I started this thread. I intended it to be about abortion, specifically, what the limits of "pro choice" are.
Most of us would draw the line at killing our children, I'm sure.
And we've all agreed to pretend that life begins at birth which is just a convenient guideline to keep Rush Limbaugh et al out of my vagina.
But what does pro choice really mean?
RTTG, since we drifted ...
I do not support transition on demand.
All but one trans person I know I met on a psych ward.
And from what they tell me (weepily), they had everything invested in a gender switch. Then they did it. Then they found out it didn't solve their essential problems. Tragedy. No going back. It's like suicide.
Do you support suicide?
How 'bout mine?
Think I should hang myself tonight?
Why or why not?
Autonomy is a wonderful thing.
But it's meaningless if it comes with diminished capacity.
Should I have the right to take my own life? Of course.
Should I be persuaded not to? Of course.
From my reading she further went on to discuss abortion, and abortion almost exclusively, and I think, Angella, that underlines my point rather neatly and that there are very clear hypocracies in a construction of pro-choice to allow termination of pregnancy on demand, (which I strongly support) and then to argue against, among other personal decisions, hormonal transition on demand.
Yeah, I'm a big ol' hypocrite, all right.
Conversation over if you don't smarten up soon.
RTTG, since we drifted ...
I do not support transition on demand.
All but one trans person I know I met on a psych ward.
First, under what circumstances did you meet this sample set? Do you have a special transdar that lets you detect trans women when they're out and under the harsh light of day? And, by the way, congratulations on knowing so many of the 0.2-2% of those who transition that purport to regret their decision.
I did write a little article about that, basically that when you put transition in the hands of the psychiatrists, you'll create a system that makes mental patients out of women deciding what to do with their bodies.
And further, advancing a fundamentally inconsistent idea does not make you a hypocrite. Asking for my definition of pro-choice and then claiming that I didn't answer your question with the correct limitations on what pro choice is, on the other hand... You asked, I'm answering.
And the only time I've ever seen a trans woman in a psych ward was me, in a mirror, when I had to go to the only doctor in the city who will prescribe a forty cent pill that reduces my testosterone and blood pressure. I left after getting said prescription. That was after a 5 month wait. For blood pressure medication. That kind of BS will drive a girl crazy, trans or no.
Thanks for writing a "little article."
I've devoted my adult life to the psych revolution.
As I said, I met these people on psych wards.
Knock it off with the snarky and I'll come back tomorrow.
I knew they were unhappy because they told me so.
I knew they were trans gender because it was patently obvious.
Please don't lecture to me in my own thread on the struggles that psych patients face.
And to be honest with you, what little you have displayed here tells me it's not working out for you, either.
If I want to be male, I'll be male.
I don't have to Rage Against The Machine for the rest of my life.
I don't have to insult and deliberately offend my natural allies.
I don't have to wrap myself in academic snot.
I can't believe that you would come onto this board, jump into a good thread and make it ugly.
Enjoy your temper tantrum.
Some of us have better things to do.
Please, in the name of all that is Steadfast & Holy, tell me you're *not* presenting at PsychOUT in May.
I have never met one transgendered person who could pass *and* who had not been involuntarily hospitalized under an MHA.
Guess I just have an uncanny ability to sniff out that 0.2 to 2%, right?
My guesstimate on regret would include the suicidally depressed and would be in the range of 2/3 to 3/4.
That's my observation over the years.
If you don't like it, you don't like it.
And further, advancing a fundamentally inconsistent idea
Didn't.
Asking for my definition of pro-choice
Didn't.
and then claiming that I didn't answer your question with the correct limitations on what pro choice is, on the other hand... You asked, I'm answering.
You bore me and the conversation is now over. Congratulations on wasting another ally.
And to be honest with you, what little you have displayed here tells me it's not working out for you, either.
So in your honest 8-post opinion, I'm a failure as a trans woman... well then. I don't know how to reply to this because I don't know enough latin to translate ad hominym. But still I will try.
Given the forum for your contact with transsexuals you seem to have quite a selection bias built in.
Regret and suicidal tendencies are not one in the same. Gay people are also more suicidal than heterosexuals. Does this mean that we regret acting on our orientation? And thus are more likely to kill ourselves? Or, more likely, is it the discrimination, and ostracization that we face that leads us to think that society doesn't care whether we live or die? That feeling is, by the way, the most reliable predictor of suicidal tendencies.
