"I’ve watched her stand in front of a mirror, singeing each hair out of her face with a secondhand electrolysis machine. The return of her testosterone hasn’t resulted in just the resurgence of facial hair; her pants now fit differently, too. My own skin has been plagued by acne since I got off the pill six months ago, and my default states are angry, hungry or sleeping. Such are the perils of trying to have a child the way Lara and I are trying, without in vitro fertilization, or cryogenically frozen sperm. The way fertile cisgender people do: They simply couple up, and boom — a child is born. For many young trans people, the question of having babies is likely the last thing on their minds. Who could blame them? Like all young people, they’re figuring out their future.... But unlike all young people, young trans people are often making choices that have long-term consequences for their fertility. Which is part of how I, a 32-year-old cisgender lesbian, and Lara, my 33-year-old trans fiancée, came to be in the situation we’re in today: trying to conceive a child, even though Lara transitioned four years ago."
From
"Adventures in Transgender Fertility" by Joanne Spataro, "a New York-based writer who is engaged to a transgender woman" (NYT).
The comments at the NYT are surprisingly hostile. Here is the second-highest rated one:
Here is how I understand this story: a woman who is not sexually attracted to men met a man who says he was supposed to be a woman and took hormones to suppress his maleness. The woman fell in love with the man and was sexually attracted to him because now he seems like a woman. But the woman wanted to get pregnant, and so the man who now seems like a woman stopped taking the hormones that make him seem like a woman, in order to once again produce testosterone to be used to impregnate the woman.
A lot of the comments express hostility to the term "cisgender." On the topic of language, I'll just say I hate the vogue use of the interjection "boom" (as in "They simply couple up, and boom — a child is born").
पोस्ट्स
११३ टिप्पण्या:
"For many young trans people, the question of having babies is likely the last thing on their minds. Who could blame them? Like all young people, they’re figuring out their future."
Let me help. It's bleak.
Don't order what's not on the menu.
About cisgender. Would you object to “blonde blogger Ann Althouse”? I expect you would find the adjective irrelevant and superfluous and get the feeling it was meant to slight you.
Love makes you do crazy things.
So does mental illness.
When the transsane speak, it's hard to keep track.
"I hate the vogue use of the interjection "boom."" Agreed. I prefer lo: "And lo, a child is born."
New York times caters to older over educated women. I bet there's a lot of hostility towards claiming that it's easy to get pregnant.
They simply see the need, and boom -- they change their orientation
(sorry Prof, i couldn't resist : )
But after all, it's a (self declared) woman's right to change his mind (or gender)
(wouldn't you all be a little concerned about using sperm sent through this much hormone treatment?)
I’m confused. But not as much as some.
A lot of the comments express hostility to the term "cisgender."
Why do they get to relabel me while telling me they can choose any label they wish?
F that.
Yeah, miscarriages, hormone roller coaster ride and heartbreak.
It’s just so fucking easy for us cis people.
BAS is right. As I pointed out above the tone, the cisgender, the boom, are all slighting of heterosexual couples. The whole thing seems to saying “oh look at the sacrifices WE make to have a child, it’s so easy for YOU.”
I'll just say I hate the vogue use of the interjection "boom" (as in "They simply couple up, and boom — a child is born
We are the Elmer Fudd and Wile E. Coyote generation.
Boom makes us laugh.
“oh look at the sacrifices WE make to have a child, it’s so easy for YOU.”
Fucking fish with gills. Swimming around having fun all day.
It's just not fair to us air breathers.
I wish my wife and I were able to BOOM have a child. It ain't that easy honey. Turns out we cant. Adoption is an option of course, but they have reserved all the infants for gay and lesbian couples it seems.
Say a Frenchman moves to the USA and becomes a citizen. He insists on calling himself a trans-citizen and bloviates on the difficulty faced by trans-citizens. He insists on calling you a cis-citizen. Further he demands that you call yourself a cis-citizen.
How do you feel about it?
Won't forget, Can't regret
What I did for love.
However, I never stopped meds for love.
