That so many of the comments to this article seem to be suggesting that if only gender roles were less rigidly enforced, trans people would have the good grace to cease existing.
Fortunately, not true. I hope those people will realise this. At least the comments seem to improve further down the page.
Also very annoyed with comments indicating the commenter was dissatisfied with eir assigned gender role yet is not trans, phrased in a manner suggestive that ey believes ey was fortunate eir parents did not send em to a therapist and get em diagnosed trans, pushed into transsexuality. Mostly, because this suggests a disturbing attitude that being transsexual is something pushed on people who do not conform to assigned gender roles in order to make them over into something which fits their behaviour. It doesn't work that way, and trans people nearly always have to push to get what they want from the medical establishment - it is not forced on them - and it is unfortunately not unusual for medical professionals to torment their patients with arbitrary hoops and waiting periods more extreme than officially required.
I would find it laughable if this idea were not so pervasive, with so much social force behind it, but since this is such a common feminist criticism of the existence of trans people, I find it disturbing instead. It is not, nor should it ever be, about people being forced into something they do not wish. The issue is bodily and behavioural autonomy, and although they may seem to be, I do not think comments like this are helpful on this subject.
As a note to people who may not be aware of this, what Zucker does with the children brought to him seems to me very akin to one of the major (the major?) standard 'treatments' designed to render autistic children more normal.
Fortunately, not true. I hope those people will realise this. At least the comments seem to improve further down the page.
Also very annoyed with comments indicating the commenter was dissatisfied with eir assigned gender role yet is not trans, phrased in a manner suggestive that ey believes ey was fortunate eir parents did not send em to a therapist and get em diagnosed trans, pushed into transsexuality. Mostly, because this suggests a disturbing attitude that being transsexual is something pushed on people who do not conform to assigned gender roles in order to make them over into something which fits their behaviour. It doesn't work that way, and trans people nearly always have to push to get what they want from the medical establishment - it is not forced on them - and it is unfortunately not unusual for medical professionals to torment their patients with arbitrary hoops and waiting periods more extreme than officially required.
I would find it laughable if this idea were not so pervasive, with so much social force behind it, but since this is such a common feminist criticism of the existence of trans people, I find it disturbing instead. It is not, nor should it ever be, about people being forced into something they do not wish. The issue is bodily and behavioural autonomy, and although they may seem to be, I do not think comments like this are helpful on this subject.
As a note to people who may not be aware of this, what Zucker does with the children brought to him seems to me very akin to one of the major (the major?) standard 'treatments' designed to render autistic children more normal.
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Date: 2008-11-30 15:15 (UTC)From:And yeah, those comments bug the crap out of me. Cisprivilege much?
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:05 (UTC)From:People like that...struggle for yourself for years, and then assume something so stupid as that God's been telling you the wrong thing sexually.
Idiots apparently decide that God's pretty fucking cruel.
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:10 (UTC)From:I don't think I was an idiot, and I don't think that the people who feel trapped and pressured into "ex-gay therapy" are either. They're desperate to feel loved, and evangelicalism denies them that unless they "normalize" themselves.
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:13 (UTC)From:I know, I'm cynical. Sorries.
And I don't think you're an idiot...you know that. :\
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:21 (UTC)From:I'm not really seeing how it's stupid to want love, either. :/
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:25 (UTC)From:It's when I lack compassion for single individuals that these things happen.
Wanting love has always struck me as stupid. It comes from my inability to percieve it when it was there as a child, I think -- I decided since I wasn't going to get it, nobody should want it, and it was dumb to want it...
You're disturbingly good at that, y'know. >.>
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:29 (UTC)From:In this case, though, I feel for what these people must be going through, because I've been there.
And... *hugs you so tight...*
Oh, and disturbingly good at what? o.o
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:32 (UTC)From:I have to say it seems like the kind of thing that could be threatening to some people, even to me a little. If I didn't know you tend to be unjudgmental, I could see myself getting paranoid/offensive about it. :\ Just like anybody else, I do that sometimes. :(
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:33 (UTC)From:Please let me know if I ever cross a line, there.
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:34 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 01:34 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 01:35 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 01:22 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 01:25 (UTC)From:I only have problems with believers when they get pushy, and you never have. :)
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:28 (UTC)From:See, if a person starts hearing voices or seeing things, and they're an atheist, they go to a shrink, or they try to push the hallucinations out, or whatever. Religious people occasionally do this thing where they start hearing voices or seeing things, and it's GOD communicating with them, and who's to say GOD won't tell them to start stabbing that mannish-looking chick across the bus from them today? (i.e., myself.)
I know it's irrational, but it's still true. :\
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:30 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-11-30 15:48 (UTC)From:i find it kind of unamusing that at the same time he's advocating butchering intersex children, he says that a child/teenager who's trans can't really be, blah blah blah, the spectrum of gender should be wider, blah blah blah...
um listen up world, i'm 31. (most of
in the meantime, Dr. Zucker is an adult cisgendered white dude who is obsessed with Barbie dolls and takes it upon himself to conflate race and gender identity. yeah. “If a 5-year-old black kid came into the clinic and said he wanted to be white, would we endorse that?” he told me. “I don’t think so. What we would want to do is say, ‘What’s going on with this kid that’s making him feel that it would be better to be white?’”
*headdesk*
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:03 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 01:40 (UTC)From:discrediting him and making him irrelevant? better than any poison ever invented if you ask me. some people are so evil they deserve to have to live with themselves; Dr. Zucker is a prime example.
well, that, or he can be relevant and not discredited but i get to "normalize" his crotch. *evil grin* somehow i think he'd rather be discredited...
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Date: 2008-12-01 01:44 (UTC)From:Torture is a fun, delicious idea for someone like that, but he will never really grasp that he's a fraud. *shrug*
Better to protect as many people as possible and take him out quick, IMHO.