Edit after reading the last post in that string of eight to read: And further 'allies' who don't believe what I do with my body is my choice, and that trans women are all a bunch of mental cases, I'm pretty sure, we can do without.
You're a failure as an advocate.
For all I know, you're an awesome trans woman.
I just don't think you're a valuable babbler.
Sorry.
And my "selection bias" was stated from the start.
And it doesn't have to be either/or on the suicidality thing, you know. Could be a combo of both. Usually is.
Please don't explain suicide to me.
And have a good day. I'm outta here.
Please don't explain transsexuality to me... and I thought you said this conversation was over.
Muffin, to me, the "rare" part of "safe, legal, and rare" is morally loaded, which is why I reject that formulation. I understand why Clinton uses it (came up with it?) -- she's a politician in a country where a significant number of people don't entirely grasp their own Bill of Rights and are given to extreme moralizing, so she has to sound pious on this and a number of other turfs in order to get elected.I don't know what Elizabeth May is doing, although she is fond of importing Clintonisms into Canadian politics.
No state and nobody "gives" us human rights. Human rights are inherent. The Charter is not a granting of rights; it's a codification of the rights all living persons just have. It may be a work in progress; it may not be a perfect codification; and we are still not all that good at living up to the ideals, but it should be a teaching tool, and it should be a defence for anyone who is being discriminated against, or under the illegal control of anyone else. We're still working on those last parts.
To me, what the Supremes did was simply to recognize that adult women are fully human. That's what choice means: I'm as much a human bean as any man is, so why do some of them think they have the right to any power over my private life at all? Or why would some women think that, come to that. People have a right to their opinions, of course, any silly opinions they like, but that's it.
People say that we have no abortion law in Canada, and in a narrow sense that's true. Abortion remains a medical procedure, though, so the doctors have codes of their own they must answer to, provincial/professional codes and then the oath they take, which I consider sets an even higher standard than most laws (although a lot of doctors aren't that bright philosophically and can't necessarily be trusted to understand human rights without moralizing). I don't believe that any doctor in Canada would kill a viable baby the day before it was due just because a woman decided she would rather get her nails done; that just doesn't happen and can't, although it's the scenario that a lot of the moralizers would like to scare people with.
Of course transgendered people have the right to decide what they do with their own bodies. No one is stepping in to stop, say, a woman who decides she wants her labia trimmed or whitened (to go with the Brazilian wax, you know). You and I might have opinions about that; you might have psychological theories about why women would do that; but a woman going for plastic surgery also has the right to tell you to sod off, and she has the law behind her, as she should. Why should she be subjected to your theorizing? This is just more of the moralizing noise we make at one another, and I sure don't like it. Trans people are in a similar situation except for what I consider better reasons, and I'd be ashamed to try to impose my fantasies of correct identity or correct mental health on them. Liberty is the only fantasy I go for. *wink*
I do draw the line at commerce in organs. People do have the right to give up an organ -- that happens fairly often within families, eg, and the law doesn't stop it. I do think it's right, though, to ban trade for money in organs. If people are selling their kidneys, then we have begun to farm people, essentially, and obviously I think that's wrong.
Stargazer:
"I understand your points and I agree RTG but this thread is specifically about abortion."
G. Muffin, opening post of the thread, verbatim:
"I consider myself pro choice. Yet I'm sometimes rattled by stories I read and hear. So could somebody please articulate what "pro choice" means?"
Nowhere was abortion mentioned in the opening post. And I'm saying for some it means a cis-centered, definition of abortion only, which, in and of itself, has trans misogynistic and misandristic and ablist, (to name a few) implications.
Sorry RTTG, didn't mean to get on your bad side, and I won't be joining in on the pile up below, The fact is cis women are the only women who get pregnant (unless there is some medical development I am completely unaware of that allows women/men with no uterus to become pregnant). I'm unsure of how abortion itself can be misogynist. Women have abortions, men don't. Period.Unless I am misreading you I would be honestly interested in how or why you consider abortion, or speaking about abortion, as trans-phobic.
