All about Serafina (Split)

[Mike DiCenso]

Not that I care much about this little spat, except that I can't really recall a Versus debate related fight that spanned across three forums like ths one has. SDN to SFJN, and now to ASVS.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

I agree insofar that not the appearance is deciding as long as you don't know it better.

You meet someone and do not know what sex/gender this person has. From the person's appearance you try to conclude what the sex/gender is. But the question is, if you try to conclude from the appearance the sex or the gender.

Someone who is familiar with the phenomenon gender may indeed try to conclude the gender - although I doubt that the only late in life learned factual knowledge of gender really affects the thinking. You may know that there is a gender as you may know that the capital of China is Peking. But that is only factual knowledge that does not affect your thinking and perception.

But most people are not really familiar with the existence of genders anyway. They would try to conclude the sex with which they are familiar from the beginning. They conclude that someone who wears women-clothes is a woman and was born as a women (with a vagina, ovaries and uterus). They probably do not think that it could be possible that the person was born as a male with a feminine gender (who has undergone a gender reassignment).

That does not answer if these cues are used to determine the gender or sex. Who is not even aware that there is such thing like gender, can use these cues only to determine the sex. As you are saying, it is not even a conscious process. That means, even if someone has heard of gender it does not mean that it is contemplated when trying to determine how one should be addressed.

My opinion and experience is that most people do not know that there is a gender beside the sex and are only trying to determine the sex. I have shown that (social) gender is a Terminus technicus used especially in social sciences. Most people have not studied these.

To change my opinion, you should show that most people are aware that there is gender and are really contemplating it when trying to decide which grammar gender to use.

And it is not a true ad populum argument. We are talking about language and language is a mean of communication. But communication works only if sender and receiver are using the same code. In terms of language that means that both have the same understanding of the meaning of a word or grammar structure. For me that means that I will use a term or a grammar gender with the commonly accepted meaning. And we are trying here to find out what people are meaning and understanding if the terms man or woman, male or female or the masculine or feminine grammar gender are used.

I'm convinced that they are thinking of sex and not gender.

I do not argue that, because most people are not aware that gender exists, it does not exist. That would be indeed a fallacy.

My argument is that, because most people do not know that gender exists, the concept has not found its way into common language. If I use the term woman now, most people are thinking of someone with a female sex (someone who was born with a vagina, ovaries and womb) - who can behave like a stereotypical woman but also like a man. Most people would not think that I referred to a man with a feminine gender. The simple thing is that I have to use the language as it is. If I want to describe something I have to use the accordingly terms and grammar structure.

I disagree. To the degree that we might choose to distinguish between a social "gender" and biological "sex" - and we may, perfectly legitimately, choose to refer to a social "sex" and biological "gender" without falling outside of the norms of English language, whether American or British, scientific or colloquial - the "most people" of which you speak are not really familiar with either, any more than a life-long resident of Sri Lanka is likely to be familiar with the distinctions between powder, packed powder, wet snow, and hard packed powder.

It is a difference that is easily taught, but not relevant to everyday life; to our Sri Lankan friend, it is all for the moment snow, an imprecise term but one suited to the fact that he may only have seen it in books and movies. Likewise with our everyday friend unfamiliar with the social sciences, who may easily use both male and female genders within the same handful of sentences to describe a transsexual.

Google the exact English phrase "he was a she." I'm getting 27 million hits and change. Our common comrades are not especially gifted with pronoun precision, and in English, the speech of the uninitiated is often quite confusingly spattered with both genders when it comes to a transgendered subject. Perhaps the consequence of a poorly-regulated language, but I will address the case of German a little later.

But if you do know it better, you do not have to guess the sex.

If someone you know as a boy dresses suddenly like a girl, you will still regard that someone as a boy. If that boy wants to be addressed as if he were a girl, you can be polite and do it. But it won't change the fact that you still think of him as a boy. Insofar your using a feminine grammar gender may be polite but is nothing more than a farce, especially if that boy knows that you know that he is a boy and therefore knows that you are using the feminine gender only to be polite but not because you really see him as a girl.

And it is confusing. You think of him as a boy and your natural impulse would be to use the masculine gender. But to be polite, you have always to remember to use the feminine gender. That means you have always to censor your own speech. You can't say what you think. If that is not confusing, I do not know what is.

