aesmael: (tricicat)
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.

Date: 2008-11-30 15:15 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
Zucker's "treatments" also reminds me of those "ex-gay" conversion groups.

And yeah, those comments bug the crap out of me. Cisprivilege much?

Date: 2008-12-01 01:05 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
OMG, I saw one of those fucking exgays the other day and almost leaped through the screen to choke her picture. Frick.

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.

Date: 2008-12-01 01:10 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
I was raised to think that God hated me for being bisexual and trans, and I would have done anything to make that guilt stop. I'm fortunate that I learned about atheism when I did.

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.

Date: 2008-12-01 01:13 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
I guess I still think it's stupid to want love sometimes. :(

I know, I'm cynical. Sorries.

And I don't think you're an idiot...you know that. :\

Date: 2008-12-01 01:21 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
Well, it's just, how is strangling someone who's being abused supposed to help them?

I'm not really seeing how it's stupid to want love, either. :/

Date: 2008-12-01 01:25 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
Because they're hurting so many other people...! *grinds her teeth for a moment*

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. >.>

Date: 2008-12-01 01:29 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
*nod* I do see what you're saying, yeah. It's hard for me to know just how to feel, sometimes...

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

Date: 2008-12-01 01:32 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
Finding things I assume or operate with that I probably shouldn't, like "It's stupid to want love!"

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. :(

Date: 2008-12-01 01:33 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
*nod*

Please let me know if I ever cross a line, there.

Date: 2008-12-01 01:34 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
I'll do my best. :)

Date: 2008-12-01 01:35 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
*hugs you back very tight, actually*

Date: 2008-12-01 01:22 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
And I hope you don't think me an idiot for my occasional God thing. If I can ever convince myself God definately doesn't exist, I'd be happier that way, I think. :\

Date: 2008-12-01 01:25 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
Not at all. :)

I only have problems with believers when they get pushy, and you never have. :)

Date: 2008-12-01 01:28 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
Never will, either. I wish more people were atheists.

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. :\

Date: 2008-12-01 01:30 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
I could not agree more.

Date: 2008-11-30 15:48 (UTC)From: [identity profile] heinousbitca.livejournal.com
i think that the problem with Zucker is that he's very good at selling his lies and snake oil to the general public. he's excellent at making, say, "genital normalization" sound like a wonderful idea. now, you and i know that means "non-consensual surgery on intersex children", but...to the general public, he can pretty much pull it off with a straight face.

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 [livejournal.com profile] aesmael's friends list is all "omg sup methuselah!") anyways, socially accepted gender roles have continuously widened since, oh, the turn of the previous century, and in my lifetime they've widened in small but noticeable ways. guess what? trans people still exist. huh.

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*
Edited Date: 2008-11-30 15:49 (UTC)

Date: 2008-12-01 01:03 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
The solution to someone like Zucker is a subtly delivered poison. :/

Date: 2008-12-01 01:40 (UTC)From: [identity profile] heinousbitca.livejournal.com
no. i want that fucker to be forced to live with himself having it revealed on a daily basis just how wrong he was.

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...

Date: 2008-12-01 01:44 (UTC)From: [identity profile] chaoticset.livejournal.com
Better, but the lengths required to achieve it are greater. The more efficient route is simply the administration of one of the several difficult-to-notice poisons. People have heart attacks every day.

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.

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