June 19, 2016

"Nobody can accept this thing... 'you can't be female and have a penis'... That just makes people's heads explode."

"And that was another reason why I wanted out of this female classification because I have no intention of removing my genitals."

Said Jamie Shupe, the first person in the United States to get the government to officially designate his gender as other than male or female, NPR reports.
Oregon joins several countries in recognizing a third gender. In 2014, India became the largest country in the world to have an official third option, following in the footsteps of Pakistan, Australia and Germany....

A few months ago, Shupe applied to the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles to be listed as non-binary. The agency refused, so they* asked a Multnomah County judge for the new gender designation, and won.

As of now, the state isn't fighting the decision, says DMV spokesman David House. Instead, he says, the agency is looking into how to comply.

"We expect there would be a computer system change required, probably form changes. Also it's very likely that it would require some legislative and administrative rule changes," House says. He expects that in a few months, Oregon driver's license applications will have new gender designations, in addition to male and female.
So all it takes is one county judge to make this decision for a state? No. It's a state-level decision to choose not to appeal. "As of now." So the state goes will forward, spending the money to comply, without submitting the question to the democratic processes of the state... unless, somehow, the people of Oregon raise a fuss about the decision not to appeal, which puts those who want to maintain the status quo in the position of having to draw attention to themselves and risk looking mean/unprogressive.
_____________________

* "They" in that sentence means one person, Jamie Shupe. The construction is confusing, but NPR expects you to maintain your capacity for fluent reading when you encounter that and this one, which slowed me down: "Three years ago, Shupe and their wife of 29 years, Sandy, moved to Portland, Ore."

82 comments:

Bob Ellison said...

Nuts.

Hagar said...

My barber claims that 40 years ago he said that when these people grow up to be the governing generation, the country is going to be in deep trouble.

traditionalguy said...

Making People's Heads Explode seems to be the new form of sexual excitement sex. Routine old gay sex acts has lost its fascination for thrill seekers.

But what will be the next way to get it done?

MayBee said...

I really don't get how you can have male genitalia, want to keep it, and say you don't *feel* male. How does being male feel?

The Godfather said...

I feel like a fried egg this morning; can I get that on my driver's license?

MayBee said...

Perhaps there is something bad they associate with their gender, and think the other gender (or no gender) is better. It can't possibly be just "I want to dress this way" or "I want to do these activities" that people think of as male or female. That's way too shallow for what is going on here.

MayBee said...

It just seems like we are hurrying to go all-in on this without trying to understand what is going on.

David said...

"Three years ago, Shupe and their wife of 29 years, Sandy, moved to Portland, Ore."

Perfect for them.

David said...

"How does being male feel?"

How long do you have to listen?

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

How many foster kids are carrying their meager possessions around in garbage bags because there is no money to buy them a simple backpack while the state wastes money accommodating this asinine horseshit? "They" should be ashamed.

Ann Althouse said...

"Making People's Heads Explode seems to be the new form of sexual excitement sex. Routine old gay sex acts has lost its fascination for thrill seekers."

But in seeking alliance with the state, this person seems to be expressing the desire NOT to make heads explode. Why? Why not explode heads? Which by the way is an expression I would not use and consider too violent and disrespectful of other people's need to feel safe within their bodily integrity.

Lewis Wetzel said...

NPR makes the guy sound like a nut. He won't be called by a singular male pronoun, but instead wants to be called by a plural neuter pronoun? How can he reject "him", "her", and "it"? "It" is a neuter pronoun, but because human beings have binary sex, human beings can't be called "it" without dehumanizing them. Oh, brother.
I think you get the clue to what is really going on with this statement from "they": "I told family members, we either let me out of this box or I'm shooting myself in the head. Things really got that bad."
He can think of himself as being anything. It's other people thinking of him as a male that made him suicidal.
That's one Hell of a burden to put on friends, family, and strangers.