It is very difficult to accept changes. You have probably by this point in your life known someone as a child and then faced the astounding experience of blinking and realizing that was once a child is now a full-grown adult. That change is difficult to get used to, often enough.

Yes, in the German language it is not so easy. That's why I have said we have to learn such things by heart. But that's the reason why it is not possible to change these things per decree. We have learned and used our whole life certain grammar genders that we aren't contemplating them anymore when using them. We do not question why the animal (das Tier) is neuter but the dog (der Hund) is masculine, the cat (die Katze) is feminine and the horse (das Pferd) is neuter or the tree (der Baum) is masculine but the maple (der Ahorn) is masculine and the oak (die Eiche) is feminine. That's how we have learned it from the beginning and why it is recommended to learn German nouns always with an article. It is the only way to know which grammar gender to use if you are not speaking of individuals.

The thing is that I'm aware that the grammar genders in Germany are not plausible and sometimes even could be considered to be rude (e.g. when the girl (das Mädchen) or the wife (das Weib) is treated with a neuter grammar gender). But that is how I have learned it. You could say that the language was indoctrinated into me. I know that a girl and a wife are female. But using the German language I can't use a feminine grammar gender. That would be totally wrong and awkward. On the other side, a girl or a wife is not insulted if the neuter grammar gender is used because they know that this is language and says nothing about their sex.

But these grammar genders are only so arbitrary as long as one is only speaking of categories and not of individuals.

For example: I have two cats; one is male, the other is female. In the German language, the species cat is female (die Katze). If I speak of my cats as cats (species), I'll use the feminine grammar gender. I can do that even speaking only about one cat - even if that happens to be the tom-cat. That usually happens if I speak with someone who does not know my cats as individuals or does not treat them as individuals. For example: The vet, even if he knows that my tom-cat is a tom-cat, would simply speak of him as a cat, using a feminine grammar gender because he does not individualize my cat. For the vet my tom-cat is only a cat like any other cat too.

But if I or someone else speaks of one of my cat as an individual, the grammar gender fitting to the sex is used. That happens especially if the name of the cat is used. Then we do not psychoanalyze the cat and try to determine their gender. We are looking only for the sex.

It is similar with persons. In the German language, the person (die Person) is feminine but the human-being (der Mensch) is masculine. If I speak about Serafina as a person, I would use a feminine grammar gender and a masculine grammar gender if I speak about Serafina as a human-being. It is the same with each man and each woman.

But if I speak of Serafina as an individual, I use the grammar gender fitting to Serafina's sex as I'm doing it with my cats. And as I do not contemplate the (social) gender of my cats, I do not contemplate the (social) gender of Serafina. The sex (or what I think is the sex) is deciding for the choice of the grammar gender.

That's how it works at least in the German language and that can't be changed per decree because it is language and the way people are thinking. Most people aren't even aware that there is such a thing like gender as opposed to sex. Insofar it simply is not possible that they contemplate the gender of someone. What they are doing is to conclude from the appearance to the sex. If someone wears clothes like a woman, one assumes that this someone is a woman and addresses him accordingly.

I disagree. When you familiarly address your cats, the pronoun is no longer replacing the noun "cat," but is still acting as a substitute for a noun.

The noun replaced is no longer "die Katze," but instead "die Arlene" or "der Garfield." A name is like any other noun - and like any other noun, it bears a gender.

Man könnte sagen: "Ich bin der Nils." (Wiki ref)

You could also say such things as "I am the Spock" in English, or "I am that Spock," and so on. In English, choosing the article is potentially ambiguous, but in German, everything is assigned a gender, and "Ich bin der Anna" or "Ich bin die Nils" would seem rather out of place, would they not? Strictly and grammatically speaking, when we are selecting those "personal" pronouns, they are still noun-substitutes, simply noun-substitutes for names instead of substitutes for generic nouns.

If I, as a child, collected rocks, and decided to keep one throughout my adult life, naming it "Klaus," I suspect nobody would think twice about the fact that I, when speaking of my pet rock as "Klaus," referred to it as "he." They would perhaps be alarmed that I am speaking of a rock as if it were alive and could speak back to me, but having named it "Klaus," a masculine name, it is appropriate that I, in the same sentences, choose to use the pronoun "he" rather than "it" - whether in English or German - since I have assigned to the sexless rock a masculine name and personality.

