Don’t let my tits stop you from calling me “Sir”
Many is the morning I awake, check social media, and am annoyed by ignorant or stubborn two-dimensional “arguments” endeavoring to erase human complexity based on personal stuckness. I’m ok with this though, I’m a morning person. It encourages me to sharpen my sword (tongue, mmm… fingers?) in response. If you’re in the mood for fresh debate, here are a couple retorts I’ve penned to community members who didn’t want to acknowledge the visible, historically active, present and growing communities of people who identify as trans this past week:
Comment: “Being a man or a woman is a physical reality. No amount of hormone therapy will make a man be able to have a baby. We are talking about reality and truth.”
Me: You are either ignoring reality or completely ignorant of biology.
BTW, these men have had babies.
Not all males are men, and not all females are women. How about intersex individuals?
Are females who can’t get pregnant not women? How about males who can not impregnate? How about people who never get pregnant or even choose to try, are they agender (“agender” falls under the trans umbrella)?
If you want to cling to the ideal of “biology” as if it’s a life raft, actually have a conversation about the variety of factors which contribute to the make-up of “biological sex”. If you are conflating phenotypic sex (the naming of what a Dr. glances down to determine at birth) with the variety of sex characteristics which ascertain and measure one’s biological sex (not to be confused with gender identity), you might want to pay to take my class on the subject. I just taught it at Berklee College, and have been lecturing on and writing about the subject for years. Yes, I will teach you about chromosomal reality, gonad development, hormone levels, and brain structure so you have a more complete picture of what’s going on biologically in the human body when it comes to sex classification. Incidentally, you may be interested to know that each of these biological sex-related characteristics exist within a range of “normal” which supports the idea that biological sex is just as complex and nuanced as gender identity is. Biology supports trans identity and intersex reality, not the other way around.
Comment: “So far I’m unconvinced about the legitimacy of being able to switch genders.”
Me: Who made you the decider of legitimate? Isn’t that “switching genders” is actually being done, and has been done for centuries, the definition of legitimacy? Wouldn’t the “Decider of Legitimacy” be nominated from the group of people “switching genders” in the first place? I am assuming you may be uneducated in trans identities, for at the very least you are “not sure they’re real”, which is confusing as there are hordes of trans people existing in every facet of society right now as I write this. For you to be The Decider of “the legitimacy of being able to switch genders” makes no sense at all, and will not do. That would be like me, a performer and sex educator — not a surgeon — saying, “hmmm… I don’t know about the legitimacy of that brain surgeon’s methods”. Utter nonsense! Let me make it easy for you: believe trans people when we tell you about ourselves, it’s an opportunity for education. Trans people happen to be the ones educated in being trans, as well as trans history, and all sorts of esoteric and everyday trans issues. Go to the source when you’re confused — didn’t researching and writing essays in high school teach you that?
Comment: “So far I’m unconvinced about the legitimacy of being able to switch genders.”
Me (take 2): Consider that trans folk are not switching genders at all, but simply telling to you who they are in the moment they are able to. Identity is something which grows, morphs, changes, is understood, and is given new names at different times in a person’s life. Aspects of one’s identity are an evolution for most people. Gender can definitely be one of those aspects, and can even be a revelation to some people when they get to know more about it. When we are younger we don’t always have the words to explain how we feel in our bodies. Sometimes people are afraid to name their inner feelings and thoughts about who they are. Sometimes people repress parts of themselves because of how loved ones or their immediate communities and society at large treats others, or because they have actively been taught to repress themselves. If someone is transitioning, they are not “switching genders”, they are undergoing a process of revealing themselves to be the person who they innately are. It is courageous. It is cause for celebration! It is not an invitation to question legitimacy.
Comment: “So far I’m unconvinced about the legitimacy of being able to switch genders.”
Me (take 3): Enters as EDMUND, with a letter
[KING LEAR by Shakespheare
SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester’s castle.]
EDMUND: Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,–legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
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~Thank you.