Bob Ellison said...

head explosion

Dan said...

Let's do it right. Stop asking people to identify their race and gender.. not on forms, not on the census.. not in polls. Make it illegal to categorize people. How will we choose our victims then? How will we know who Trump hates then?

David Begley said...

Terry

Maybe this guy is a nut.

John Bragg said...

"I was in a deep, dark depression because I had boxed myself into this male identity that I couldn't stand anymore," Shupe says.

Three years ago, Shupe decided enough is enough.

"I told family members, we either let me out of this box or I'm shooting myself in the head. Things really got that bad," Shupe recalls.


That seems to be a clear declaration of mental illness. I'm open the idea that gender-reassignment (or de-assignment?) is the best form of treatment, or at least I don't rule it out. But shouldn't that be the subject of medical debate?

There doesn't seem to be as much medical debate as I'd expect. Is that because activists set out to destroy J Michael Bailey, with great success?

I've started to wonder if the ideology of transgenderism is this decade's equivalent of the satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s, in that normal standards of discussion are suspended and skepticism is seen as proof of moral imbecility.

If this intutition is correct, one major difference is that most of the damage of this moral panic is to the perpetrators of the panic themselves. The statistics on the mental health of transgender people are terrible--is that because the living as or being seen as the wrong gender is a tremendous stressor (analogue homosexuality), or because transgenderism is a byproduct of other(?) pathology (analogue anorexia)? It's possible that what we (as a society) are doing to accommodate transgender people is the best thing for them. It's also possible that it's terrible for them.

Bob Boyd said...

"Is it a third box? Or will it require multiple boxes?" House says. "We just don't know the answer to those questions; we're going to need to study that."

Of course it will require multiple boxes. It will probably require multiple pages. They will probably wind up just not designating gender on the form at all.

Curious George said...

The only good to come of this is the practical end to Title IX. It will be abused b those that see the opportunity. You want to see heads explode? You ain't seen nothing.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Pretty soon some perv will claim that because he identifies as a woman (even though he does not look, act, or dress like a woman), he should be allowed to lead a team of girl scouts. And the Obama JD will back him up.
"Team of girl scouts" doesn't sound right. What's the best collective noun for a group of girl scouts? Coven?

William R. Hamblen said...

NPR could have said "it" and "its" instead of "they" and "their". "She", "he", "it" seems perfect.

Laslo Spatula said...

Male, Female, Unicorn.

This far and no further.

I am Laslo.

Bob Boyd said...

Don't ask. Don't tell.

PB said...

Gender is meaningless now. It's equivalent to fashion.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Making People's Heads Explode seems to be the new form of sexual excitement sex. Routine old gay sex acts has lost its fascination for thrill seekers.

But what will be the next way to get it done?

6/19/16, 7:17 AM

Well, Canada has just legalized some forms of bestiality.

The Italian writer Luigi Barzini worked in Wiemar-era Berlin as a young foreign correspondent and was fascinated and repelled by its' sexual decadence. He was told that the ultimate thrill was to sodomize a male goose while slitting its' throat, since one could experience homosexuality, bestiality and necrophilia all at the same time. Also, gastronomy, Barzini said, as one could eat the goose afterward.

Of course, we know what came after Wiemar.

Fernandinande said...

That just makes people's heads explode."

Crazy people don't make anyone's head explode. 'Cept maybe their own.

Eleanor said...

Terry. a man doesn't have to pretend he's a woman to be a Girl Scout Leader. Lots of dads lead troops, which is what a group of Girl Scouts is called.

Jim said...

Dr. Lysenko, call your office. We need someone who can turn liberal dogma into a science and we need him/her/it fast.

John Bragg said...

Terry,
An organized group of Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts is a Troop. (A group of Cub Scouts is a Pack.)

From http://www.girlscoutsla.org/pages/about/join_faqs.html
Q. Can men be Girl Scout troop leaders?

