If I see a transwoman (so a guy who dresses as a girl), I sometimes feel pity for them. If they feel like they want to be a girl, being in a guys body is a big setback to that!
But if I see a transman, as a guy, I'm offended that they're trying to present themselves as MY GENDER. They don't have a right to pretend to be a man as far as I'm concerned.
Is that "transphobic?" Or just an instinctual reaction to an imposter?
Yes, that is transphobic. You should not be offended by trans people, male or female. They are not pretending to be anything and they do have the right to be who they are. Being offended by trans people is just as bad being offended by gay people or black people or any other group. It is bigotry.
shareWith as much respect as I can muster, Allaby, that is utter BS!!
"A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. The phobia typically results in a rapid onset of fear and is present for more than six months."
ITN simply said that he was offended by transexual women. He didn't say he shat his pants when he saw one, or ran away screaming and hid from them trembling in a corner.
Personally, I'm offended by people who offer themselves as authorities on social phenomena and insult people by applying bogus labels.
No, it is not BS. It is the correct definition of the word and it is being applied properly. If a white person said they were offended by the existence of black people, we would consider them racist. If someone is offended by gay people, they would be considered homophobic. It doesn't mean that they run away screaming. It means they are prejudiced against them. Being prejudiced against someone because of their race is called racism. Being prejudiced against someone because they are transgender is being transphobic.
shareWell thanks for the lesson, professor, but you're still just picking words out of the hat and using them incorrectly. Phobic does mean persistent and excessive fear. A phobia is an anxiety disorder. That's been the definition of the word since the time of Sigmund Freud. It's only relatively recently, when certain groups are trying to find ways to fend off the natural criticism of society at large, that the word has been appropriated and redefined to suit the aims of those groups.
They've chosen "Phobic" because of its connotations with mental disease. They've found that it's much more effective to accuse people of being mentally ill, than to merely accuse them of bad manners.
The meaning of words can change over time. Words can also mean more than one thing, depending on the context and how they are used.
From Wikipedia:
"Transphobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes, feelings or actions toward transgender or transsexual people, or toward transsexuality. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence, anger, or discomfort felt or expressed towards people who do not conform to society's gender expectation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transphobia
You may not like the definition of the word, but transphobic is a real word and I used it correctly.
If the meaning of words changes over time, what are psychiatrists in future going to call a patient who presents with a genuine crippling, chronic fear that is provoked by a particular object, place, or person? Are they now required, because of your agenda, to misdiagnose the patient by telling him his problem is merely caused by his personal aversion to the demeanour of specific people? Are they going to decline to examine the patient's history, background, and trauma experiences, and just tell him he's bigoted? Do they now have to rewrite the text books, just because people with a self-serving agenda misused a well-known psychiatric term just to avoid the consequences of their behaviour? If someone openly insults and criticises another person who then says he is offended by that behaviour, can he be accused of being "violent" or "fearful". Ridiculous.
Generally speaking, psychiatric terms usually have only one meaning, because of the risk inherent in vague diagnoses. A disease may display differing symptoms, but the fundamental definition of the term tends to remain fairly constant among the psychiatric profession. Schizophrenia, for example, is a mental disorder which negatively affects a person's interaction with reality. Drunkenness affects it similarly, but we don't try to cure alcoholics by saying they're schizophrenic, because that would be neither true nor helpful.
But I can see I'm talking to a person who can't change his mind to educate himself, but can change his words to justify himself.
i see your point, and basically agree. language is often weaponized to effect a social agenda. nothing actually new there. nevertheless, language appropriation, like other successfully executed appropriations, tend to be 'sticky'.
in this case, however, perhaps the imprecision of the term transphobic, to reinforce or simply enforce tolerance of non-binary gender identifications, is worth the distortion. at any rate, it's not likely to be rolled back.
but there is no question the connotation of phobia is, in an objective sense, overwrought when applied to people who are uncomfortable with gender non-conforming identities. this hasn't been out in the open for very long, and many people are resistant to the significant changes in attitude now in force in the new zeitgeist of sexual tolerance on the broad front.
the basic evaluation is that we are living in an era of little tolerance for 'intolerance', as currently defined.
i believe the brutality/speed of such changes is one reason so many react negatively to progress in general. they were shocked by the changes, castigated for their inflexibility to immediately adapt to the changes, and we are living with the reaction, in part, reflected in our political/cultural divide.