The cisgender woman in the article seems pretty selfish, forcing the transgender man to subvert his (her?) self-defined true self just so she can procure some semen from him. But maybe she's doing him a favor by reducing the number of hormones he has to take.
I'm so sure the child they conceive -- if it happens -- will have a normal upbringing.
"boom!" as in "ta da!", or "wah la!" or "surprise!"...all spoken with a dash of sarcasm.
"...the situation we’re in today: trying to conceive a child, even though Lara transitioned four years ago."
So Lara still has the wedding tackle? What does transitioning actually mean? I thought a man has the surgery and boom - he's a woman, but apparently that's not correct.
the question of having babies is likely the last thing on their minds. Who could blame them? Like all young people, they’re figuring out their future...
Maybe if they figured out BIOLOGY first they wouldn't have such a bleak future or be so confused.
Are their various problems going to be solved after the introduction of a child to the family?
Reading the article, I get the impression she fell in love with the man he was, squaring it with her lesbianosity by his transness. So they get married and want to have a baby just like a couple in a, er, normal relationship. The complication isn’t wanting to have a child. The complication is all the nutty bullshit that they signed up for prior to wanting a child.
I can't help but think back to the old margarine ads that ended with:
"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."
"boom" in this case is like the Seinfeld "yada yada." It refers to sexual intercourse.
"Boom" is explosive, calling to mind a bomb. And when you use it to refer to heterosexual sex, it suggests a "wham, bam" approach, which is disrespectful to heterosexuality.
But I'm seeing "boom" in a lot of stupid places, though I'd thought it was going out of style. I never liked it mostly because to my ear it sounds old-fashioned, like something a loud, cheesy 1950s comic would say.
If they have a baby there will be a third person in that relationship. And they will have to concentrate on that person, not themselves and their treatments. No more happy evenings around the electrolysis machine. What if its a "boy" and "he" turns out cisgender and plays football? Maybe the Times could do follow-up stories.
"stopped taking the pill"
Why was she taking the pill? She was engaging in lesbian sex with a chick with a dick... but WHY was she taking the pill?
Even Before they decided to try to get her preggers,
She'd been letting that disgusting GUY put his thing in her THE WHOLE TIME!!!
And then the article says that in talks with Other 'trans' 'lesbians' , they say that “We’re trying” to get preggers
No True Lesbian would EVER do that!
For Joanne Spataro, "Boom" is probably the short form of "Bada Bing, Bada Boom".
Sebastian said...
When the transsane speak, it's hard to keep track.
"Trans X" = "not X" where X = man or woman. Oppressively binary.
"For many young trans people, the question of having babies is likely the last thing on their minds. Who could blame them?"
It's easy to blame babies because they can't deny anything.
The androgynously cute naked mole rat can simply couple up, and boom - 25 to 30 children are born.
I'm interested in why the comments are so hostile. Normally this would be received fawningly by the typical NYT commenter.
Perhaps the article was linked on a Democrat rather than a Progressive forum: maybe Reddit, where despite being hyper-Progressive on economic issues, the young people remain unimpressed by the ever multiplying number of genders and sexual/asexual categorizations.
Maybe the Left has finally had enough?
Although that begs the question - why *here* but no further? Don't the Leftist realize that they'll be the demonized conservatives in a few years unless they adopt every vogueish new nomenclature?
Aother moment's reflection reminds me that we're all eating butter these days because we found out it's really better for us anyway. Hail Wisconsin.
Maybe there is hope for the future.
Interesting that there’s no photo of the couple in the article. Like they know they’re participating in a freak show but don’t it want shown with any clarity.
like something a loud, cheesy 1950s comic would say.
OR... BOOM what you do to me. Perry Como Circa 1956
We used to sing this song in the car while traveling in our 1950's station wagon on Route 66 from St Louis to LA. Didn't think about what the BOOM meant in the song then as kids. Just a fun song to sing. BOOM! Now it makes sense :-D
An exegesis on the meaning of Boom. The French have a word for it.
Dat boom is da bomb, baby!