A. Absolutely! Every Girl Scout troop requires two or more adults (minimum one unrelated female) with one adult designated as the leader.


So our notional John Goodman-looking trans woman Girl Scout troop leader is less of a problem than you may think.

Phil 314 said...

Delusions were once considered a key symptom of mental illness. It appears that sexual delusions no longer apply.

Laslo Spatula said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Owen said...

So this creature's threat of violence (to itself) was enough to stir the State to rewrite the entire social structure. Response was not to commit the creature to the mental health system? Does the State think that the creature's demands will now cease? No, the nature of mental illness is to seek (or stumble into) other and more fantastic confrontations with the rest of the world. The fun has just begun. And the average taxpayers will be funding this.

Anonymous said...

Bob Boyd beat me to it.

"I don't think anybody's asking the DMV or any other big institution to have 50 boxes," Haque says.

Oregon will ultimately end up with as many boxes as there are weird Oregonians. Everybody's gonna want their own box. It will keep the coders in business a long time :)

Birkel said...

John Bragg:

The medical community already had this debate. And Johns Hopkins decided gender reassignment surgery was, medically speaking, unhelpful.

Larry J said...

Abraham Lincoln once asked how many legs a dog would have if you called a tail a leg. The answer, he said, is four. Just because you call a tail a leg, it doesn't make it a leg. Transexuals can call themselves whatever they wish, but it doesn't make it true nor does it compell everyone else to agree, at least not yet.

Roughcoat said...

How does being male feel?

This male thinks it feels great!

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

No, the nature of mental illness is to seek (or stumble into) other and more fantastic confrontations with the rest of the world. The fun has just begun. And the average taxpayers will be funding this.

6/19/16, 8:47 AM

Transgender woman who now identifies as a dragon:

http://www.healthiswealthofheart.com/transgender-woman-now-transitioning-into-a-dragon/

Birkel said...

Owen,

Oregon has paid the Danegeld.

Lucien said...

An unstated premise in the article is that government forms have boxes to check for "gender" (although maybe they do, in Oregon). If the intellectual argument is that gender is different from sex, because it is socially constructed, then asking people to state their sex rather than gender seems to speak to biology rather than social construct.To turn around and say that when forms say "sex" they really mean "gender" (without even admitting that is what you're doing) seems like a bit of a cheat, doesn't it?

Lewis Wetzel said...

Blogger Eleanor said...
Terry. a man doesn't have to pretend he's a woman to be a Girl Scout Leader. Lots of dads lead troops, which is what a group of Girl Scouts is called.

6/19/16, 8:13 AM


Dear God! Things have changed since the 1960s!

Amadeus 48 said...

Time to take the sex box off official ID forms, or even better change the choices to yes/no/maybe. It would make better sense than where Oregon is going.

Bob Boyd said...

"Everybody's gonna want their own box."


Yup. And they already have that on the form.

Name______________________________________.

There's a photo for identification. Why have sex on a driver's license?

Speaking of which, you can be arrested for having sex on a driver's license, especially if you're still at the DMV.

Owen said...

Amadeus 48 said: "...take the sex box off official forms..." Yes, and "race," whatever that means (other than position in the queue for preferences). We should all be linked to forms with a reference number to a DNA read-out. It will be several hundred characters long and you will want to encrypt it, so better start memorizing it now; but it will be uniquely and completely "you" for official purposes.

Curious George said...

Hey, if Hillary can do it, why not Jamie?

jr565 said...

"Said Jamie Shupe, the first person in the United States to get the government to officially designate his gender as other than male or female, NPR reports."
So how does this work when it comes to bathroom policies? And/or sports teams.

Swede said...

I eagerly look forward to the next census, where "other" boxes get checked like crazy.

Now how will the government know who gets classified as victim or not?

Fred Drinkwater said...

There used to be a saying in Oregon:
"Don't californicate Oregon."

Too late now. This is what happens when you don't control immigration.

