From: Mr Lasastryke | #299 As I said before, many people don't view transgendered individuals as more then a lifestyle choice, and hence they feel it is acceptable to discriminate against people that chose their lifestyle as opposed to being unable to choose their race.
I was asking what you think about this, not "many people".
I try to keep my personal feelings outside of arguments such as this because I don't fool myself into thinking I know enough about the world and the situation to have a full grasp of the issues. If it comes down to the question "Do you think transexuals should be allowed in beauty pageants?" I would respond with a solid I don't know.
What I do think though, is that the pageants should have the freedom to choose whatever criteria they wish in choosing who can compete. If people don't like that criteria then they can be vocal against the pageant and try to pressure them to change economically or in whatever ways they deem fit.
The thing is, this isn't health care or education or even a job. It's a beauty pageant.
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From: DeepsPraw | #300 What they think doesn't matter
It certainly does when the object of your organization is to make money and promote women, both of which are highly dependent on what people think about you. You aren't going to shoot your organization in the foot for a cause.
They already have the freedom to "discriminate" against men even if they may look the part or be transgendered. If your sex is male, they just flat out don't allow you in a female only beauty pageant, regardless of gender.
I don't see the point in complaining because what I've seen as the viewpoints generally include at least one of:
1. It's discrimination and should be open to everybody, including men. To avoid a double standard, any sort of TG/TS thing should be open to everyone too. This seems a bit over the top in PC to me, as it's already something of vain showmanship that "discriminates" against those who are less attractive in a specific way, how that can be upheld yet you can't bring up whether they're male or female feels like either too much or too little.
2. That transexuals are the same as transgendered people, but only if a costly surgery is involved, and that transexuals are more legitimized than transgendered people. Can someone give details on this or the surgery transexuals have and to what degree it actually changes their biological sex? I can't shake that this doesn't truly change your sex but rather imitates it on a superficial level and is rather costly as well as something uncomfortable enough that it should not be pressured upon a person to do it to legitimize their gender.
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The reason this entire story exists is to raise awareness towards discrimination faced by transgendered individuals.
no, the reason this story exists is for people to express how offended they are about a decision made by a pageant that they never watch and never will watch. like when subsections of feminists or religious women complain about porn. I disagree with the decision personally but I also do not care about beauty pageants at all. I recognize that I'm not the intended audience and think they should be free to discriminate using whatever criteria they want because the are a private organization that presumably receives no federal funding and what they do has no direct impact on me.
I know that I don't like it when women want to ban porn or when old people express their disapproval of violent video games, or people who don't give a crap about the FG community start criticizing it for being sexist, so I choose to stay out of this and let the intended audience sort it out. which I assume will happen over time, on it's own, assuming that the country in general becomes more accepting over time. given our curve of gay rights, I think that's likely.
I recognize that I'm not the intended audience and think they should be free to discriminate using whatever criteria they want because the are a private organization that presumably receives no federal funding and what they do has no direct impact on me.
So you'd be fine with them refusing to let black women enter?
KJH posted... I can't shake that this doesn't truly change your sex but rather imitates it on a superficial level and is rather costly as well as something uncomfortable enough that it should not be pressured upon a person to do it to legitimize their gender.
scotted4 posted... KJH posted... I can't shake that this doesn't truly change your sex but rather imitates it on a superficial level and is rather costly as well as something uncomfortable enough that it should not be pressured upon a person to do it to legitimize their gender.
This exactly IMO.
That's because it's currently medically impossible to change your sex 100%. Also, you seem to be under the impression that transgendered individuals are somehow pressured into a sex change which is completely false. It's entirely their own decision, and they all feel much better about themselves when they "get their new body"
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yup. and if their audience thinks that makes them racist and leads them to boycott the show, the free market is working!
The problem with this logic is that you let people suffer to come to a solution of the problem, in this case by being discriminated.
This is always the problem with "let the free market correct itself" logic. It's comparable to how advocates of the free market think every employer should be allowed to fire all their employees overnight for no reason at all. "If an employer does this, their company will go bankrupt and the free market will have corrected itself once again!" Marvelous, too bad all the former employees have died of starvation in the meantime.
From: Mr Lasastryke | #310 yup. and if their audience thinks that makes them racist and leads them to boycott the show, the free market is working!