I consider your body yours, to do with as you see fit. It isn't mine to make decisions about or over or to construct theories as to why you will be, or have or are transitioning. I fully support your choice to transition, and I welcome you as a woman. I think it is important to realize we are allies, not enemies.
That said, making abortion about something other than a woman's right to chose is problematic, for me anyways and I suspect for many other women.
[apalogizes in advance for the drift]
To me, what the Supremes did was simply to recognize that adult women are fully human.
Despite this thread's topic, which I contributed to on topic in the past, when I read this sentence, my first thought was "Diana Ross and the Supremes had this kinda of power? Maybe so.
You Tube Link: Stop in the Name of Love
[/end of drift with more profuse apologies]
Skdadl, I will read & respond to your post in full when I get back from work. But it looks great & I can't wait!
One tiny issue -- rights can't be inherent; that's a philosophical warp.
When the earthquake struck Haiti, did the survivors rush out and scream at the sky "Hey, what about our human rights?"
Human rights like animal rights or any other rights are an invention of a clever species to help us make sense of the world.
If dinosaurs ruled the world, there wouldn't be any dino-rights.
And on safe, legal and rare, isn't that just a catchy phrase?
Rare, to me, in this instance, means "not primary means of birth control."
Oh, and I did abort. At age 17. With my parents' (retroactive) blessing. And I did go through a period of mourning. And I got over it. And if I became pregnant now, I would have the child. I have no particular wish to be a parent, however, and don't intend to become pregnant ever again.
I was 17 back in the early 80s and it was a different landscape than we have now. The world's getting better.
I'm pro choice. Pro choice. I support the right of human teenagers to keep their children if they want to. I was coerced into my abortion. I don't regret it; I don't regret anything. My choices, both mine and those forced upon mine, made me who I am today.
Had I kept that pregnancy, my kid would be in his 20s today. Had I followed the same path, Social Services (or my family) would have been forced to remove him. Then again, maybe I wouldn't have followed the same path. A large part of the imagery and horror of my first psychosis was my abortion.
All I'm saying is that it's not just a routine medical procedure unless it's the morning after pill or some such. It's a morally loaded issue and it should be. It's just that the Republicans are dead wrong on the moral issues. So what else is new?
I've gotta go.
[apalogizes in advance for the drift]
To me, what the Supremes did was simply to recognize that adult women are fully human.Despite this thread's topic, which I contributed to on topic in the past, when I read this sentence, my first thought was "Diana Ross and the Supremes had this kinda of power? Maybe so.
You Tube Link: Stop in the Name of Love
[/end of drift with more profuse apologies]
OT: Oh, gosh, I just love that performance. Think of all the girls who worked so hard on those moves. I can still do the "Stop!" part pretty well. 
They turned out to be kind of a sad story, but they broke through a few barriers on the way, which is a good thing, I guess.
Skdadl, I will read & respond to your post in full when I get back from work. But it looks great & I can't wait!
One tiny issue -- rights can't be inherent; that's a philosophical warp.
When the earthquake struck Haiti, did the survivors rush out and scream at the sky "Hey, what about our human rights?"
Human rights like animal rights or any other rights are an invention of a clever species to help us make sense of the world.
If dinosaurs ruled the world, there wouldn't be any dino-rights.
It's true that this is a philosophical problem. When we talk about human rights, we're talking about humans trying to live in society with one another, which right away is not a state of nature. But those who claim we have inherent rights claim it on the basis of our animal reality -- I'm here; I'm alive; deal with it -- an argument from nature.
So yes, it's a turning-point between social/political thought and the argument from nature. I don't know whether it's a warp; I'll have to think about that. But the question remains: how do we build societies that make it possible, on the one hand, for us to stand to live together, to share, to co-operate, to keep the peace, etc, and yet maintain that recognition of essential animal existence and dignity? I'm a srs believer in essential animal existence and dignity, partly because I feel quite fierce about my own liberty and then partly because I've watched animals a lot. It's just a basic truth, something all animals will do: corner me, and I'll rip your guts out or die trying. No social theory can go anywhere without recognizing that truth.
Stargazer:
"I understand your points and I agree RTG but this thread is specifically about abortion."
