LGBT News Trump Eyes Defining Transgender Out of Existence

Right so, it's shit like this debacle that makes me regret living long enough to see it. The blatant transphobia is fucking disgusting and I'm so mad that I could take it out on myself. I'm done with this shit. People on Facebook are saying that "there's only two genders, determined by XX and XY" and i, a genetic engineering student, and fucking BAFFLED at the stagnant knowledge of these peiple because I know that sex biology is getting more complicated as the years go by as we study it.

It fucking makes me want to puke.

 

Since Donald Trump became US President, trans rights have been rolled back and it should be a matter of concern to all of us that it's happening. It's no secret that some influential Republicans are, and always have been incredibly hostile towards the LGBT community and whatever the President believes personally, he is beholden to them for support.

It's sad that the United States seems to be diverging away from all of its major allies in the world on rights for the LGBT community (and other issues). While most countries are seeking to expand rights and freedoms for their LGBT population the United States seems to be reversing progress and increasing the sense of alienation amongst countries with which it once had many shared values. Hopefully, sense will prevail.

 

It's also red meat for the political power base that votes for him, and an easy target to focus that base on. One thing I'd like to point out about how Trump has phrased his support of LGBT though (from an old tweet during the campaign):

Even when he's talking about supporting the LGBT community, he's really dog whistling about immigration. It is mind-meltingly ignorant of what really threatens LGBT folks in the US.

I worry a bit about the UK as well. Mostly because the TERF crowd is starting to get vocal over there. A surprising chunk of the crud I run across online is UK centric/sourced when it comes to trans issues and regressive rhetoric.

 

Uh... you don't think foreigners from cultures where homosexuality gets the death penalty and killing gays in the street is applauded secretly sneaking into the country with no record, no way to track them, and no way to get rid of them is a threat to LGBT people? I'm not just talking about the Middle East either, Mexicans and Central Americans from undeveloped areas who are deeply entrenched in their religious beliefs still think gays have the souls of demons and need to be 'set free' with death. The cartels aren't real thrilled with gay people either.

You live in the furthest possible place from the southern border so yea it might not affect you, but how do you think gay people in south Texas feel about their new illegal neighbors?

 

Any evidence for this? How would a few people's sexualities remotely interest people who's primary concern is making profit from the dealing of illicit substances. That just seems like an odd group of people to mention in relation to lgbt rights. My guess would be that their stance would be fundamentally amoral/neutral.

.

 

Only the bosses care about profit. The hitmen/enforcers just like to kill and hurt people in a way where they can't be punished for it. El Chapo Guzman himself, current boss of the Sinaloa cartel which is the most powerful one, was heard bragging about how when he was young and an enforcer a long time ago he tied a fellow cartel member discovered to be gay to a chair and cut his legs off to watch him bleed to death, because having a gay member made their group look less intimidating and easier to get ridiculed. He didn't want his group to be made fun of for having a gay member, so he just killed him instead.

 

Right.. I'm still fairly doubtful they would care about just random people they aren't personally involved with..

 

I am from Jamaica where the penalty on the books for being gay is 10 years hard labour in prison. Nevertheless, we had to ban an American preacher Steven Anderson from our country because of his hateful rhetoric against gay people. Some of the most homophobic people in the world live in America and they are white, religious and Republican.

You need to seriously open your eyes and realize how American evangelicals travel to other countries supporting initiatives like the "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda. American evangelical leaders have blood on their hands and they are the most disgusting, despicable and manipulative people I have ever met in my life. Instead of worrying about homophobia in poor third world countries maybe you need to focus on Mike Pence's attempts at taking away rights of LGBT people in America.

 

I really wish he would stop proving me right. Not to say "I told you so" or anything, but the guy's a maniac. I should probably keep this short before I throw a few creative insults at him... "Land of the free" right?

I do vaguely recall the "He won't hurt LGBT rights, he loves us!" comments prior to the election. It's naive to think someone like him would ever have our best interests at heart, he only cares about power, popularity, and profit. And that means being a puppet to those who want us gone.

 

I am utterly disgusted by the idea.

Imagine working hard to change your documents and have your true gender recognized... only to have it taken away because an orange man ''felt like it''. This is heartbreaking and I really hope it does not pass. I tell you, if I were an American citizen, I would have tried to emigrate long ago. Hell, if I had a dual citizenship with the United States (had my mom decided to move there), I'd think about renouncing it.

I am so happy that Quebec made so much progress in trans rights, making it possible to change your legal gender WITHOUT any surgery or even hormones, just an ''oath'', and then extending this to minors, even if they can't get their parents' consent.

I am so sorry for any trans person living in the States right now. I'm terrified for you, and I don't even live there.

Also, I have seen terrible, terrible comments about this, with people congratulating Trump on this. All I have to say to them is: fuck you. You don't understand how miserable it is to be stuck in a body that doesn't feel right and preventing people from feeling better (in a way that doesn't affect you either way) is just truly disgusting.

 

Yo, how did this thread of Trump administration literally erasing the lives of trans people turn into suggesting that LGBT people should be afraid of "illegals" instead? The fuck.