The problem with this logic is that you let people suffer to come to a solution of the problem, in this case by being discriminated.
This is always the problem with "let the free market correct itself" logic. It's comparable to how advocates of the free market think every employer should be allowed to fire all their employees overnight for no reason at all. "If an employer does this, their company will go bankrupt and the free market will have corrected itself once again!" Marvelous, too bad all the former employees have died of starvation in the meantime.
Better then the alternative of forcing all companies to do things which are detrimental to them when only a few would do something stupid IMHO
KJH posted... I don't see the point in complaining because what I've seen as the viewpoints generally include at least one of:
1. It's discrimination and should be open to everybody, including men. To avoid a double standard, any sort of TG/TS thing should be open to everyone too. This seems a bit over the top in PC to me, as it's already something of vain showmanship that "discriminates" against those who are less attractive in a specific way, how that can be upheld yet you can't bring up whether they're male or female feels like either too much or too little.
I'm fine with excluding men.
There's a huge difference between excluding 50% of the population, and excluding 1% of the population.
ESPECIALLY when said 1% of the population already tends to suffer discrimination in all walks of life from housing to employment to promotions.
KJH posted... 2. That transexuals are the same as transgendered people, but only if a costly surgery is involved, and that transexuals are more legitimized than transgendered people. Can someone give details on this or the surgery transexuals have and to what degree it actually changes their biological sex? I can't shake that this doesn't truly change your sex but rather imitates it on a superficial level and is rather costly as well as something uncomfortable enough that it should not be pressured upon a person to do it to legitimize their gender.
She's Canadian. Canadians have free health care--the government pays for surgeries, and is careful not to be discriminatory (if a doctor says someone needs surgery, they get surgery. It's not like the USA where the insurance can disagree with the doctor and force the patient to pay out of pocket).
As for the level of biological sex...I've only really got anecdotes. I've heard stories of friends of friends who will do things like have a one-night-stand and not have their intercourse partner realize. I've heard stories of doctors not being able to tell. On the other hand, it's not like you can change people's DNA, so a chromosomal test would in some cases turn out results. And then there's the brain--also body tissue, which doesn't need surgery at all because it was already born aligned to the chosen sex. And then there's hormones, which don't require surgery at all to change.
Once there, I...still don't have a strong definition, in fact, reading that wikipedia article, it sounds like the sex/gender distinction is something used more in Feminist Theory and English Literature than actual hard science. Hard science will happily use the word gender to refer to "biological sex".
So................basically, everyone acting like they're standing on a foundation of science when they talk about "biological sex" is actually standing on a pile of BSing by feminist writers which doesn't actually necessarily have a clear definition, and sounds like it was made up to legitimize butch/femme behavior. The people who came up with it in the 70s probably weren't aware of "sex change operations" at all, or how they might mess with the model.
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hard science or literature in general will happily use it because it was only recently where the divide started being understood. for the most part, and for most people, they mean the same. then people started saying they're different and eventually got to where we are now. you ask a person 10 years ago what the difference is, they wouldn't be able to tell you. ask 'em today, they STILL won't be able to tell you but you at least may run into the odd one out who does. however social science will try to differentiate them when the subject's at hand (if it ain't then well it'll probably still mean the same). and it's becoming understood that there's an entirely different thing being talked about. though you'll find a lot of people still use 'em interchangably because really it's rare that you won't, and most find them to be synonyms. when you get to people saying they're something else however, you're starting a divide.
nevermind that you're drawing that conclusion by a series of wikipedia links linking to each other which i gotta say, is a first. maybe, just maybe, the fact that they've meant and still mean the same for a good 99% of the time means that yes, they'll be linked to each other because they're obviously connected. connection doesn't make 'em the same. such is language. or maybe, just maybe, you somehow missed clicking on sex in the gender page which brings you to here:
and who knows how many other links that aren't the angle you're shooting for there, or who break things down into basically saying 'so yeah the way the split is now says that gender is a mess.' again, you're overcomplicating it. the entire point of sex as a term is that it's simple, straightforward, and easy to classify based on observation from the self, others, and your biology. you might as well be asking 'what's black' or something.
but trying to argue the point off of 'this is what wikipedia links me to!' is dumb. i don't even get why the distinction would bother you as regardless of how it came to be its a generally understood social term used to separate itself from the biological one.
