected to do/ wear/ act like varies, so it's not like the Westernised version of "woman" is the only one possible anyway.

So social gender is clearly a thing -- everything that doesn't actually have to follow from the fact that women and men are biologically built differently is a social construct.

[Zacs-Master]

I don't think it is. It's the perception of a 'thing' and very much debatable.

[jim360]

Even the fact that it's a perception of a thing makes it one -- men and women are usually expected to behave in particular ways, even if they don't actually "have" to, and these ways often are expected to align with their biology. Which is exactly the definition of a "social construct" of gender.

[Zacs-Master]

As I said, I (and it would appear others) believe that the concept is debatable. Therefore the reality of whether it is a 'thing' is subjective.

[RATTER15]

You will never change the minds of bigots Jim!!

[Zacs-Master]

I hope that's not aimed at me ratter.

[jim360]

I hope it isn't too.

[RATTER15]

No Zac, it wasnt.

[Old_Geezer]

Sex and gender is the same thing when applied to people. We are defined by everything we are, we don't exclude body parts as part of that definition simply because it suits some.