I asked several colleagues and although some admitted to have seen documentation about transsexuals, they have said that this is not what they are thinking about the whole time. They factual knowledge they have gained by seeing that documentation is there; it is not forgotten, but it is not active and has not affected their way to think. When they meet a person, they do not wonder if that person is a transgender. They do not contemplate the gender. They only try to guess that person's sex to decide which grammar gender to use. And usually that is not even a conscious process.

That it is not conscious, I do not doubt.

And of course language evolves. But usually only if something or the understanding of something that is described with language has changed. When they found out that not the penis or its absence - although as a first clue not unimportant - is deciding which sex a person has, they changed the definition of man and woman.

Today it is a biological definition I have already provided: Woman is an adult human female and man is an adult human male. Female is of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes and male is of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.

I do not know a sociological definition for these terms or it there is such a definition at all. To define man and woman with gender in mind could be insofar difficult as there is, as far as I know, no exact definitions for masculine and feminine gender. Nobody really can say what characteristics exactly a masculine gender has or what characteristics exactly a feminine gender has. These thinks are very nebulous and blurred.

I think I understand what you are trying to say. But I also think that there is a difference between feminine and masculine behavior and a feminine and masculine gender.

For example a girl whose mom died giving birth to her is raised by her dad. Her dad wanted a boy and didn't know how to raise a girl and never even attempted to raise her as a girl. She never had a female role model and always played with the boys in her neighborhood. All she observed and imitated her whole life was masculine behavior. Now that is the way the girl behaves too. But nevertheless she is a girl and is aware of the little difference between her and her playmates. Until reaching puberty it simply was not important. But now she discovers that, although she still behaves like a boy, there are more differences than presumed. The girl is now discovering her feminine gender and sexual preferences. E.g. while the boys find that they are attracted to woman, she finds that she is attracted to man. She might even fall in love with one of her (male) playmates. That still does not mean that she has to change her behavior. But she is more aware than earlier that she is a woman and she does not want to be a man. This girl is not a transman and if she is satisfied with her life will not see a reason to change her behavior. And because, for whatever reason, for a girl to be masculine is more accepted in society than for a boy to be feminine, it makes it easier for the girl to decide that there is no reason to change the own behavior respective to act as if she were a stereotypical girl although she has a feminine gender and she sees herself as a girl/woman who simple does not like to act all girly.

The definition, we might note, denotes a sex. While we describe the sex by pointing out which sort of gametes it usually produces, this is not the whole of what we use to describe membership in the sex itself. E.g., biologists are perfectly comfortable referring to most ants as sterile females, and to self-fertilizing queen ants, who fulfill both male and female reproductive functions internally, as female as well.

Female and male are heuristically derived categories. We assign animals to one or the other based on heuristic logic, and in some cases this logic is unclear, as with intersexual humans. A "biological" definition will not in every case be the same.

They are blurred in biological contexts as well - again, consider the case of the intersexual, whose biological classification is unclear. Defining gender socially is not about picking any particular aspect; it's pulling together all the parts of the performance and skipping to whether the audience deems the play more of a comedy or tragedy.

A tragedy may include jokes; a comedy may include disaster; but we can usually, after taking in the whole performance, come to a decision about what kind of play the director and actors have put on for us in spite of the individual characteristic ambiguities.

If a girl only learned masculine behaviours in a case like you describe, she would very often be taken as male in her everyday behaviour - and what's more, treated like a man, in some cases by those who know that she is not, unless she learns to act "like a lady."

But of course that can change again. I have advocated earlier letting language evolve as it always has done. Maybe in some time, the definition of man and woman will change again and not biology but sociology is deciding what a woman and what a man are.

But it still has not changed.

People still think it is necessary to differentiate between "real" women and men who have a feminine gender. That's why there are terms like transwoman and ciswoman. This differentiation shows that there is a difference between transwoman and ciswoman and it is not discrimination but only accurateness.

It's a distinction that's necessary to make in order to have conversations like this one - but it's not at all necessary in normal casual social contexts.

Where?

On reviewing, perhaps I have been mistaken. I had thought Serafina had made at some point an exception for pre-op transsexuals in prison, but I have had difficulty locating such a post.