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I read the first couple of lines of that article, and concluded it was talking about sex as a process of reproduction. So...sure, I missed this line, my bad:
"An organism's sex is defined by the gametes it produces: males produce male gametes (spermatozoa, or sperm) while females produce female gametes (ova, or egg cells); individual organisms which produce both male and female gametes are termed hermaphroditic."
So...I suppose that would make transsexuals "none of the above"? But then, there are people born infertile or with a mix of genetalia, say, with a vagina and testes (and that particular mix tends to legally get classified as female, because it's much easier to check for a vagina than to check for unusual ovaries. Under the gametic schema it would be male). What about women who are menopausal, and thus no longer produce gametes--do they no longer have gametic sex? For that matter, if you believe the studies that claim that women are born with the total number of eggs they will ever have, since they don't produce new gametes after birth do they cease having a gender?
I certainly remember having discussions like this with Biology professors (vaguely--I haven't done a biology course in about 15 years). But...it does show that the gametic definition is pretty damn useless for social purposes.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
OmarsComin posted... no, the reason this story exists is for people to express how offended they are about a decision made by a pageant that they never watch and never will watch.
This news story was on the front page of Yahoo. It's not like it's limited to LGBT sites and GameFAQs.
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because it seems pretty clear from reading the most replied comments (and checking to see which of those have a lot of thumbs up) that most of the population is not bothered by this. yeah major news places will pick it up, and the response has been "fair. next." the only places where this is getting any real discussion and the places where this actually matters to people are places that were never going to be targeted as beauty pageant audiences.
ok. so what does that have to do with what you said before? are you just trying to communicate your general disdain for this decision and so arguing anything related to it? we got the message.
Yeah, sex can get really weird and if you want to break it down a lot is certainly doable, but is honestly not worth it. Thus we go with the simpler innie or outie for female, male. At least that one gets you to a close enough to know their sex without overcomplicating it. That's why it's fair to call her female in just about every way now. Just that if they care for your sex period, including what it was when you were born, there's the rub.
But yeah for the promotion as it stands, until guys are okay in overwhelming numbers to consider her current status as the answer to whether she should join or not, you won't get anywhere. Think that's a given though. You would need to change the thought process from born male, now female to either born female with male genitalia, born doesn't matter, or I dunno what else. Still all tied to the sex there.
Just that the former ain't happening anytime soon because what we have is simple and works. The latter is more social progress, but you're asking a would you hit it contest for that so uh...
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
because it seems pretty clear from reading the most replied comments (and checking to see which of those have a lot of thumbs up) that most of the population is not bothered by this. yeah major news places will pick it up, and the response has been "fair. next." the only places where this is getting any real discussion and the places where this actually matters to people are places that were never going to be targeted as beauty pageant audiences.
Comments.
On an internet news item.
What part of this did you not understand?
Or in case more explanation is needed, read this article:
GameFAQs is amazingly civil compared to youtube comments and news story comments. And it's not because GameFAQs somehow attracts a higher breed of human being, more that...think about it: do YOU post comments on news stories or Youtube videos? I don't. Most reasonable internet-savvy people don't. But apparently the people who DO are very angry about...everything.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
From: OmarsComin | #315 I've heard stories of friends of friends who will do things like have a one-night-stand and not have their intercourse partner realize.
I think they should always tell them upfront
that seems like the right thing to do
That's a pretty bad idea to do when the thing you're telling someone is a thing that a lot of people get violent over.
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Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.
Female: "Whoo! Well that was great for me. You?" Male: "It was amazing. Never felt a p**** that good before. Warm, tight, incredible" Female: "Well I did pay a lot so that's good to hear." Male: "What?" Female: "Hm? Oh, I had surgery. I was... let's see, two inches bigger than you, but that didn't feel right, so now, well, here I am." Male: ".......wut."
yeah, that'll go over well. let's just leave it at the first two lines followed by "glad to hear." if you're cool with hitting it before, you should be fine with that.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
Oh, I'm not saying whether or not it's a good idea, just that one of my psychologist friends claims to have had clients who have done so.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision