11/4/2002: Gay Games open

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by BrianR

From my own personal views, it leans towards the feminine...

Well, remeber female is the default; male is the differentiated form.
But jeepers...with all the <a href="http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/">gender-neutral pronoun systems</a> in use, can't we do better than "it"?

...does not know if it produces viable sperm from it's (undescended) testicles.

Undescended testicles tend not to be fertile; temperature control is important. But it's easy enough to check; all one needs is access to an optical microscope...and a sample, of course. Fertile semen is easy to see.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by philgump

I am under the impression from looking at MaggieL that he/she does not suffer from any of the aforementioned conditions, although I could be wrong.

My genome has never been sequenced, so I'm pretty sure you're talking though your hat here. I don't claim to be genetically intersexed, but in fact I don't know, and certainly *you* don't.

Are you actually basing your diagnosis on *pictrues* on my web site, Doctor?

I know this may make some people mad but you can't just choose; there is VERY clear science on what makes a man and what makes a woman.

No one could possibly make such a flat statement who has actually studied any of the science involved. Unless we're talking "science" in the same abused sense in which people say "creation science"...considering your apparent standards for diagnostic data, I suppose that might be the case.

It is indeed not simply a matter of choice...there's nothing simple about it. Or painless. Or inexpensive.

In view of the fact that both the State of Pennsylvania and the Federal Avation Administration have taken legal note of my reassigned gender, I find your use of "he/she" in reference to me to be intentionally rude.

"Sin of pride" indeed...

[BrianR]

Originally posted by MaggieL

Undescended testicles tend not to be fertile; temperature control is important. But it's easy enough to check; all one needs is access to an optical microscope...and a sample, of course. Fertile semen is easy to see.

I can't resist adding "and taste". Seriously, I knew that and if they're over about 94 deg F then they are infertile. And I hate to think of the consequences of self-fertilization...



The pronoun issue is not my doing folks...it insists on using "it" to refer to itself...and I've spent quite some time getting used to that. And it still sticks in my Neanderthal throat.

All I wanted to know is: Do I hold the door and pick up the check or not?

Brian

[Zorg]

While I realize that sexual identification is a very complex subject, and that transvestitism is a recognized medical area, human gender is simply not nearly as fluid as MaggieL would have you believe.

No matter what sort of lifestyle you live, what sort of surgery or treatment you subject yourself to, if you were born with a Y chromosomeyou will be biologically male, and therefore (primarily) mentally male, for all of time.


What philgump is trying to say is basically, don't wear your sexual preference(or any other group identification) on your sleeve, or as a chip on your shoulder. He seems to want gays to be judged just as everyone else is, on their individual merits, not to which tribe they belong to.

MaggieL is obviously deeply involved in the gay-lesbian-transgender 'lifestyle'. She seems to think that being a member of that community means that mainstream acceptance or conformity is not only not necessary but even unacceptable. It's this sort of divisive fractionalism, this "us against them" mentality which I think is a bad idea. As long as you've divided people into "queers" and "straights" there will never be widespread acceptance of homosexuality.

For example, it isn't as simple as "homosexual" and "heterosexual". MaggieL is more Quentin Crisp, philgump is more Rock Hudson. Lumping all the "queers" together does a disserve to everyone.

[Beletseri]

Originally posted by Zorg
No matter what sort of lifestyle you live, what sort of surgery or treatment you subject yourself to, if you were born with a Y chromosomeyou will be biologically male, and therefore (primarily) mentally male, for all of time.

So genetics is destiny? Even genetisists don't believe that these days. Since the development of the brain sexual areas and those of the peripheral organs happen at different times and under different hormonal influences they are only loosely tied together. If the genetic program goes right, the brain identity and preference tends to match up with the external organs. Since development is a complicated process sometimes things don't proceed per the genetic blue print. Also sometimes other genes (not necessarily found on the sex chromosomes) effect the outcome differentially.

I don't see how you can say that someone who thinks and feels like a woman despite being XY has less insight into their own head than you do. How the heck do you know that they are primarily mentally male? What does that mean anyway? This insistence that everything is black and white or male and female is very naive.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by Zorg

No matter what sort of lifestyle you live, what sort of surgery or treatment you subject yourself to, if you were born with a Y chromosomeyou will be biologically male, and therefore (primarily) mentally male, for all of time.

Tell that to the "man" with androgen insensitivity syndrome who's had a Y chromosome all "his" life and didn't know it. Or the transsexual women whose hypothalmic features match typical female patterns more closely than many XX women do.

(Actually you can't tell the ones who have actually been examined that way much, they had to be dead before their brains could be examined that way).

"Y-chromosome=male brain" simply isn't true. It's *usually* true, but not *always* true. Y chromosomes *usually* make brains that find women attractive, too. But not always.

The real world is more complicated than that.

What philgump is trying to say is basically, don't wear your sexual preference(or any other group identification) on your sleeve...

OK, everybody into unisex clothing, immediately! :-)

MaggieL is obviously deeply involved in the gay-lesbian-transgender 'lifestyle'.