Don't come in here defending this administration and also saying that LGBT people should be afraid of the "crazy illegals" that are apparently coming to this country just to kills us all? Have you ever in your live spoken to a dreamer? Spoken to someone who was undocumented?

How do you spend so much energy on this thread attacking liberals while trans kids on this website are coming here to vent or hopefully hear the outcry about what this administration is doing to them right now.

How dare you.

For all trans people feeling attacked, know that many of us are standing with you and will do anything in our power until we are all free and not just a select few. Fuck Trump and fuck this idea that you can erase trans people.

 

The person I quoted earlier brought immigration into it with the dog whistle remark, that's how.

Everyone should be afraid of illegals. They are untraceable and have not been reviewed for safety before they entered the country. Through normal immigration, if they see a person was just released from jail for murder in their home country they'll deny the request and keep that person out to keep American citizens safe by only allowing in good quality immigrants who have been background checked and deemed not a threat to others. With illegals, there's no way to tell whether they're a good productive person or if they're a crazed lunatic because they were never background checked before entering the country. Sure, most are fine, but the ones that are dangerous cause harm to Americans that would have been prevented had they been reviewed and rejected like how the system is supposed to work.

Yea I know dreamers, I see 5 of them weekly actually. I used to live in Texas where you run into an illegal on a daily basis too so have spoken to many. It doesn't matter why they came here, they don't deserve anything from the American government when they broke our laws to get here in the first place, why would we reward them for that. I understand that a lot of dreamers were kids and didn't have a choice in breaking into the country, but they did have the choice to apply for a green card when they became old enough and still chose not to anyway, so they do not deserve a single cent of American taxpayer dollars when they are not citizens or green card holders. Personally I think it's disgusting that illegals qualify for and receive college grants and scholarships paid for by American taxpayers, while actual American kids often don't get any form of college funding except loans. Why are we making American taxpayers pay for the free education of foreigners while our own citizens are stuck with crippling lifelong student loan debt? It's wrong and self-destructive on so many levels. No one who is here illegally should get a single cent of taxpayer money for anything - no welfare, no foodstamps, nothing (with an exception for children because it's not their fault). Let them go back to their own country where they actually deserve it as a citizen if they want free government benefits - we barely have enough for our own citizens as it is.

Funny how you never complain about the people who spend so much energy to crap on Republicans and conservatives here on a daily basis, but oh how dare I defend myself by pointing out the flaws in a post from a liberal basically calling me a fascist for being a Republican earlier in the thread. It's not a liberal website, it's a discussion website, stop getting so offended every time someone discusses from a different viewpoint. (I'd also like to point out that I'm only responding to people who quoted my posts or brought up off-topic things in their own posts, and my original post was fully on topic, so this thread derailment and the shift away from the transgender stuff was not caused by me, in fact I tried to push it back on topic with the freedom of information post when someone asked for it to be more on-topic).

 

Yeah uh... probably best to return to the thread's topic. Not only is this unrelated, but we really shouldn't degrade into an argument or play devil's advocate or whatever right now.

The president and his party are doing their best to erase an entire type of people. From healthcare, to jobs, to their own private lives. For no reason at all other than to claim power or authority by pushing minorities further to the bottom. "I'm strong because you're weak". He's disregarding the well-being of his citizens, scientific records, and the majority of medical consensus. He doesn't care who he has to hurt to assert his dominance, if it means radicals feel empowered and vote for him despite his clear inefficiency, vulgarity, and backtracking.

A lot of people I care about are trans. It doesen't make them any less of people that they've had to endure the struggles and then having their own country turn against them. If anything, they've had to put up with a lot more nonsense than the average citizen. Remember when the country tried this nonsense with other minorities? We've had it done with gender, race, sexuality, atheism, and now it's back to gender again. There will always be people who feel "superior" by making others "inferior". It wasn't okay then, and it's not okay now.

If we want to be "land of the free" so bad then we'd better start living up to the name.

 

I'm curious.

What is your personal stance on this policy? Do you think Trump administration should be implementing this new policy?

 

I'm not entirely sure what the policy is supposed to be for, but I think they're correct that sex is only male or female. No amount of hormones or surgeries is going to change a person's XX or XY genetics, they will always be male or female as they were born and that's how it should be defined on forms/records. They should just add a third box called intersex for the people who don't fit into either.

However, since gender is a different socially constructed thing people should be able to put whatever gender they want on things. There should be the male/female sex box and a different gender box with more options like transgender male, transgender female, genderfluid etc.

Whether a policy is actually needed for this is questionable though.

 

No, it's no as simple as that. There are many intersex people who have caracteristics of both sexes and cannot be classified easily. There are also chromosomes combinations like XXY, XXX, etc. and they're not as rare as people think.

Ok, but why? What purpose does it serve to know the ''true'' biology of someone? We're talking about governement forms here, not medical ones. Why make it obvious to everyone that you're trans? It could prevent you from getting a job, housing or even get you detained at the border ''because your papers don't match''. How the hell is that a good idea?