The Cracker Emcee Rampant said...
Like they know they’re participating in a freak show but don’t it want shown with any clarity.
My theory, which is mine, is that the interest in people who have psycho-sexual problems which cause them to look weird is partially the result of closing down the real freak shows with pin-heads, midgets and lobster boys.
Tolerance is a virtue. But all things in moderation.
I draw a line when your self-chosen behavior is the source of your dysfunction. This problem has a simple and readily available solution.
The hostile Times comments are a reminder that their readers are statistically the most bourgeois of conservatives on matters of coupling and breeding.
Anything for love
Oh I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love
But I won't do that
No I won't do that
And some days, it don't come easy
And some days it don't come hard
Some days it don't come at all
And these are the days that never end
And some nights you're breathing fire
And some nights you're carved in ice
Some nights you're like nothing I've ever seen before
Or will again
Meat Loaf - I'd Do Anything For Love
I'm sure that I'm unconsciously bias, but I don't see that 2nd highest rated comment as hostile. It reads like a decent recap. I guess it is the use of binary gender assignments that is hostile? Yet it seems in terms of sex, which is what the topic is here; one is a male sex and the other a female sex, which is handy for human reproduction.
"O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!" Scott.
Grinder recently added another line in the "About Me" section. You can now self identify and there are like 10 different identities you can choose from. I chose not to self identify but many have and I have no idea what the labels mean.
My Grindr title is "Top Man Looking" with a pic of my body.
Writing about your own mental illness is so empowering.
The poor woman wasn't really a lesbian in the first place.
Quite a few get caught up in it as a fashion, justify it with some personal issue, some tragic thing like trouble with parents, fall into a rut, or ruts, but then nature eventually takes over.
De Blasio's wife for instance.
I've run into some cases, one a very pretty Irish girl I was dating thirty years ago, who was, she said, a lesbian, who had a long-established (from her college days) "girlfriend" at the time we were going out, whom she had gone on romantic trips with, but it was an "open relationship"... eh, it's a good thing I got lucky and my wife accepted my proposal, because that "lesbian" would have been no end of trouble. A real San Francisco "Tales of the City" situation.
Women are extremely vulnerable to group dynamics, even very intelligent ones.
Very sad to see that much failure happen from bad ideology. But the good news is that she/he can return to the Patriarchy anytime. She/he will be welcomed back with great joy over seeing another soul saved.
Millions of years of human evolution doesn’t mix well with poorly considered fades.
These weird social pathologies seem to be centered in big cities.
Many years ago, there was a Norway rat experiment. As the rat colony got more overcrowded, there was more and more homosexual behavior among the rats.
No judgement. Just an observation.
Buwaya,
Irish lasses are easily confused. They don’t like to give blow jobs so some think that makes them a lesbian. Their grandmothers usually disabuse them of the notion. They’ll them the joke: “Why is the Irish Bride always smiling so much and so happy on her wedding day? Because she’ll never have to give another blow job.”
Perhaps not everyone is really suited for parenthood. If you can't do it naturally, perhaps Nature is trying to tell you something.
How is the quoted comment "hostile", unless merely stating the true nature of things is now hostility?
In fact, truth is the more compassionate response. To live a life of falsehood and lies is not happiness, but ultimately is hellish.
When two things do not fit by their very nature, it is not a good result to try to jam them together with brute force, physically, mentally, emotionally, culturally or ideologically.
Modern times: Accept without questioning look or comment that a woman who has chosen a life of heterosexual sex is a practicing lesbian and that her heterosexual sex partner is a woman because he takes estrogen and removes his body hair.
Modern times are kind to only the most agile minds.
So Lara still has the wedding tackle? What does transitioning actually mean? I thought a man has the surgery and boom - he's a woman, but apparently that's not correct.
I had that thought too. And furthermore, if a woman is in a long term committed relationship with someone who has male genitalia, then how the hell is she a lesbian? Didn't Chaz Bono's lesbian girlfriend end up leaving the relationship after Chaz transitioned to male?