MaxedOutMama said...

This is why women will be subject to the next draft. If everyone's gender is fluid and has nothing legally to do with birth gender, then a male-only draft is legally unenforceable.

The logic is inescapable.

Tari said...

My 13 year old self-identifies as 16; would Oregon be willing to give him a driver's license? He'd really like to drive, and he'd probably be pretty good at it with a little practice. If gender is a social construct, why isn't age?

On a more serious note, it seems that gender is on a driver's license to begin with only for purposes of identification. It's the same as having your height, eye and hair color, etc. Your license is not a place for self-expression; the information on it is there to aid the person trying to match your physical appearance up to the ID itself. If you're going to let a M be a F on his license, or create a whole new category that doesn't aid identification, why not just take gender off the license altogether? You'd have hoped the state would have thought that through (since they are the ones who want to be able to identify people via an ID), but that's really just wishful thinking, I guess.

John Bragg said...

Birkel: I don't know that "the medical community has had this debate."

The Johns Hopkins head doctor in question, Dr Paul McHugh, is a strongly pro-life Catholic, and the case could be made that his re-thinking of gender reassignment surgery connects to that.

Issues of sexuality and gender are sufficiently charged that I don't really trust any single expert in the absence of rigorous examination of his or her evidence and premises.

If I had to bet a dollar, I would probably bet that Dr McHugh is more right than wrong. But I wouldn't bet the house, and I wouldn't tell transgender people what to do or not do based on my poorly informed guess.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

"exiledonmainstreet" is ostensibly female and has a penis, of sorts.

At some point clitoromegaly transitions into micropenis.

Don't be afraid to touch your clit every now and then, Ann. It won't explode (at least, not that way) and turn you into a suddenly confused male.

n.n said...

Sex is binary. Gender is a narrow normal distribution centered on sex, which has exhibited a progressive divergence since the establishment of a Pro-Choice Church.

then a male-only draft is legally unenforceable

Not only has gender become a liberal social construct, but so is the law, morality, etc. The pro-choice doctrine is not limited to justifying premeditated abortion of wholly innocent human lives for wealth, pleasure, leisure, and democratic leverage... and clinical cannibalism by Planned Parenthood corporation et al.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

All your commenters' obsession with this stuff must be like the acrobatic obsessive minutiae of trying to figure out whether people back in the day were mulatto, quadroon, octaroons, etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseam. They were all people but somehow we must determine whether they were more one OR THE OTHER!!!!

n.n said...

So, if gender is a liberal social construct, evolutionary dysfunction can be compensated through mass immigration (e.g. refugee crises, immigration reform), transgender confusion requires placing young girls and boys at risk, and reproductive prostitution (e.g. Heather has one mommy, one female guardian, and absentee father), why does the Pro-Choice church still practice selective exclusion of politically unfavorable orientations and behaviors?

I wonder for how much longer people will tolerate the Pro-Choice culture.

boycat said...

After Obergefell the entire sexual looney-tunes universe is rollickingly drunk and adrift.

Real American said...

heads won't explode, but they'll go firmly in palms. A court can no more declare a third sex than it can declare that pi = 3, that the earth is flat or that Romeo & Juliet tells the story of space aliens abducting Elvis and forcing him to share a New York City apartment with Big Foot in an Odd Couple like scenario.

Real American said...

people tend not to accept things that aren't true.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

All your commenters' obsession with this stuff must be like the acrobatic obsessive minutiae of trying to figure out whether people back in the day were mulatto, quadroon, octaroons, etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Uh, genius, it's not Althouse's readers who are coming up with all these weird variations. It's your side of the political divide.

Real American said...

sounds like there's a greater need for listing mental illnesses on driver's licenses than the specific delusions.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

R & B, can you try to be original in your insults? I called you a low-T gamma male due to your laughable anti-gun hysteria and your counter is to call me manly.

How boring. How jejune. No wonder Inga the Witless Wonder applauds it.