Gender is not a social construct, and I'm one of many who think that. There are studies being done on brains that say that a trans man's brain is more similar to a cis male's brain than a female's. Vice versa for trans females. There are also studies about the fetal development saying that the sex organs and the brain developp at different stages, allowing someone to have the two developping in different directions.

 

Which is why I already said they should add a third box for intersex.

Bureaucracies like accurate demographic information. They use that stuff for tons of weird internal studies and theories so don't like it when people mess with their statistics by not fitting into the forms normally. For example, a real thing they use the 'sex' box for are military studies on how quickly the country is capable of rebounding from destruction by creating new children to replace all the dead citizens after a war - they need to know how many people are capable of making a child, so they need only biological females to check that box for it to be accurate for their study.

For personal records like a passport or drivers license, it would just be to ease the confusion of others. Not everyone passes well, and it would look pretty suspicious to an official like airport security, the police, or border patrol if the passport says the gender is 'female' but the person very obviously looks like a man wearing women's clothes. If it said sex: male, gender: transgender female it clears up that confusion and dissipates the suspicion of something not being right because it has now been explained. They occasionally catch people with fake passports specifically because they were made carelessly and the gender is wrong, so they look for that on purpose.

Everything about gender is a social construct. There is no predetermined natural way that males or females act, dress etc. beyond basic survival instincts so anything like that a person does to act 'manly' or 'ladylike' is socially constructed. That includes transgenders too, they're just acting according to the social construction of the side they want to be on. If we went back in time and changed societies views on things, it's possible that it would be expected for men to act feminine and women to act masculine currently instead of the way it is now. If it weren't socially constructed, that wouldn't be possible.

 

You know about biology so you must know the difference between phenotype and genotype? You're probably also aware genes don't mean bodiddly if they aren't being read. The functional DNA is the only part that matters. Take Swyer syndrome for example where the phenotype is completely unresponsive to prenatal androgen flushing and presents 100% female externally. In such cases to assign a social role of "male" to them based on their XY chromosomes would be completely absurd, unnecessary and counterproductive (unless they a felt an overwhelming sense of being male internally and the vast majority if not all report no emotional incongruence with their socially assigned gender whatsoever.)

I credit you with enough intellectual honesty to admit that biology is "analogue" as opposed to "digital" in nature. As such the responsiveness of individual organisms to various types of hormone falls somewhere on a gradient.

Now we have to take into consideration 4 things when it comes to gender identity. Social systems, individual psychological/emotional makeup, phenotype, and genotype. Why prioritise genotype at the expense of everything else? Where is the rationality in that? It has nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with humans acting like shit slinging power playing apes.

If a society diminishes individual identity then the sum total of individual identities within said society diminishes the society. The best thing about western society is that we shift our culture to suit our needs as opposed to shifting our needs to suit our culture. If you value your personal freedom you will seek to maintain a dynamic and progressive culture rather than promote a regress to static and monolithic ideals. The strength of western society is in it's dynamism not it's hesitancy. And if we're appealing to nature here then it's perhaps pertinent to mentioning that the viability of a species is in it's ability to adapt not its ability to remain unchanged over time.

 

From your responses , It doesn't sound like you understand what the trump administration is trying to do. Have you read into it?

I get some of this is hard to understand and we all have hundred things going on, but when trans people are telling you this is really fucking bad then believe them. Even more when you don't truly understand what is happening.

Government programs do need this information, but they don't take it from birth certificates and IDs. They use the US census to do this type of studies and data.

But even if this were true, this policy has nothing to do with that.

What the policy would do is so people can't transition with their paperwork. It means that if someone transition their IDs, passports, etc would not be able to be changed, It means federal protections wouldn't include trans people, it means a trans guy wouldn't ever be allowed to use the right bathroom.

This policy would actually increase confusion.

The government wants to make sure that gender = sex. So this whole dream that you have where documents would include sex and gender is a dream. The policy being proposed is that it doesn't matter how much you "pass" you are not legally allowed to change your marker.

So what you will have is trans guy who "passes" but with "female" on their IDs because the government will not recognize his gender identity.

As for fake documents, we have WAY better technology for that than a system where "I think you look like a guy in a dress" technology that you are implying.

Again, read the whole damn thing. Not sure what you are arguing, but from what you are saying it sounds like you disagree with the policy. Not sure why you are defending it.

 

On top of what @smurf said, you have to assume people wouldn't discriminate when they see a mismatch of sex and gender, which they often do, sadly.

Plus, personally, I don't want people to identify me as trans. I worked hard and dealt with a lot of bureaucracy to get to where I am, and seeing that a government could just decide to take it away like that... well, it destroys me.

A lot of trans people who have their gender marker changed pass without any problem, so putting their biological sex on their papers would just be a slap in the face.

Oh also, being transgender is not as simple as following the gender stereotypes of the other sex (many don't after all). There's not social construct telling you to hate having curves, to want to stop your period or to mourn you genital difference. No. You don't learn to do that. You do it because you're made to expect something else. Your brain expects you to have another body type, but you don't. Remove all the social constructs about the genders, and you'd find that there are still people who'd transition, because they can't bear to look at themselves in the mirror.