{"id":927,"date":"2024-03-10T18:35:58","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T23:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/?p=927"},"modified":"2024-11-07T22:15:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T03:15:10","slug":"gender-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/2024\/03\/10\/gender-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">What I am going to say here will be highly unpopular with some people.  They will accuse me of bigotry or worse.  They are mistaken.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" src=\"http:\/\/random-musings.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Persecuted_When_Contradicted_01-300x212.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1009\" style=\"width:500px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Persecuted_When_Contradicted_01-300x212.png 300w, https:\/\/random-musings.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Persecuted_When_Contradicted_01-1024x722.png 1024w, https:\/\/random-musings.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Persecuted_When_Contradicted_01-768x541.png 768w, https:\/\/random-musings.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Persecuted_When_Contradicted_01-1536x1083.png 1536w, https:\/\/random-musings.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Persecuted_When_Contradicted_01-2048x1444.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Some people are not happy about the bodies they have.  They want to be something else &#8211; a male, a female, non-binary, any of the wide variety of genders and identities that are possible.  Because of their dissatisfaction, we are required to call them by their preferred pronouns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I can sympathize with people who are dissatisfied with their bodies. Some people really deeply want to be something else &#8211; often a man wants to be a woman, or <em>vice versa<\/em>. They often will undergo difficult and painful surgeries to accomplish this &#8211; they can have their bodies remade into what they want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t have a problem with this, in theory.  It&#8217;s their body.  Let them modify it according to their wishes.  People get tattoos, piercing, other body modifications.  Why not gender &#8220;reassignment?&#8221;  I&#8217;m not sure where they get &#8220;reassignment,&#8221; but there it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The thing is, these people are not really the gender they chose. A trans woman is not a woman, and a trans man is not a man. No matter how their bodies are manipulated, there are certain unchangeable facts that identify their gender. Among other things, the presence or absence of Y chromosomes is an indication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">This creates serious problems.  I don&#8217;t much care about what washroom they use.  Let the washrooms be gender-neutral.  Who cares?  But it gets trickier when discussing things such as sports.  Is a trans woman equivalent to a naturally-born woman?  No.  There are differences, and there always will be differences.  These differences may give trans women an unfair advantage over natural women.  I don&#8217;t know whether trans men have any advantage over natural men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">One hot topic is pronouns.  Everyone is supposed to have the right to choose their pronouns &#8211; he\/him, she\/her, they\/them, and so on.  I don&#8217;t feel this is a serious issue, but some people do.  If I happen to use the wrong pronouns, they might get offended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The thing is, claiming to be something does not make you that thing.  A person who claims to be a woman, who was born a man, isn&#8217;t a woman no matter how much he insists on it.  At best he might be seen as a trans woman, and her pronoun changed accordingly.  But we&#8217;re playing make-believe here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">At this point many readers will be foaming at the mouth at my horrible &#8220;transphobia&#8221; or &#8220;homophobia&#8221; or whatever.  And yet &#8211; I haven&#8217;t said a thing against anyone.  The worst thing I&#8217;ve done is to disagree with what some people say about this subject.  I haven&#8217;t said that anyone should be punished, or discriminated against, or otherwise mistreated.  I haven&#8217;t suggested that anyone is less of a person, or not a legitimate member of society.  All I have done is to suggest that trans is incomplete, and that differences will always exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The flaw in thinking that we should all be able to &#8220;identify&#8221; as male, female, binary, nonbinary, etc., is this:  where does it end?  If you were born a male and identify as female, why couldn&#8217;t I, who was born White, identify as Black?  To my understanding, there are treatments available where I could, in fact, develop a dark pigmentation that would cause me to resemble a Black person.  If I undergo this treatment and turn dark, does that make me Black?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m guessing that most people wouldn&#8217;t regard me as Black, even if I had the treatment.  But why should this be denied me, when a person can be considered whatever gender they prefer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve noticed that a lot of people are rabid about this issue. They have their rules, and if you disagree, you are transphobic or otherwise bigoted. And really, I&#8217;m not. I don&#8217;t give a shit what gender you are, what gender you want to be, what pronouns you want to use. That&#8217;s your choice. I don&#8217;t claim that you&#8217;re any less a person than anyone else, or that you should be kept away from children, or that somehow you&#8217;re deficient. I just disagree. And that&#8217;s enough to get lynched, at least online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Why is that, I wonder?  How did we get to this place, where merely disagreeing is considered bigotry or worse?  What ever happened to respectful debate?.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What I am going to say here will be highly unpopular with some people. They will accuse me of bigotry or worse. They are mistaken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/random-musings.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}