"I'm unmanly? Well, you're - unfeminine!! So there!" is the equivalent of "I know I am but what are you!" a line of reasoning that is very popular in the 3rd grade.

But then what can we expect from a man-child who screams "I hate you!" and then stomps off like a petulant brat?

Hagar said...

I have never seen a box on a form for "gender." They all ask what sex you are.

Hagar said...

Gender is a grammatical term, such that in Norwegian, a dog of unspecified sex is assumed to be a male - en hund - but a likewise unspecified cat is ei katte.

Molly said...

William R. Hamblen comment.

I was thinking recently about how we as a society have made pronouns so difficult to use. We can always avoid pronouns: Shupe and Shupe's wife of 29 years; the department refused, so Shupe as a judge... I agree it's not always elegant prose, but neither is the NPR solution elegant prose, and what is more it is downright confusing.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Blogger Hagar said...
Gender is a grammatical term, such that in Norwegian, a dog of unspecified sex is assumed to be a male - en hund - but a likewise unspecified cat is ei katte.

6/19/16, 11:52 AM

I recall reading about a little Jewish boy who was taken in by Polish Catholics during WWII. Since the Nazis were in the habit of checking to see if boys were circumcised (a sure sign of Jewishness in that time and place), his new "parents" put him in a dress, had him grow his hair long and called him by a girl's name. The child survived the Holocaust and went back to living as a boy when the war was over. He said the hardest part of faking it was the fact that Polish is pronounced differently depending on the sex of the speaker and he made mistakes all the time. People became suspicious. His "mother" explained to people that he/she was mentally handicapped and that was the reason for the lapses in pronunciation.

So a modern-day Polish trannie has to learn his/her own mother tongue all over again as part of the sex change, which would be quite difficult. That feminists decry English as a sexist language always amused me - it's one of the most gender-neutral ones out there.

Unknown said...

"Nobody can accept this thing... 'you can't be female and have a penis'...

If he's saying what he seems to be saying (who can be sure?) I have no difficulty at all accepting it. "Your cock is hanging out of your short shorts" is a thing you can only say to a male. These assholes have completely departed the planet. And not for near-earth orbit, either. Please, pinkos, run on this shit. Hard.

ALP said...

Isn't this all about identity documents and being able to identify one person vs. another?

So forget gender all together and use fingerprints or iris scans. Problem solved. Once digital biometrics are everywhere, this shit will never be discussed again. In fact, I'll bet this is one of those problems that solves itself due to digital biometrics: some day we'll look back at including gender as an identifier as terribly primitive.

Do irises and fingerprints have a gender?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I have never seen a box on a form for "gender." They all ask what sex you are.

Yes.

But then, what happens when you have a PCOS-suffering intersex she-male like "exiledonmainstreet," who has too much testosterone and male secondary and primary sex characteristics to ignore? Obviously there has to be a way to account for these unfortunate individuals, as well.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...


"All your commenters' obsession with this stuff must be like the acrobatic obsessive minutiae of trying to figure out whether people back in the day were mulatto, quadroon, octaroons, etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseam. They were all people but somehow we must determine whether they were more one OR THE OTHER!!!!"

That's a good analogy, comparing gender hi-jinks to the racial parsing of the past, but you weirdly, willfully, completely misidentify who's doing the parsing. Sometimes, R&B, I get the impression you recognize the absurdities of the Left but somehow (emotionally, socially, professionally) too invested in them to call them out. I have a brother who's like that.


""I told family members, we either let me out of this box or I'm shooting myself in the head. Things really got that bad," Shupe recalls."

OK, so if you're that certain you're a chick why do you require validation from the state? Call yourself Jane, get yourself surgically mutilated, wear a dress, and run with it. You can think you're Napoleon all day and nobody will care much. It's when you insist that others think you're Napoleon that you show how batshit you truly are.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Yawn.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I get it, Cracker. Hermaphrodites, etc., freak you out.