Why don't they just get a GoFund Me to get facial waxing?
I see a future child that will be better off in a single parent household--and adopted.
With Farm Animals they just rub together with love and poof another is born.
Leyla Shows How Farm Animals Copulate
"Modern times: Accept without questioning look or comment that a woman who has chosen a life of heterosexual sex is a practicing lesbian and that her heterosexual sex partner is a woman because he takes estrogen and removes his body hair."
But she's demanded that this person stop taking the estrogen.
I'm willing to believe that she's attracted to exactly what she has and that sexual preferences can be that specific.
But I'm willing to believe that mostly out of wanting to give people their privacy and their dignity. If I really want to look into what sexually attracts people, I will question all relationships. With any couple -- including all the heterosexual couples -- does every individual really feel sexually attracted to his or her partner?
For all I know, in half the cases or more, a person with a partner doesn't feel sexually attracted to that partner. You take those wedding vows -- "in sickness and in health, for better or for worse" -- and implicit in that is "when there's sexual attraction and when there isn't" -- and loyalty and decency keep you from telling other people about it.
It's a big, secret part of life for everyone -- so why not also for Spataro and her partner?
"And furthermore, if a woman is in a long term committed relationship with someone who has male genitalia, then how the hell is she a lesbian?"
I think the best answer is: She's a lesbian because she chooses to call herself a lesbian.
It's like with religion. We mostly accept that people are what they say they are. It's an acknowledgement of our respect for freedom of thought, freedom of conscience.
Now, we could say: You say you're a Christian, but I don't think you really are a Christian because, etc. etc. But that's pretty socially transgressive. You need a good reason to cross that line.
The comments at the NYT are surprisingly hostile.
No, no, they're not. Readership of the NYT is overwhelmingly self described liberals. But underneath the liberal veneer are real people. And reality is, the average real person feels revulsion towards so called "transpeople". In the comments section they can let their revulsion out anonymously, and they do. Ask them at a cocktail party where they're associating with others just like them and they'll gush over the braveness of such freaks.
"I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body" used to be a joke.
It still is.
I think the best answer is: She's a lesbian because she chooses to call herself a lesbian.
It's like with religion. We mostly accept that people are what they say they are. It's an acknowledgement of our respect for freedom of thought, freedom of conscience.
We used to respect truth as much as freedom of thought and freedom of conscience.
I'm a pretty easy going guy. Let your freak flag fly as long as no one else gets hurt.
But now we've reached the point where the freaks are demanding that I participate in and endorse their delusions, backed by the power of the state.
I think the best answer is: She's a lesbian because she chooses to call herself a lesbian.
So...if I decide to call myself a Jackalope then everyone is required to accept that I am a Jackalope and treat me like a Jackalope.
Fall into line and play along with MY fantasy? Wow. That gives me so much power.
So...if I decide to call myself a Jackalope then everyone is required to accept that I am a Jackalope and treat me like a Jackalope.
You should also be able to call upon the medical profession to chemically and surgically transform you into something that physically resembles a jackalope.
Now, we could say: You say you're a Christian, but I don't think you really are a Christian because, etc. etc. But that's pretty socially transgressive. You need a good reason to cross that line.
Reasons like:
Expectation that publicly funded schools should teach ideas that clearly contradict scientific fact because they are part of your belief system?
Expectation that doctors prescribe drugs to assist with the practice of your religion?
Engaging in behaviors that physically deform your body and bringing children into an environment where this is presented as normal?
Wouldn't these things cross the line if done by Christians or practitioners of some other religion?
“Why is the Irish Bride always smiling so much and so happy on her wedding day? Because she’ll never have to give another blow job.”
Last call at the bar, two Micks, well-sauced, talking about going home:
“My wife’s gonna kill me. She gives me hell no matter how quiet I am -- I coast into the driveway headlights off, softly open and close the front door, creep up the stairs in my stocking feet, and gently slip into bed, but she always wakes up and starts screaming at me.”