G. Muffin, opening post of the thread, verbatim:
"I consider myself pro choice. Yet I'm sometimes rattled by stories I read and hear. So could somebody please articulate what "pro choice" means?"
Nowhere was abortion mentioned in the opening post. And I'm saying for some it means a cis-centered, definition of abortion only, which, in and of itself, has trans misogynistic and misandristic and ablist, (to name a few) implications.
Sorry RTTG, didn't mean to get on your bad side, and I won't be joining in on the pile up below, The fact is cis women are the only women who get pregnant (unless there is some medical development I am completely unaware of that allows women/men with no uterus to become pregnant). I'm unsure of how abortion itself can be misogynist. Women have abortions, men don't. Period.Unless I am misreading you I would be honestly interested in how or why you consider abortion, or speaking about abortion, as trans-phobic.
I consider your body yours, to do with as you see fit. It isn't mine to make decisions about or over or to construct theories as to why you will be, or have or are transitioning. I fully support your choice to transition, and I welcome you as a woman. I think it is important to realize we are allies, not enemies.
That said, making abortion about something other than a woman's right to chose is problematic, for me anyways and I suspect for many other women.
It's a common, and most here would agree, fair criticism of those who identify as pro-life, that their movement's spokesmen often don't support post-natal care, supports for the homeless, etc, or as comedian Mike MacDonald puts it, "Right to life until you're born and then here's a piece of cardboard... good luuuuuuck!"
I'm asking those who identify as pro-choice if they're really and logically in favour of choice. Being pro-choice means a lot more than believing in the right to terminate, or have fully supported, a pregnancy. Abortion's not transphobic, but the following is: Those who loudly claim to be pro-choice until it's the choice to express my gender identity and avail myself of medical transition; who expect me to submit to a battery of hurdles, requirements, and red tape that would be considered by them to be a criminal level of restriction were I choosing not to bear an infant instead of not to bear an artifice; who claim that what they do with their body is an inalienable right; and who somehow forget all the justifications they just used proclaiming their bodily soverignty when it comes to letting me excercise my bodily soverignty, that's transphobic. I'm saying my definition of pro-choice has to include, among other choices, transition, by sheer logic.
Nobody is going to force a person to be a victim of willful non-treatment of their biology because it makes elements of society more comfortable and then be allowed to proclaim, without rebuttal, that they are pro-choice.
Think you are failing to interpret correctly why there are no abortion laws in Canada.....
The decision was based upon women not being forced to give their lives into the "service" of another, just as men could not.
Which is completely non-applicable to the 'choice' in gender changes, as nobody is being forced to give their lives into the service of anyone else in respect to their gender selection choices.
... nobody is being forced to give their lives into the service of anyone else in respect to their gender selection choices.
I disagree, and I think that RTG is right. If anyone is controlling or attempting to control RTG's right to determine her own sexual identity, then she is being forced to live in a way others have determined. That is wrong.
My point from letter one, skdadl. Thank you.
Hey, and I agree with the both of you.
Had a nap.
Sorry for the earlier crankiness, everyone.
Skdadl, an argument from nature -- yes, I know all about that.
That's why it's legal (or ought to be) to urinate in public.
Frowned upon, sure, but legal.
I'm pro choice with the caveat of informed consent.
I don't believe it's in a rational person's best interests to use our medical system to try to change their problems in living. I'm a Szaszian in that respect.
I don't believe that rational people try to determine other people's best interests for them.
Children, or cats who don't believe the vet is going to help? Sure. We have a duty of care. Adult human beans? No.
(There's the obvious exception of criminal behaviour that affects others.)
Nobody I know is stopping trans people from transitioning. However, if they are asking for support through the public health system to do so, that becomes a public issue.
Nobody I know is stopping trans people prenant women from transitioning terminating their pregnancies. However, if they are asking for support through the public health system to do so, that becomes a public issue.
How many times have we heard the equivalent? Nobody I know is stopping pregnant women from terminating their pregnancies. However, if they are asking for support through the public health system to do so, that becomes a public issue.