Most transsexuals usually have a slightly different problem: For one, there is a pathological condition that compels them somehow. We still do not really know what the cause of that condition is or what exactly that condition is. There are theories that a genetic deficiency causes a misguided development of the brain that than causes transsexualism [O]. A few symptoms were found, e.g. that Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in their Limbic Nucleus [O]. Insofar is transsexualism not only a sociological phenomenon but also a biological or medicinal phenomenon. But we do not really understand what exactly causes transsexualism. What we know is that transsexualism somehow compels the with it afflicted to a degree that they can't really make a free decision (if such thing is possible at all - I tend to be a determinist who thinks that a free will or a consciousness does not really exist). For whatever reason they want to be what they are not. The girl from above does not has such a pathological condition.

And a girl without a "pathological condition" may desire to be taken as male in some social contexts, in order to be taken seriously, avoid undesired attention, or simply to have fun.

Meeting the diagnostic criteria for being transsexual is not at all the only motivation for wishing to cross over social gender lines. There are others - and this, too, can prove to be important. Let's go back, for a moment, to Mr. Oragahn's ill-fated objection, where he suggested that the majority of male-to-female transsexuals are in it for the purported sexual power of women: Isn't the presumption of that motive, alone, a powerful indicator that all is not yet right between men and women?

If the social roles of gender were not so clearly defined, how would we possibly object to a boy who dresses like a girl and acts like one? If they were not restrictive, would we have rebels seeking to escape them?

If the only difference we cared about was that boys had on the average a few more inches of height, a few more pounds of flesh, and different genitalia, it would be hard to describe what a transsexual was. But we do not live in such a world. Gender involves what you do, how you do it, how you dress, and nearly every inch of your life - and in such a world, not everybody will find themselves well-suited for acting the part they are told to play.

And what is if someone ignores their wish? Imagine being a transvestite (male sex, masculine gender but feminine appearance) and being called a girl although you have informed your opponent that you are a man and wish to be addressed as such. If only the appearance is deciding, the transvestite wouldn't have the right to be addressed accordingly to their sex.

I have difficulty imagining the context of this scenario, but without even the exception of men who have donned a dress on a dare from buddies, the man putting on female clothing and airs knows full well the risk of being called female which is entailed - and it is easy enough for him who has a masculine social gender and masculine sex to achieve again a male air if he is done with it.

Yes, but what is it that I guess? Do I try to guess the gender or do I try to guess the sex?
When I have made up my mind, when I started to think of that someone a certain way, do I change my thinking when I learn that this someone wishes to be addressed different from what I thought? Or is it only a farce to address that someone accordingly to their wish?

If you are having trouble convincing yourself, then guess for the social gender, as that is what people are concerned with, cis and trans. Think whatever you wish. You may be wrong, even.

However, it is often that we address people as they wish - or more accurately, refrain from addressing them as might offend them. It is the rare vegetarian activist who makes friends by referring constantly to non-vegetarians as murderers, however sincerely they may believe it.

Correct. And if everyone connects the grammar gender with sex but I am the only one who connects it with the gender, misunderstandings happen. Insofar the gender is not the most successful at communicating.

Well, really, the social gender is all about communicating.

Not really. We look at that someone and try to find out the sex. How to address that someone is then out of question because the sex is deciding for the grammar gender.

And there is a big difference between a forgotten name and the not yet determined sex. If I have forgotten the name, I can still use pronouns; I can talk of he and him or she and her. But the sex determines the grammar gender and in the German language that influences not only the pronoun but also the articles and the suffixes of each noun. You simply have to decide for a grammar gender. There is no other way - unless you want to talk about an individual as a person or as a human-being. But that is really rude.

It is actually possible to avoid referring to someone by anything but name or directly in the second person, although that may get obvious after a while.

Are there really so many instances of gender in the German language? In English, humans are nearly always gendered in pronouns.

To be honest: That's their problem. I have outright said that my decision to use the grammar gender accordingly to the sex is not a critic of their performance.

And yet implicitly, in a casual social context, it would be. For that would be the typical casual context of you meeting a transsexual:

Quite the contrary: Only a transwoman who tries to deceive people into believing that he is a real woman can regard the usage of the masculine grammar gender as a performance critic. He was not convincing enough. Now he could be insulted or he could try to improve his performance. It is not the fault of those who were not deceived by that performance that the performance was not good enough.

Someone attempting to "deceive" you by exhibiting the "wrong" gender as convincingly as possible. This is your normal casual context for such cases.

On the other side, if always the grammar gender is used accordingly to the sex, an honest transwoman cannot regard the usage of a masculine grammar gender as a performance critic because it is always done that way.