“That’s funny -- when I come home I screech into the driveway, slam the front door, stomp up the stairs, jump into bed, slap my wife on the ass and yell, 'How ‘bout a blowjob?' But she’s always fast asleep.”
How very convoluted. There are children still waiting to be adopted, aren’t there? Or would this couple be denied a child? On a positive note, their future child could be considered a contribution to the population, in a time when we are concerned about the declining population rate.
(Quotes from the NYT article.) "[It is] unrealistic to expect trans teenagers or even young trans adults to know whether they want to have their own children."
Yet we can be confident in their decision for "momentous, all-consuming" sex change surgery.
"These people can then find that permanent decisions, made early on, may have closed doors before they even knew they wanted to open them."
Sadly, all too true. This is why I find repugnant the hype and encouragement to achieve your imagined gender-du-jour.
You should also be able to call upon the medical profession to chemically and surgically transform you into something that physically resembles a jackalope.
What! No need to get all medical on me and tell me what to do with MY body. My body MY choice right?
I have some deer antlers from a halloween costume that I used when I was a barbarian princess warrior one year and a big fuzzy bunny tail from when I pretended to be a playboy bunny from a time when.....well.....um......none of your business :-D
I'll just dress up....CROSS dress as a Jackalope and that should be good enough for anyone. Put on the antlers and fuzzy tail and bunny hop all over the house. Cross dressing. That is my right too!!!! My husband will be confused, but that's HIS problem.
(this is fun)
"We mostly accept that people are what they say they are. It's an acknowledgement of our respect for freedom of thought, freedom of conscience."
The problem here is that we are social animals and we live in communal societies. Personal behavior is never simply personal. If #1 gets away with doing y, then #2 is influenced to do y as well, or maybe #2 will decide that x is acceptable also, seeing as y seems to be OK. Get enough people doing y or x or z, then these become fashionable and it becomes a wave of hundreds of thousands.
If x, y, and z are pernicious, such as drug addiction or divorce or abortion or homosexuality, the collective effect can be disastrous. I have known quite a few in San Francisco that are effectively the last of their kind, the last of their clans, talented people, childless heirs to large fortunes sometimes, because they and the couple of generations before them have failed to produce viable descendants. This sort of person, and not just homosexuals, seem to congregate in places like San Francisco, or so it was historically.
It is a tragic thing to see. These may be triumphs of personal autonomy, of "freedom", according to one point of view, but they are collective failures.
If the cause of these mounting failures to show up for the future is a fashion, a meme, a fatuous "keep up with the auto-exterminating Joneses", then its even more tragic. Dying in a plague or famine or war or natural disaster is one thing - but dying out due to a mind-plague is worse.
And I do congratulate the woman - she has at least learned to struggle against the plague with which she was afflicted. She may succeed, and I hope she does.
Why was she on the Pill, If the injections her fiancee were taking rendered her fiancee's sperm infertile?
We all know the Pill alter one's view of who are attracted to, and a woman's pheromones get back into normal.
Can't make anything BOOM if you don't really like the person.
I think the piece is interesting. It's a recounting of an experience that wouldn't even have occurred to me, and that's always valuable.
Personal behavior is never simply personal.
Indeed, the personal is political, at least according to screeching Leninists and radical feminists.
Ken B @ 8:31 'About cisgender. Would you object to “blonde blogger Ann Althouse”?'
Would that be "cis blonde blogger?"
Would that be "cis blonde blogger?"
Althouse was not cis blonde, but transitioned.
The use of "boom" as a slang term is not innately sexual. It is used to show various things coming together and producing a certain outcome, similar to a chemical formula producing an energetic result. There is a bit of an assumption that the outcome is inevitable if everything is in place. "Bob puts down the seed money, Chris bakes the cookies, Dan figures out the logistics and BOOM we are all rich."
Of course, the usage does fit sex very well on multiple levels.
Let's hear it for the lowly splooge stooge.
'A lot of the comments express hostility to the term "cisgender."'
That's because there is already a term for people like that. We're called heterosexuals. It's also because the trans activist community frequently uses it as a slur.