This is my point: The fundamental, and frankly privileged, illogic on display. That, and that statement indicates you obviously haven't tried to transition in Canada. It's been 6 months and five days since I asked for hormones and still I have yet to be prescribed estrogen, which I will still pay for out of pocket. At 26, my biological clock ticks with all the quietude of a tympani drumbeat. Oddly enough I'm *lucky* to live in Alberta in terms of access to hormones and social transition. Ontario and the CAMH, home of Ray Blanchard who basically says all trans women are gay men or cross-dressing perverts and says of trans men... well, nothing really... would be much, much, worse. More hazing than support. The idea is not to bar transition, just to make it so traumatic and alienating that people drop out en masse. This is the same system by which anti-choice advocates in the rural US make it next to impossible for poor women to get abortions.
RTTG, I support your right to physically reflect the gender you feel you were born, and would never restrict the access of any MTF to spironolactone, etc. But women have been dying in childbirth for millennia, and dying from botched abortions for at least hundreds of years. When my mother was a young nurse, she remembers, before abortion was legalized, there were entire wards full of women with massive pelvic infections subsequent to their being butchered in their desperation to avoid carrying a pregnancy to term. And speaking of a lack of choice, there's the women who get pregnant from rape, so they have the potential double whammy of denied choice, forced to have sex against their will, and then forced to bear a child against their will.
So there's the right to reflect the gender to which a person feels they were born. And there's the reproductive rights for which women fought hard for in this country, and eventually won. And these are entirely separate things, see? RTTG, I respectfully request you do not conflate the two.
Sorry for the multi-posting, but from Wikipedia:Think you are failing to interpret correctly why there are no abortion laws in Canada.....
The decision was based upon women not being forced to give their lives into the "service" of another, just as men could not.
Which is completely non-applicable to the 'choice' in gender changes, as nobody is being forced to give their lives into the service of anyone else in respect to their gender selection choices.
R. v. Morgentaler [1988] 1 S.C.R. 30 was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada wherein the abortion provision in the Criminal Code of Canada was found to be unconstitutional, as it violated a woman's right under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to "security of person". Ever since this ruling, there have been no laws regulating abortion in Canada.
This had nothing to do with the draft or any other form of conscription. If it did, the supreme court would strike down mandatory snow shovelling bylaws. This was about society's remit falling short of the body.
Funny I kinda thought we all were forced to "live" in a way that others have determined, I mean what the hay, for example we even have a thread here about protestors having the right to determine how protestors protest.
However, living in its own right is really not being forced to give one's life into the service of another.
Differences of content do not all on their own make differences of structure, or of principle.
No...that is not a correct summation in wiki, there is a thread in the feminist forum about what the exact wording by the Supremes was, but distilled down it was based upon British Common Law from which our laws are derived, which holds that humans cannot be compelled to give their lives into the service of another, even if death is a result .
it is the same law which holds slavery illegal.
Perhaps in some matters, however there is a clear distinction between giving one's life into the service of another, which is actual slavery, than there is to the issue of choosing to physically conform to one's self perceptions of gender.
I just don't see it. Mental health, and all that that entails, is supposed to be considered basic medical care in Canada. Anyone can have cosmetic plastic surgery at any time at his/her own expense, but I should think that enlightened people, certainly psychiatrists, would take questions of sexual identity as serious health matters.
I'm just kind of gobsmacked that this has turned into such a hard slog. I can't see what feminists who've been working on choice for decades (as I have, since the late 1960s) have to object to when it comes to transgendered people. The language of the Charter is uncompromising -- freedom of conscience and security of the person. And that's not just British common law. That's all serious thought about democracy in the West since at least the C17.
No, we haven't lived up to it yet. But that's sure no reason for decent people to shave principle. Why? Why are people finding this so hard?
Not finding anything hard, there is just no compare, it is just that simple.
being forced to be a slave to another person, is in no way like making a personal choice to have one's body conform to one's own self perception of gender...just as cosmetic surgery is not equivalent to slavery, even though many people do it to conform to their personal idea of the gender they are...just as I choose not to starve and over excercise so that I conform to the "rail thin" mode of womanhood.
as Redtoryteagirl stated said persons stuck in the wrong gender identity body, also choose not to have reassignment surgery, and still consider themselves the gender they perceive themselves to be.
What I object to is the rhetoric, where RTTG is trying to piggyback gender-related issues onto abortion choice. They're two separate things. I support choice in both, but why try to conflate transgender rights and reproductive rights? It's rather strange.