And yet, they still exist.

What a bummer that your discomfort with them can't be used as a reason to deny them an identity and sexual reality that you readily understand and/or can relate to.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Sometimes, R&B, I get the impression you recognize the absurdities of the Left...

The left just prefers to keep up with medical science.

Should it reject all medical science, or just the parts that make you feel uneasy or in unfamiliar territory?

Hermaphrodites were even depicted in Greco-Roman art of antiquity. Perhaps you're not as conservative (or even pro-Western) as you think by pretending that they're a new invention, designed to scare all the good traditional folk.

Fernandinande said...

Rhythm and Balls said...
Hermaphrodites were even depicted in Greco-Roman art of antiquity.


"The Romans were unaware of the different conditions which cause individuals to display both male and female attributes. They believed those born with physical variations were signs of natural corruption. As such, intersex people could be considered as punishments or warnings from the gods."

'Titus-Livy13 relates that when Italy recovered from occupation by Carthage, monsters appeared, including two androgynous children: "...all these events appeared to be due to a freak of nature which mixed genders. In particular, we were horrified by the hermaphrodites".'

The "Grecos" were mellower.

ken in tx said...

I didn't know about Polish, but Thai is pronounced differently for males and females. Cah means Sir/Madam when said by a woman. Cup means Sir/Madam when said by a man.

damikesc said...

Party of science, kids.

damikesc said...

A lot of states have rape laws that make female on male rape impossible. This will go well and all of the problems, of couse, will be unforeseen.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The "Grecos" were mellower.

They were always mellower.

The only thing the Romans respected about them was their earlier military successes.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

" I get it, Cracker. Hermaphrodites, etc., freak you out.

And yet, they still exist. "

Dude, you do have a genius for missing the point entirely. I couldn't care less about trannies and whatnot. Real ones are so rare, they're virtually mythical, and of no societal significance one way or another. It was your bizarre misdirection I found interesting.

JamesB.BKK said...

This action used the same outrageous technique the EPA has been using for a while now. Step 1: Collude with group / agitator for planned outcome. Step 2. Group brings "citizens' suit." Step 3: EPA does not oppose; consent order, no appeal. Result: Huge change, no need for approval of the know-nothing voters or their elected "representatives." Finding a helpful local judge is just a lot easier.

Anonymous said...

Use of "their" is just bad grammar, it's a plural word outside a couple indefinite constructions. If the man doesn't want people to use either the masculine or the feminine pronoun, the only one left is "it". Or we could just continue using "he" since of old it used to be the pronoun of choice when the gender of the object was irrelevant.

Meanwhile, biological sex continues to be important. Doctors should know and treat patients according to the XX or XY reality, since that actually does matter, all protests of transgender activists aside. Are we really supposed to schedule XY people for annual mammograms while ignoring prostate exams? Or are we supposed to pay for both just to make them feel better about themselves? My bet is the answer to both those questions is going to be yes, making an absolute mockery of medical science.

Owen said...

James B.BKK: "This action used the same outrageous technique the EPA has been using for a while now. Step 1: Collude with group / agitator for planned outcome. Step 2. Group brings "citizens' suit." Step 3: EPA does not oppose; consent order, no appeal. Result: Huge change, no need for approval of the know-nothing voters or their elected "representatives." Finding a helpful local judge is just a lot easier."

Bingo. Termites in the frame of civil society.

Michael McNeil said...

Transgender woman who now identifies as a dragon

Wait till genetic engineering allows people to choose bodies to match their feelings! Women in a Bengal tiger body? Try raping that! Ah, but if you're a transgender (or just an ordinary) man in a dragon body….

(As Instapundit notes from time to time: this isn't the 21st century I was expecting.)

sean said...

It seems kind of strange for a law professor and gay marriage advocate to be suddenly complaining about judges and executive branch officials not deferring to the democratic process.

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