I think the best answer is: She's a lesbian because she chooses to call herself a lesbian.
Which necessarily means that homosexuality is a subjective choice, either in thought, action or lifestyle, and not something that is innate or otherwise a part of objective human nature.
There are certain things you can't say publicly that you can say in the anonymity of a comments section. I think in the case at hand, you are seeing that distinction played out. I think most people truly think the couple in the article deserve no sympathy- their problem is purely self-inflicted. The comments reflect my attitude which is I don't give a shit. That probably seems harsh, but isn't going to be a minority position even with liberals.
I think the best answer is: She's a lesbian because she chooses to call herself a lesbian.
les·bi·an
[ˈlezbēən]
NOUN
a homosexual woman.
ho·mo·sex·u·al
[ˌhōməˈsekSH(o͞o)əl]
ADJECTIVE
(of a person) sexually attracted to people of one's own sex.
Nothing about what you call yourself there.
As for challenging somebody on their Christianity, if they deny that Christ is the Son of God who died for the sins of the world, and was physically resurrected and ascended into heaven, then yeah, I'm going to say nope, not a Christian.
On the topic of language, I'll just say I hate the vogue use of the interjection "boom" (as in "They simply couple up, and boom — a child is born").
Guess that means Althouse isn't a Mark Knopfler fan.
I have no problem with calling her a lesbian if she wants to be called a lesbian. I respect her choice. I am less happy that she does not respect my choice. I do not choose to be called cis. She calls me cis, worse, she insists I call myself cis. How socially transgressive is that?
Even Before they decided to try to get her preggers, She'd been letting that disgusting GUY put his thing in her THE WHOLE TIME!!!
You don't know that. She's probably the top, and he's the bottom.
"Indeed, the personal is political"
It is actually.
You will find conservatives, traditionalists saying exactly this.
It was a new left argument, but that doesn't mean it was wrong.
Confucius puts it all most clearly.
The real target of the new left on this and most other things, was not conservatism but liberalism. Conservatism was considered de trop.
Language is either a mind-plague in itself or a mode of transmission for them.
This is one of the more common tools of the Devil.
Great post, DBQ @11:28. I'm trying to picture you jackaloping off to a party. I was often a gypsy at Halloween, a practice that would raise the hackles of cultural appropriation hawks today but it may have foreshadowed my future lifestyle.
Regarding so-called "transition" surgery, custom options for re-plumbing are available for those souls wishing both penis and vagina.
https://journals.lww.com/plasreconsurg/Abstract/2017/10000/Phalloplasty_with_Urethral_Lengthening___Addition.14.aspx
Be all you can be. And somebody else too. Maybe several somebodies.
Who is paying for all this surgery and hormonal and mental therapy?
I'm trying to picture you jackaloping off to a party.
Jackaloping off sounds like a method of masturbation involving a pogo stick.
"For many young trans people, the question of having babies is likely the last thing on their minds. Who could blame them? Like all young people, they’re figuring out their future."
Perfect time to have a child. What could go wrong.
Some day in the future it will cool to be a heterosexual couple have several children. And unusual.
http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/01/the-crazy-years-and-their-empty-moral-vocabulary/
"The great and dire events of the early Twentieth Century no doubt confirmed Korzybski in the rightness of this theory. Nothing prevents a race of people from contracting and fomenting a false-to-facts belief: the fantasies of the Nazi Germans, pseudo-biology and pseudo-economics combined with the romance of neo-paganism, stirred the psyche of the German people for quite understandable reasons. From the point of view of General Semantics, the Germans had divorced their symbols from reality, they mistook metaphors for truth, and their emotions adapted to and reinforced the prevailing narrative. They told themselves stories about Wotan and the Blood, about being betrayed during the Great War, about needing room to live, about the wickedness of Jewish bankers and shopkeepers, about the origin of the wealth of nations—and they went crazy."
The angriest comments at the NYT are from lesbians. She's giving lesbianism a bad name by loving a man who just looks like a woman.
