Tuesday's CNN.com story about transgender children and their families shed light on an emotional topic and provoked strong response. "Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are" centered on identity, gender, health, parenting and child development. It's not unusual for a popular story on CNN.com to have hundreds or thousands of responses, but the overwhelmingly negative tone of Tuesday's comments raised the question about the root of the hostility. What exactly provoked such harsh opinions? The discomfort toward transgender people comes from challenging conventions, said one academic who focuses on social attitudes and behavior. Read more...
I havent had time to read the article, but my responce to the title is that I think it is easier for your average heterosexual to imagine being with someone of he same gender, than they can imagine feeling trapped in a physical gender that doesnt reflect them. same-sex attraction seems a much smaller leap than conforming your visual and physical gender to match your emotional/mental gender identity. This can also be possible to attribute to aspects of society that still try to enforce ridgid, strict gender roles. society is more accepting now to gay people because society has made great strides to demystify same-sex attraction, gay marriage, etc. ... we have alot of work to do in doing the same for transgendered individuals, and how society views them.
Our work really begins at home and not out in the general public. We need to educate the LGBT community first because a lot of them don't even understand us. I've been trying my best to give this community some transgender education for that reason. The reason transgendered people keep getting "thrown under the bus" for LGB people is because they aren't taken seriously. I believe this is primarily the transgender community's fault, though, because a lot of those don't want to address these issues. We're still in the phase that if we keep our heads down, we shouldn't cause trouble. The phase homosexuals were in up until about twenty years ago.
There's also a lot of misunderstanding with transgender people. They delve into gay topics on a radio program I listen to once in a while, and I often hear the hosts say "I've accepted the gays, but you lost me at the transgender issue." They don't act outright hateful, but rather just don't "get it." The truth of the matter is, there's a lot of different definitions for transgender. Transgender can be traditional GID. Transgender could be drag. Transgender could be liking when your man bangs you while you wear a skirt (*ahem*). It's really just an umbrella term for doing or being something your birth gender isn't traditionally known for. Umbrella terms don't yield decent meanings to people who could care less about gay issues to begin with. But "gay" and "lesbian" and "bisexual" are much easier concepts to grasp; ergo, gays aren't really getting thrown under the bus.
If possible, people need to understand the difference between transsexuals (people with GID) and the others. See, transsexuals are different from crossdressers in that crossdressers choose to dress up in clothes from the opposite sex. Transsexuals don't really have a choice in having a gender identity the opposite of their body. It's just how we developed. This idea of choice was really harmful to homosexuals during their campaign. When more people began to accept they didn't have a choice, more people joined their cause. I think we also suffer from this same issue. Granted, we have the choice to transition or not, but it's quite literally choosing between life or death--meaning, there's little to no choice. There's just an illusion of one.
This very topic came up the other day when one of my neighbors said that Chaz Bono looked like one of the Mexicans that cuts his grass....he kinda looks like the Mexican that cuts my grass now that I think of it...but that's neither here nor there. I think many people harbor the same kind of feeling that my neighbor does...they can half-way (in their own special way) deal with homosexuality...but the concept of a woman feeling they are trapped in a man's body..and vice versa..is simply too much for them to comprehend. Sadly, I think it will be a while before that particular mindset changes...but I think down the road it will.
I'm not sure if that's quite fair. I have met a few crossdressers that obviously didn't choose to be crossdressers; there's just something in them that wants them to do that, and if they don't, they can get depressed and trapped feeling. In a lot of cases, I don't think people choose to be transgender OR transsexual... they just choose whether or not to give in and do what their brain tells them to do, and for some people they don't HAVE to, but many people feel they DO have to. I feel crossdressers are just as much part of the transgender spectrum as anyone else... and I don't think that's something people choose. But maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. Anyhow, about the original subject... I think part of the negative response is that it was about children. Many people feel kids just can't figure gender and such out at a young age, and many people also feel that seeing trans people (or gay people) in the media is "tainting" kids. Also, I think there needs to be a difference drawn between transsexuals and GID. They can go hand in hand, but I don't think they are the same thing. Transsexualism is a medical issue; GID is seen as a mental issue. I think being transsexual can cause GID, but there are transsexual people who don't have GID, and I think the GID association is seriously causing problems for the trans community. It'd be one thing if doctors were saying "this transsexual person has GID", but most aren't; most are just "oh, well they have GID, a mental disorder". GID could do people some good if insurance would accept it as something that requires medical treatment and cover it, like "oh this trans person has GID and needs treatment NOW", but most insurance companies don't... :/ It just makes GID this label that to many people just equals "crazy". I hope that makes sense. :[
I think a lot of people are a little scared by it. I was talking to a friend who didn't understand it and they said that had they been born in a different body they would be a different gender, because it was all socially constructed. If someone genuinely feels like that then it would be kind of scary that the logic doesn't work with some people, because then what makes it apply to you? If you don't feel a strong internal gender then the knowledge that gender is changeable could potentially make things feel kind of precarious. I know a large part of the reason I can understand it is because I am so strongly female. If I had been born in a male body it would have been transition or die.... and given my history I suspect I would have died. But if you don't have that strong sense of gender then how do you understand the concept of feeling so out of place that you have to change? If you are OK with being in this body and this gender role but you wouldn't particularly mind if that changed (apart from the fact that it would screw up the continuity of your social identity) then how can you understand feeling out of place in a body? Ignorance is the root of all evil.
The big problem is that since gender identity is something that's an intangible thing, people assume that it's mental; however, we don't live in the Dark Ages anymore. We now know that the brain is, in fact, a physical thing, and that it can be greatly effected by chemicals. These chemicals can alter your personality, mood, perception, and even how the brain develops. In case of the former, it's all about hormones. It's been proven that the brain and body do and often develop independently from one another. This also means that it's more than possible for the brain to develop as the opposite sex of the body. Unfortunately, the majority of the transsexual community doesn't want to have their experience verified by biology. Why? Because they think that it'll demean their experience. It's something I frankly don't understand. I think it's because they don't quite get what it would mean. If our experience is verified by science, it will prove that our plight is genuine and it isn't our fault. The belief that it's "all in our heads" is what's hurting us and they want to defend that idea? I just don't understand. The main problem here is that your friend's belief is what the majority of people believe. Why's that a problem? Science proved that notion wrong ages ago. Gender roles are social constructs, but gender identity is based on the brain. It's hardwired in. Like I said, this isn't doing things like washing the dishes or cleaning the house, those are gender roles. A lot of people claim to be gender neutral because they feel indifferent about their physical sex. Truth is that they feel this way because they're secure in their gender identity. Everything fits, so of course they're okay with it. They often make a rather bold claim that even if they were the opposite sex, they would be okay with it. This is bold because science says they wouldn't be. If someone who is a cisgendered male takes female hormones, he develops FTM gender dysphoria until he stops the treatment and vice versa for females. People who are truly gender neutral are rare. Gender neutral people often sympathize with transsexuals because it often isn't easy to be gender neutral, either.