Thanks, Riley. I'll just reply to your points one by one:
"the imprecision of the term transphobic ... is worth the distortion."
Do you mean that the misuse of established psychiatric terms is justified if it serves the demands of a select group? Nobody except those groups would agree with that. Much as I'm reluctant to bring up the "nazi" connotation, it applies here.
"We are living in an era of little tolerance for 'intolerance."
That's a catchy phrase, Riley, but what it really means is, "We live in an era of little tolerance for diverse opinions." And that's the very epitome of irony because these minority groups depend on tolerance of their "different" mindset to survive!
"the significant changes in attitude now in force... "
Your choice of words there is significant. In a genuinely free society, attitudes can't, and shouldn't, be forced.
"the brutality/speed of such changes is one reason so many react negatively to progress in general."
Or maybe it's because those changes weren't seen as "progress" at all. You're not giving society the benefit of crediting it with common sense. The people who react negatively aren't all ultra-conservative elderly folk who dislike sudden change. There's a silent majority, and it's a majority because it consists of everybody outside these minority groups, and that's a lot of people. And their reactions to the enforced "changes of attitude" are provoked, not by its abruptness, but by their awareness that it's all a nonsense.
I often wonder why the subject of professional psychiatric treatment for these folks is never pressed in discussions about it. Trained psychiatrists or psychologists would surely be the most tolerant and understanding people possible, for folks with these problems.
One of the best comments I've read here.
shareAre you trying to convince him that homophobia is like a mental disease of people who run away screaming when they see an homosexual?
I'm trying to point out that adding the suffix "phobia" to a word confers on it the status of a mental disorder, and thus it should not be added to words that mean simply "aversion" or "dislike". Many people are puzzled and repelled by the concept of homosexuality and are put off by the behaviour of some homosexuals. They are not affected to the degree of being mentally disturbed by it.
To say that people who are repelled by homosexuals are "homophobic" is like saying people who hate getting caught in the rain are hydrophobic. Or that people who prefer cats to dogs are cynophobic.
But that is a popular tactic of minority groups today. They know that the only way they can escape the perfectly natural negative vibes that they get from society at large is to desperately assert that those negative vibes are the result of society's pathological fear. They know that nobody likes to called fearful, and that people will generally modify their outward behaviour if they believe that it gives the impression of fearfulness. So they start the myth that the dislike of homosexuality is actually a pathological condition suffered by society.
This tactic works. Society accepts this lie, and many non-homosexual people even go so far as to repeat the lie to anyone who questions it. Hence discussions like this one.
They are not pretending to be anything and they do have the right to be who they are.
I know a lot of feminists who despise transexuals and I suspect it is because the trans women look better than these out of shape, hairy feminists do. The pure venom in some of their attacks on trans women suggest jealousy.
shareYour post suggests stupidity...
shareI know a lot of closeted males who like to convince themselves that they're not really gay by seeking out stereotypical Barbie transwomen. The logic is that sucking off a transwoman and engaging in anal sex can't make them gay because the man they're sucking off looks like a woman.
Also, transwomen are a sexual fetish. I suspect that it's the large amount of tranny porn that is why the transwomen's biggest allies are straight men: https://www.bing.com/search?q=tranny+porn&form=OPRTSD&pc=OPER
Another major ally are Incels and MRAs. This is why you immediately started ranting about feminists without even me mentioning feminism. You're a misogynist who couldn't care less about LGBT issues. You're just latched onto this whole issue to attack women.
Lastly, a hairy, out of shape feminist could never be jealous of a transwomen. They can have children. A man dressing up like a Barbie can't. A feminist doesn't have to spend three hours a day (yes, three hours) with a dildo to keep her vagina from closing up. A post op transsexual does: https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/2uytmr/i_want_to_stop_dilating/
This is what you trans activist trolls keep failing to understand. If you had enough familiarity with women, you'd know that what defines a woman is biology, not appearance. It's why a feminist could never be jealous of a man who has to tape his penis between his legs or go through painful surgery, time consuming hormonal injections or dilate himself three hours a day with dildo. Because a woman is the real thing, a feminist doesn't have to WORK at affirming her gender. A transgender woman does.