There is gender: masculine and feminine, physical and mental traits, corresponding to the male and female sex, respectively, and transgender, including: homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites, neo-sexuals, etc. The #NoLabels organizations went with the diversity angle and profit from normalizing and dividing people in accordance with #TooManyLabels. The same thing happened with #LoveWinsAndLoses, which favored a politically favorable congruence ("="), over equal rights.
The transgender spectrum does not offer sufficient cause to reject it. Its various genders ("orientations") offer no redeeming value to humanity. The consistent solution to address the spectrum as a whole and not piecemeal ("=") is to tolerate the individuals and their choices.
There are some lesbians who use fake penises, in fact there's quite an advanced product market for fake penises. So I can see how a lesbian might rationalize having heterosexual sex with a transwoman. But the concept goes against the clear party line that has been presented to brainwash people and imo comes across as a major head trip more than a gender identity issue.
I think if more people knew how many transpeople detransition, or go back and forth about their identity, the whole political support structure might collapse. That's why you don't read many stories about it. We hear a lot about people who are sure from a young age they are in the "wrong" body. You don't see or hear about the people and couples who go from being lesbians to trans, or gays who are sure they are women until the last moment before bottom surgery. If you say anything you will be attacked as "anti-gay" or "anti-trans." IOW you're a bigot.
I feel compassion for the individuals involved. The only disgust I feel is towards the LGBTQ and left wing politicos who get vicious towards anyone who questions or goes against the party line.
"It's like with religion. We mostly accept that people are what they say they are. It's an acknowledgement of our respect for freedom of thought, freedom of conscience."
Mostly but not always. And even that is only publicly. Internally, we might not accept most of what most people say. And certainly we wouldn't even publicly if the person seemed to have no interest in his professed religion or said things in complete opposition to it. (For example, if a man said he were a Christian and said he had never repented of anything, we wouldn't be surprised to hear people say that he did not seem to be a Christian.)
And yes, in person-to-person relations, we should be polite, and yes, all people deserve dignity. But none of that precludes commenting generally on the meaning of words and their modern usage when these topics come up in the news.
The idea that words have no meaning, that they mean whatever we want at any time, seems rather dangerous. Certainly there could be no law that way.
And again, I think it would be absurd to really accept that people are what they say they are despite whatever evidence exists, even if those people are ourselves. Most of us think all kinds of inaccurate things about ourselves.
"Over the last several months, I’ve spent evenings watching my fiancée, Lara, ...."
Some might think it irresponsible and self-centered to create and bring a child into the world without first establishing a committed parental arrangement.
The comments at the NYT are surprisingly hostile.
A lot of the comments express hostility to the term "cisgender."
The "hostility" you're seeing is just good obedient progs running up against something that they know is dysfunctional/pathological on both the personal and social levels, but who are too far gone down the obedient prog garden path to any longer have the moral/basic philosophical vocabulary to express their dissent. They might be able to begin to sort things out if they could own to themselves that "whoa, this is all fucked-up, these people are all fucked-up, there's something wrong here." But they can't.
That sort of existential and intellectual frustration would make anybody cranky.
Your responses @10:36 and @10:39 are marvels of refusal to acknowledge that there's any kind of social or personal pathology at play here, instead attempting to force it the old familiar frame of "respecting other people's choices/thought/conscience" - "well, it's just like freedom of religion, blah blah blah":
It's like with religion. We mostly accept that people are what they say they are. It's an acknowledgement of our respect for freedom of thought, freedom of conscience.
Now, we could say: You say you're a Christian, but I don't think you really are a Christian because, etc. etc. But that's pretty socially transgressive. You need a good reason to cross that line."
But this is nonsense. People cross that line all the time, and reject other people's claims. Lol, you yourself have very rigid ideas about what real Christians think or do about this or that. It's easy to multiply these examples of "label rejection" re religion. But this "label rejection" doesn't end in anything but eye-rolling, or butthurt and acrimony at worst, certainly not in people filing lawsuits or being quality-of-life destroying pains-in-the-butt about other people for not accepting their self-labeling. Because people think that those differences in "what constitutes a real Christian" are philosophical or moral errors, not pathologies.
