Vocal Voices

Is a dish best served cold.

This particular bit of legislation which is about to come out of the Trump presidency was not high on the agenda, was not something he particularly campaigned on and was not something anyone saw any burning need to legislate on.

So why this?

If you read into the article you find that it totally shafts the Civil Liberties groups attempts to attack this in court. The Executive office is a powerful ally in these fights. One good turn deserves another. The civil liberties advocates pulled the rug out of his executive order on immigration. He's pulled the rug out from under theirs.

I expect, over time, that Trump will sign order after order to pull the rug out from under pending court cases being brought by the Civil Liberties groups.

The American political and legal system is quite complicated. But one thing has always been true. You don't go head to head with the man at the top and expect there will be no repercussions.

I do not get this.

There is no such thing as a transgender person... they do not exist. A person might have their looks changed through surgery or HRT, but they are still the same gender.

There are people who wear clothes normally associated with the opposite gender - men wearing women's clothes, and vice-versa - but they are transvestites. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

However, what is trying to be created by the CLU, and others, is a new class of people who do not exist biologically in order to promote their 'Liberal' view of how society should operate.

I wonder how many of them would be happy to take a communal shower with Gerald(ine) with its meat and two veg on display before 'it' had them surgically removed. I also wonder how they would feel taking their kids in the same shower with post-op Geraldine in there.

Workingman wrote:I do not get this.

There is no such thing as a transgender person... they do not exist. A person might have their looks changed through surgery or HRT, but they are still the same gender.

You and me both Frank. People get terribly excited about the subject though. Germaine Greer expressed very similar sentiments to yours and she got some right abuse for it.

Having been in the hospital to visit my Nephew, turned niece, after the surgery, I’ve spent a bit of time looking at it. Essentially, apart from the ability to bear children, she’s functionally the same as a woman. Bit of silicone here and there but no longer a male.

It does depend where they are in the process and whether they have the nerve, or the need, to undergo the extensive surgery. My niece has also had significant cosmetic surgery to re-shape the face and other parts of the body.

During the visit in the hospital I managed to get her to open up about how she had felt about the whole thing. Essentially she said that it came to a point where it was change or not be able to live with who she was, locked in a man’s body. I had thought it would be like that, I know a bit about the desperation of being locked into something, 24x7, you can’t change but can’t live with.

I believe that once having had the gender reassignment surgery, my niece can then apply to change her sex, legally. In this case the issue goes away.

However, for all those who are somewhere else in the journey, it causes confusion for everyone.

I guess, in this case, there should be some pause for thought. What is more disturbing to you? An openly gay male, partially cross dressing, using the men’s toilets? A transgender female/male using the men’s toilets? Or the other way round for women?

In this particular case I was pointing out the backlash that this action represented. Trump had no intention of going after Transgender. But by going after transgender he kicked the civil liberties crowd in the nuts. Tit for tat for going after his travel ban.

I’m guessing that the civil liberties crowd, in the US, are about to find out just how rocky a road it becomes when the white house stands against them and more issues like this are going to become a battleground where Obama’s orders sought to override state legislation or even federal legislation.

Keeping it impersonal, for obvious reasons.

A person can have as much surgery and life long hormonal treatment as they desire, but from a biological POV they have not changed sex. However, from the psychological POV of those undergoing gender realignment, they have, and that is to their benefit. Therein lies the problem for the lawmakers.

Trump looks to have gone with the biological side, and there is no reason why he should not have, but he could have gone the other way, and also why not?

Judges probably do have to look at the 'shower test' or the 'toilet test' when they make their considerations, and there are no simple answers. One person's "OMG!" is another's "So what!".

This not ever going to be easy to resolve, but in the new anti-PC world the CLU, and others, are going to have fight their corner on something more than calling those who disagree with them '...ists', '....phobes' or bigots.

Workingman wrote:This not ever going to be easy to resolve, but in the new anti-PC world the CLU, and others, are going to have fight their corner on something more than calling those who disagree with them '...ists', '....phobes' or bigots.

Indeed. That needs sorting out big time. Not going to happen though.

Workingman wrote:I do not get this.

There is no such thing as a transgender person... they do not exist. A person might have their looks changed through surgery or HRT, but they are still the same gender.

.

That is my view, too. One either has testicles or ovaries, and that determines their sex. Amen.

AliasAggers wrote:That is my view, too. One either has testicles or ovaries, and that determines their sex. Amen.

Not quite. There are women born without Ovaries and in some cases without a womb. Just as there are men born without testicles.

Once a "man" has been through hormone realignment, removal of the male sex organs and provisioned with a semi functional set of female sex organs, then it comes down to reproductive capabilities.

Personally I have little issue with the change of gender. So long as they happily live their lives without constricting mine, I'm live and let live. Many of them can't live with being what they were born. For me a bit of tolerance on the issue is better than a lot of suicides.

The problem begins with no tolerance on the issue.

For many of these people this is not a choice. It is a requirement which, eventually, they find they can't live with.

If they want to get all pushy about it, that is one thing. But, in fact, the push is coming from the other side.

If we want to look at how that works, we might want to have a look at Alan Turing. If he had been found out before the war, we might very well have German as our first language.

Someone who was given one of two choices which would lead to his death. Someone we all owe more than we could possibly repay in 10 lifetimes.

It was intolerance of law and society which led directly to his death. Were he alive today, there would be no need for his death and he would be happy.

So, as I grow older, I also grow less hidebound by my own history.

What I won't tolerate is minority groups demanding to change my life because they won't accept a very reasonable accommodation for themselves. That I fight tooth and nail but that is not the case in this instance.

In this case Trump is using religious dogma to punish a group which thwarted him. Of course it is always the poor grunt in the middle who gets hurt. Those of us who were grunts in the Army understand that one very well.