Got to love the ad-hominem. Everyone who points out feminist drivel must be misogynist. Got it, you misandrist.
shareA lot of women are offended and threatened by trans women as well. Feminists feel like these men are "cheating" by switching genders so they can jump on board the woman gravy train.
I can't think of any advantages a woman would have by becoming male.
I honestly don't give a shit about the phobia thing. Phobia means fear. I do not fear trans people. I do not fear homosexuals, or to be more accurate, men, as homo means the same. I do not fear Islam.. oh hang on, I think there is good reason to fear Islam..
Apparently lesbians have a HUGE problem with transfemales who then turn around and say 'I'm a lesbian, accept me.' They're like "we actually like REAL women not dudes in dresses!" LMAO, it's a head spin!
shareIt amuses me because these Lesbian's tend to be part of the larger group of people who claim to be "tolerant"!!
shareI can't think of any advantages a woman would have by becoming male.
If you treat them fairly, I don't see how that's transphobic. For example: if a white guy had surgery to look black and said he identified as black, I would think it's ignorant on his part. You're not black. You can't just say I feel that way and expect everyone to be okay with it. I would still great them as a regular human.
shareI don't see why people can't be what they are. What they are born. If they were born male but feel like they are female then just live as an effeminate type of male. That's what people used to do. Why turn an unfortunate situation into a disaster by having surgery to transform themselves into a travesty? The same thing applies to women who feel male.
And as for this latest fad of gender reassignment for pre-teens it is utter madness. All of this gender reassignment stuff should be restricted to medical cases where someone has been born with both male and female genitalia. The rest of it should be banned.
Exactly.
When I was a kid, people were allowed to be effeminate males and butch females. And people were allowed to be cross dressers, too. We called them transvestites and transsexuals.
Transgenderism is a mythological condition designed to wipe away categories of people who used to be recognized as being one gender yet dressing as the opposite. It's a DENIAL of gender non-conformity, not an acceptance of it. Today, someone like Eddie Izzard would no longer be allowed to be a transvestite. Dee Snyder or Boy George would no longer be able to just be guys who were into makeup and femmy clothing. They would just be called transgender.
For example, in the FOX remake of Rocky Horror Picture Show, the show had to cast a transgender as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Why? He was a transvestite/transsexual. But it's like, there's so little tolerance for this idea that a guy can accept himself as a guy and yet still want to wear garters and lingerie that they had to make him transgender. They had to, in other words, completely erase the character of maleness, so that he looked exactly like a woman.
I don't care.
The gender fluid/non binary ones make me roll my eyes a bit.
Don't we all have our feminine and masculine sides? You don't feel totally masculine or feminine so you're going to make up a new gender and pronouns?
Get over yourself.
I don't know that much about "gender fluidity". But I've seen some of those people on youtube videos and they all seem to share one trait- outright hostility. That is, if you don't use one of the fifty different pronouns they use to identify themselves. Call yourself whatever you want. But don't expect me to buy into your delusions. Get psychiatric help.
And as a female, I know I have NEVER had a "masculine side." I may be confused about some things and I once changed political parties. But I am a woman. Why should I have to apologize for feeling like one all the time, even when I wear pants?
sut6432- I don't know if the whole human race is doomed, but a lot of it is sure messed up!
"fifty different pronouns" - I think you'll find they're up to 73 now (how are you meant to keep up?).
shareMy biggest issue with these people is that they're dumbing down language and thought using Orwellianism. Once any person or group resorts to the cynical manipulation of language, that's when I see them as a threat and push back.
For example, Merriam Webster is one of the most esteemed dictionaries in the United States. It decided this year to include "they" and "them" as a pronoun for transgenders: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/461755-merriam-webster-adds-they-as-nonbinary-pronoun.
How can one person be a "they"? This is not grammatically correct, but now a dictionary has sanctioned grammatical error that not even a first grader would make as being correct and almost no one has ever used except for bloggers and a few misguided journalists. I will never accept this, because this is textbook definition of Orwellianism--i.e.,cynically shifting language to manipulate reality. It's evil and wrong no matter who uses this tactic, whether we're talking about the Left or the Right.
How can one person be a "they"?
Multiple personalities?
True. I also hate when doctors classify them with having gender dysphoria, but when you say they have a mental illness, they get offended. That's like saying Spielberg is a movie director and getting mad at the term "filmmaker".
shareIdiots offend me about the same amount as bigots.
share