That's a rather important if, and I think it puts the cart before the horse.

Serafina has given a nice example: » As an example, a friend of mine (a transman) is regulary giving speeches about transsexuality at schools, homosexual political meetings and other places. He generally does not say that he is a transman right away - and when he does so at the end of the lesson, he drives an important point home: Transsexual people are no different from other people. It works. It would NOT work if he did so at the beginning of his speech, people would look for differences then.« I have not quoted that because I want to debate that the point she is trying to drive home is wrong. The fact is that transsexual people are different from not-transsexual people and that they are trying to hide that difference, to make it go away and that they are trying to deceive people into not noticing that difference. (Another question is if that difference is a good reason for an unequal treatment. As long as it is not a good reason, an unequal treatment is discrimination.)

But what I wanted to say is that this woman has convinced her audience. Now imagine that after the show, the students are talking. You may hear sentences like » Wow, have you seen that woman. She has really fooled me. I really thought that she is a man. « You see, the feminine grammar gender is used but it is not used to criticize the performance. It is used because now the students know that what they thought to be a man is a woman and they automatically use the grammar gender accordingly. They neither want to criticize the performance nor do they want to insult that woman. It is simply the way they are thinking and speaking.

They may just as readily say "Wow, he was really a woman!?" It is quite likely, in my opinion, that were you to come upon a herd of young students after such an address, that you would hear a wide range of pronouns and pronouncements, some of them male, some of them female, some of them mixed and confused.

I cannot say what the proportions would be, but I also cannot believe any of them would approach unanimity too closely.

And if a transsexual (intentionally) misunderstands that, the solution cannot be that the whole nation changes the way to think and speak but that the transsexual pulls their self together and take what was said as it was said and not how they want to understand it.

How you take something is not wholly within your conscious control.

I do not think that transgenders should be conscripted. It was Serafina who played the moral-card. And if we go that route, we have to question what would happen if all transgenders are deciding to behave the way Serafina does. Is it morally from an individual to behave a certain way if, if all behave that way, the consequence would be detrimental for all in the long run? Is it morally to say that others can solve the problems? I do not think so. If society has to change and be aware that there are transgenders, all transgenders have to do their part. And that begins with telling the truth and not deceiving others.

All? I don't think so.

Activism is almost always a balance between personal and group interests. In some cases, it is easy, because your personal interests will in the long term benefit from pushing forward. In others, however, it is hard, because they're directly at odds.

You may identify the personal interest of the transsexual as being, by virtue of diagnosis, taken for the sex or gender they were not born to. If you define transsexual pathologically - as you seem willing to - then you should even say transsexuals are pathologically unsuited for the type of activism you describe, for the declaration that you were born a woman is never an aid to being taken as a man.

[Mr. Oragahn]

If a girl only learned masculine behaviours in a case like you describe, she would very often be taken as male in her everyday behaviour - and what's more, treated like a man, in some cases by those who know that she is not, unless she learns to act "like a lady."

People would say she behaves like a male, which is as far as it can go, but would still refer to her with a female pronoun. Unless she lies about her true biology and manages not to have any feminine trait stick out. Make believe, sort of.

[Tyralak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf0oXY4nDxE

[Jedi Master Spock]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf0oXY4nDxE

Was there a useful point behind posting that?

I don't see one.

[Tyralak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf0oXY4nDxE

Was there a useful point behind posting that?

I don't see one.

Not really. It was just a joke to lighten things up.

[Serafina]

Not really. It was just a joke to lighten things up.

And not the least bit funny or original.


Anyway, i want to start a new rebuttal to WILGAs basic claim.
He essentially claims that if a term is grammatically correct, you can use it no matter whether it is insulting or not.
This is his main argument, and has been right from the start. His discussion of the science of transsexual people is at best tangential and neither conclusive nor comprehensive.

Now, is this a valid claim?
No, it's not. Simply because something is the correct term, you are not justified when you use it. Otherwise, i am free to call a black person a nigger since that is a "grammatically correct term" as well.
It is simply not justified to ignore insulting implications of the terms you use when addressing a person. When you address a transsexual person according to her sex, you ARE ignoring the insulting implications just like someone who uses the term "nigger" when addressing a black person. Both carry the negative connotation of long-term discrimination: Just like nigger is associated with anti-black discrimination, sex-based addressing is associated with anti-transsexual discrimination. Indeed, it is still widely used in that regard: Practically every person who does not accept transsexual persons will show this at first by using the improper address.
For this reason, it is highly offensive.


Now, the second pillar of his argument is that "it is scientifically correct".
And again, that is not a valid criteria, mostly for the same reasons as above: Nigger is also scientifically accurate, after all the person IS black. But that is not justification for using it that way.
Now, is his science correct? Again, psychology and medicine disagree with him. I have repeatedly pointed out that this is expressed in german law, which was mostly based on that exact evidence. Indeed, if you want to find meaningful discussion about whether transwomen are women you have to go back to the 60s or further. Since then, this fact is no longer really disputed and only the details are discussed - much like you won't find a paper that argues about the validity of evolution and only those who expand on it, you won't find papers that question the identity of transsexual people.
He is, of course, genetically correct - but there are also other XY-females who have nothing to do with transsexuality.
Anatomically, he is NOT correct - any variation but the lack of a female reproductive system is well within the female phenotype. And again, there are other women who simply lack proper reproductive organs. Any other variations are fixed via hormone treatment and surgery. Claiming that those are not real is like claiming that a in-vitro child is not a "real child", that a homosexual relationship is "not natural" or that skin grafts or organ transplants are "mutilations". Appeal to nature is a fallacy, not a valid argument.


His third pillar also falls easily. That pillar is "we always address according to sex".
Now, i have shown that my sex is not as easily determinable as he thinks it is. Of course, he claims any blur in his favor.
Either way, his supposedly easy method falls flat. When you meet a transsexual woman (or man) on the street, you will not be able to tell her genetic sex from the way she looks. For most transsexual people this is simply the reality after 1-2 years of transitioning, sometimes much earlier (especially with transmen).
Thus, his selected method fails in such cases and requires additional inquiry. That's why he demanded that transsexual people are legally forced into a third category, so that he may recognize them more easily.
The alternate method has a higher success rate - simply looking at the expressed gender works for practically every non-trans person and for most trans-persons (unless you are really socially inept). If you have to ask, the question "how would you like to be addressed" or even the clumsy "are you a man or a woman" are both less intrusive and offensive (to anyone, not just TS-people) than asking "what is your biological sex".
Thus, his third pillar falls flat - it lacks any reasoning and is needlessly complicated while producing poorer results.


Now, my point: Why do i call him a bigot?
Here is why: His argument lacks any rational basis, ignores a wealth of evidence, violates common law and most importantly the interest of a whole group of people.
In other words, he is irrationally discriminating. His behavioral pattern is equivalent to racists in many ways. He might not be an extremist since he does not advocate eradication etc., but he still calls for segregation and denial of rights.
For me, such behavior is enough for that classification. You might not like it if i call him that (even tough he is allowed to call me all sorts of things), but that is simply how he presents himself to an affected person.


WILGA, you are free to respond to this as long as you do not ignore JMS argument.
JMS, keep in mind that WILGA is arguing for discrimination and the violation of the wishes and needs of TS-people simply based on semantics. You can demand much more evidence from him than you currently do.

[Tyralak]

Jeezzzz.... This thread is as much fun as pink eye. Have a good time, guys. Oh, and Serafina, lighten up a bit. You're far too intense.

[Serafina]

Jeezzzz.... This thread is as much fun as pink eye. Have a good time, guys. Oh, and Serafina, lighten up a bit. You're far too intense.

Maybe, just maybe this thread is not about fun but rather serious?
And i suppose it's totally appropriate to link to a song that is offensive to black people when discussing racism. And yes, the comparison is valid - transsexual people are a minority that is discriminated against.
In a proper environment, your video might have been a joke. When in the company of friends, i might have laughed. When discussing with people who would like to take my rights away from me and institute discrimination against me, it was not.

[Tyralak]

Jeezzzz.... This thread is as much fun as pink eye. Have a good time, guys. Oh, and Serafina, lighten up a bit. You're far too intense.

Maybe, just maybe this thread is not about fun but rather serious?
And i suppose it's totally appropriate to link to a song that is offensive to black people when discussing racism. And yes, the comparison is valid - transsexual people are a minority that is discriminated against.
In a proper environment, your video might have been a joke. When in the company of friends, i might have laughed. When discussing with people who would like to take my rights away from me and institute discrimination against me, it was not.

Of course. I forgot:



I compared you to Timothy Jones on the previous page for a reason. I'm the only person here who's agreeing with you, (At least on the main point of your argument, namely the legal and societal treatment of transsexuals) and yet you're STILL finding ways to argue with me.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I'm the only person here who's agreeing with you, (At least on the main point of your argument, namely the legal and societal treatment of transsexuals) and yet you're STILL finding ways to argue with me.

Actually, you're not the only one, although you might get that impression from Serafina's posts. My position has been all along that social gender identity should be as flexible as practical. You might note that in my first post visible in this rather long thread, I stated for the record that Serafina ought to be referred to with the pronouns of her choice, the main subject of discussion at that point in time.

You should not rely on impressions you gather from her posts about what others actually believe. She has constructed more than one strawman argument in this thread.

[Serafina]

I compared you to Timothy Jones on the previous page for a reason. I'm the only person here who's agreeing with you, (At least on the main point of your argument, namely the legal and societal treatment of transsexuals) and yet you're STILL finding ways to argue with me.

Given that i have neither clue nor interest in who Timothy Jones is, that doesn't tell me much.

Either way, i was not arguing against you - i was merely stating that that video was not funny (to me at least) along with the reasons for that opinion.
Even IF i was arguing against you - just because you agree with me that doesn't mean i have to agree with everything you say.

Regarding the "only one" business - neither you nor JMS have been making a serious argument for your position (until now in the case of JMS). You have been randomly popping in and stating your opinion. While it's good to know that this forum doesn't just contain intolerant people, that doesn't exactly qualify you as on anyones side - comparable to silent, non-voting majorities.
Particularly JMS did have state that he is on my side, but his opinion had no more weight than anyone else's he wasn't exactly enforcing it despite it being a simple rule of politeness.

Well, at least that is my perception so far. You might agree with me, but you don't see anything (or enough) wrong with WILGA/Kor/Oraghans opinion to defend yours (which agrees with me). That's why i had the feeling that JMS "owed" me the discussion with WILGA, since he insisted that he would do it and that he was on my side.
Again, just draw the comparison to race-based discrimination:
You are people who do not like it, but you stand idly by while a black person is attacked for being black and while people demand that that person is treated as a second-class citizen.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Jeezzzz.... This thread is as much fun as pink eye. Have a good time, guys. Oh, and Serafina, lighten up a bit. You're far too intense.

You should know better. That clip was offensive.
I had to endure for dozens of seconds a rock band which, like many other rock bands during those days, liked to be shot while "performing" their single on stage, in a big and vast building with half the instruments missing and no public whatsoever, while the main singer demonstrated his talent for some kind of jellyfishy simiesque impression.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Regarding the "only one" business - neither you nor JMS have been making a serious argument for your position (until now in the case of JMS).

As far as I was concerned initially, this was a distraction ad hominem Serafina from the topic at hand, and it was sufficient to point out its nature and present the case why everybody should just nod their heads, bury their differences, and move along if they wanted to get back on topic. As a general rule, this is a fairly specialised discussion forum, one in which we stick largely to VS topics.

As far as I was concerned later, after your private and public requests regarding this debate, I was willing to let you have your three-cornered debate with W.I.L.G.A. and Kor, since you seemed to want a direct debate with minimal interference (when you weren't simply asking me to suppress all dissenting opinions, which is to say suppressing debate entirely). You weren't asking for help actually making your case (to the contrary, you were interested in having a private debate if you could get it), and had you been arguing competently, it would have been superfluous for me to do any more than state my opinion as a matter of record.

As it turned out, you were not arguing competently in the least; and in fact, not even managing to argue politely, which matter forced my attention back to the thread. I discovered that you had managed to argue so completely unsuccessfully as to push Kor away from your position; Kor and W.I.L.G.A. were interested in debating the topic further, simply not with yourself, and so here we are.

he wasn't exactly enforcing it

If not for that ruling I made and enforced on the topic of polite address, Kor would not have been banned; only you.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I've learned a couple things about Transgession.com's author, the website from where I found the article I linked to earlier on, by G. Eugene Pichler.

It seems that for someone who's little known, this person still generates a certain amount of controversy:

http://www.mystimusic.com/Greg_Pichler.html
http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.asp ... PLATE_ID=2
http://thetrialwarrior.blogspot.com/201 ... tions.html
http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/20 ... c1863.html
http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onscdc/doc/ ... 26255.html