What exactly *is* this "gay-lesbian-transgender lifestyle"?

Am I supposed to be living in Key West now? Provincetown? Northhampton? The Castro?

Should I have Judy Garland records? I *do* have a few k.d.lang, and there's even an Indigo Girls CD around here somewhere. Oh, wait...Judy is a gay *male* thing. Indigo Girls and k.d. are for the flannel shirt crowd. Damn....I don't have any flannel shirts either.

I suppose I should drop out of the amateur radio club, even though I'll be on their board of directors next year.

Actually, I tend to think of it as my "life". "Lifestyle" is an attempt makes it sound like some sort of superficial, changable ephimera, like a "hairstyle". Straight people have lives, queers "follow a lifestyle".

As long as you've divided people into "queers" and "straights" there will never be widespread acceptance of homosexuality.

And as long as you divide people into gentiles and Jews, there will never be widespread acceptance of Judaism, right? :-)

[Cam]

OK, everybody into unisex clothing, immediately! :-)

Just a quick point about that, Zorg did say sexual preference not sex. So he's actually pretty much right in that part of his statement, unless you believe gays should dress differently.

Though the rest of his statement is wrong since group identification quite often is associate with clothing, in fact some religions have requirements on what people can or cannot wear.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by MaggieL
Am I supposed to be living in Key West now? Provincetown? Northhampton? The Castro?

If I become mayor of Philadelphia next year, I'm going to divide it into sectors: Black, White, Hispanic, Gay, Jew, Russian, and Indian. And if the lesbians and transgendered want their own sections apart from gay men, we'll discuss it.

[Nic Name]

Dr. Janis Ashley told a Sedalia, Missouri, newspaper in 1989 that she would shortly have a sex-change operation so that she could find a wife and raise a family. She had been a woman for eleven years, following her first sex change.

I read it on the Internet.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by Nic Name
I read it on the Internet.

I only saw two references for it, both from the same place.

If it IS true, I wonder if she's been in Sedalia all her life. It's a fucking podunk town an hour west of Kansas City...it's home to the Missouri State Fair. They don't take too kindly to "funny" people out in them parts.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by sycamore
If I become mayor of Philadelphia next year, I'm going to divide it into sectors: Black, White, Hispanic, Gay, Jew, Russian, and Indian. And if the lesbians and transgendered want their own sections apart from gay men, we'll discuss it.

That'll never work....some of the lesbians are transsexual women. And some of them are black. I can tell you for sure some of the gay guys are transsexual men. There no shortage of gay Jews, either.

As I see it, the only solution is to give the bisexual transsexual women all-access passes. :-)

Originally posted by Cam

Just a quick point about that, Zorg did say sexual preference not sex. So he's actually pretty much right in that part of his statement, unless you believe gays should dress differently.

Only if they feel like it. My point was that gender is <i>The Mother of All Group Identifications</i>; when people meet you it's the first box they check on their mental form....and people definately expect to to dress accordingly. There are still laws in some jurisdictions against crossdressing.

I sure was glad when PennDOT finally issued me a drivers licence that caught up with my birth certifcate. If I was stopped by Officer Dullard on an isolated southern road, I didn't want to stiill have an "M" in the "sex" box, even if I pass a physical as female now. The update card they originally issued wouldn't help much in that situation...:-)

As for the Janice Ashley story, I suppose it may be true, but female-to-male surgery still pretty much sucks. I'd want to see it somewhere besides "News of the Wierd" before I beleived it. There have been a few cases of gender detransition, but never to my knowlege among folks who followed the http://www.hbigda.org/soc.html]HBIGDA Standards of Care[/url]

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by MaggieL
That'll never work....some of the lesbians are transsexual women. And some of them are black. I can tell you for sure some of the gay guys are transsexual men. There no shortage of gay Jews, either.

I thought about that originally...some would obviously need multiple sector passes. After all, what the hell would Rho and I do?

[Beletseri]

Hey, I"m a straight white women but I don't want to just hang out with straight white women and men. Can I have an all sector pass too?

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by sycamore
I thought about that originally...some would obviously need multiple sector passes. After all, what the hell would Rho and I do?

Dunno, but whatever you do, you're apparently not allowed to flaunt it. :-)

By the way, I had to look up who Quentin Crisp was. I remeber him from <i>Orlando</i> now. Can't say I feel any particular resonance there. His cereal is too sweet, too; I prefer Cocoa Puffs. :-)

[philgump]

umm I never mentioned a "Sin of Pride". I think I mentioned a "Sin of Tolerance". By the way a sin of pride is not what you think. A sin of pride does work with human situations, it only works if you are so prideful as to think that you do not need God and that you as a human can do it alone. That is the "Sin of Pride" you mentioned.

As far as he or she that is about the only pronouns I have up my sleeve unless 'IT' would be more preferable and you have already said that 'IT' was unacceptable.

I have always been taught, that you should never offer up a problem without offering up a soulution. Therefore, what pronoun do you prefer people to use when speaking about or to you.