You will find conservatives, traditionalists saying exactly this.
Leninists, shrieking radical feminists, and religious conservatives — I always sensed they had something in common but couldn’t put my finger on it.
They simply couple up, and boom — a child is born.
Normal people are the pesky redskins of the 21st century.
" I always sensed they had something in common but couldn’t put my finger on it."
None are liberals. There are whole worlds that are not liberal. But yet they are not the same.
"You don't know that. She's probably the top, and he's the bottom."
Happy International Women's Day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mVqiYOLZAI
I liked this comment - she sounds like a Jewish granny - OK a lesbian Jewish granny, but still:
Iris - Europe - April 24
I'm a lesbian, and I can't have the option of taking off hormones and having biological children with the woman I love. Two females cannot do it, unlike a female with male using female pronoun, while maintaining male organ and the reproductive benefits that can with it...
I wish these people to realize their dream, but trying to portrait this as lesbian couple experience, it's ridiculous and offensive.
Two opposite sex people performing a reproductive act, such a novelty!
Notice how we never read follow ups of this kind of article?
"Notice how we never read follow ups of this kind of article?"
I was a fan of Paul Harvey "The Rest of the Story"
Why would I not be surprised if these hormone-injectors abjure buying GMO food?
"CStanley said...
"So...if I decide to call myself a Jackalope then everyone is required to accept that I am a Jackalope and treat me like a Jackalope.
"You should also be able to call upon the medical profession to chemically and surgically transform you into something that physically resembles a jackalope."
Why not a jackalope? It's been done with snakes, zebras, etc.:
https://www.tattoodo.com/a/2015/11/6-people-who-turned-themselves-into-animals-through-body-modifications/
I expect that people will be turning themselves (or their kids) into things like (human brained) “jackalopes,” Siberian tigers, etc., et al., within a few decades. Via genetic engineering, don’t’cha know.
Much sooner than that, it’s highly likely going to be practical for “cis-women” to produce their own (genetic heritage) sperm, and “cis-men” their own (genetic heritage) eggs. The stem cells that can accomplish this are already known.
Over the last decade I knew a woman named Sharon who was in much this same situation: she’d long ago decided she was lesbian, but then ended up in a long lasting partner/marriage relationship with a male transvestite: a (pre-op) “trans woman.” I ended up chatting with her a number of times — and it was fascinating to me how much she fretted over how her “unconventional” personal gender situation together with relationship was perceived by people (this in ultra-liberal Santa Cruz County south of San Francisco!) — yet she was basically just a woman in a long-standing sexual relationship/partnership with a man. It’s very strange the knots people’s minds can twist themselves into.
She had a beautiful voice, which she would occasionally use to sing uplifting Christian songs at homeless soup-luncheons and the like. I heard recently though that she had died, don’t know what for. Sad.
Why are you surprised at the negativity of the NYT's comments? The author doesn't say the nasty 6-letter N word, but it's lurking in the background all the same - Normal. This pair is trying to conceive a child in the normal fashion of all mammals, male having sex with female. Except the female claims she isn't sexually attracted to males despite wishing to have traditional sex to conceive a child and the male claims he's a female despite having a penis and attempting to do what males do to have children.
That's why the comments are so negative - traditional-minded people see two people very confused about their identities reaching toward what nature intends. The identity politics people see two people claiming alternative identities yet going against type due to something both want. That suggests not a little that their lifestyles are choices rather than fixed identities and that they can be set aside in the pursuit of a goal.
What would really make heads explode is if the male in this situation decided to go back to a male identity as a result of this experience.
Cisgender is intentionally designed to be a slur, Ann. Why shouldn't people be offended when people are trying to offend them?
No need to attend a carnival nowadays to watch a freak show.
As a cisgender (my book — normal, but then potatoe potahto WTF) couple we too had to go through the estrogen and then IVF route. Ended up adopting. Never did it occur to us to whine. Then maybe a cis-whine is quieter than a trans one.
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