What if a trans-gendered person does not decide to alter their body, but simply to live, dress, and act as a member of the other sex? Should this person be forced or bullied or assaulted into acting as a member of his/her birth sex?
Somehow, I can't imagine a biological male, dressed in female clothing, being left alone without bother in a public restroom. Usually, female people do not bully like this (in college I used to go to a predominantly "gay" dance club in D.C., and we "real girls" didn't do anything to the "girls for the evening" who joined us in the loo, and who usually looked better than we did). But I strongly suspect that the people upset that some transgender folks choose to alter their bodies would bully and assault these same folks if they didn't.
Didn't you just get done saying this was personal and only involved the trans person? And now all of a sudden it's MY problem and I'm supposed to take up the slack for HIS decision? I think not.
What I said was that matters of sexual identity, surgery, anything to do with the body, such be left up to the individual, and that there is a strong likelihood that forcing transgendered people to use restrooms according to their birth gender would lead to bullying and assault due to the amount of insane bullies and hoodlums who seem to think that they are somehow entitled to be "enforcers" of some social code.
I read what you said just fine. Please don't flatter yourself that the only reason I don't immediately applaud your brilliance is because you're just too deep and nuanced for me to fully grasp your meaning.
I have no problem with leaving decisions about surgical changes MOSTLY up to the individual, and I say "mostly" because I do think there are times when a person's judgement is impaired and when it would be irresponsible and inhumane for those around them to simply shrug and say, "Whatever, man." When a person is trying to commit suicide, for instance, or if a person is suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder.
Back to the topic of "individual decisions", my problem is that you don't want to take that out to the logical and inevitable conclusion: if the decision is "left up to the individual", then
why aren't the consequences? Why am I, and every other woman, expected to rearrange MY perceptions and expectations and comfort zone to deal with the fallout of a decision in which we have no part? I realize that you're going to be shocked and outraged and screech about how callous and cruel I am, but I'm okay with that. If it's his/her decision, then the consequences of that decision should ALSO belong to him/her. Why is it so unthinkable in this day and age for people to have to say to themselves, "I really want to do THIS, but THESE are the likely consequences, and do I want it enough to deal with them?" Why is that less sensible than that millions of women be forced - because you leftists so love misusing that word, let me just throw it in here in an entirely appropriate usage - to accept being less safe in order to facilitate the play-pretend of a statistically non-existent group of men?
And do NOT even start in with the intentionally-obtuse blather about "Transgenders are just peeing. They're not dangerous." I am doing you the courtesy of assuming you can understand the concern (given that you've only heard it enunciated approximately 100,000 in the last year), so please do me the courtesy of dropping the pretense of bewilderment and addressing the question head-on. You and I both know that the transgenders themselves are not the threat; no matter how a woman might feel about the issue in the abstract, in practice most have no desire to be the "penis police" and will ignore any apparently-female person who is just quietly going about her business.
There has always been a real danger of predators in any public place where women are vulnerable in any way. One need only look at the statistics on various sex crimes to know this, and under any other circumstances, feminists scream about this from the rooftops. They have no trouble easily grasping the concept that pedophiles try to get jobs in day cares and live in houses close to schools, that rapists, fondlers, and peepers want to work in women's gyms and attend college parties full of drunken coeds, and that flashers hang out in parks and near playgrounds. But suggest that predators MIGHT see the opportunity to get close to their chosen prey through the big, honkin' loophole of "I identify as female, and no one can or will challenge me", and suddenly they come over all bewildered like I'm speaking Hmong or something. It's a big fucking fail for alleged "Champions of Women".
All of us are being asked to think that other people's problems are now OUR problems and that we should take up the slack for them. Look at all the people who claim that they have some sort of "belief" and, for that reason, everyone else must stop what they are doing and take up the slack for THEIR decisions, when they are under no threat of physical aggression and their "beliefs" involve other people as well as themselves.
Why don't you float me an example of "people being asked to take up the slack" for other people's beliefs? Vagueness accomplishes less than nothing, since I don't even remotely operate from the same worldview you do, and I'm highly unlikely, therefore, to automatically leap to the same bigotries and hatreds you are, or in any other way intuit what the hell your analogy is supposed to be.
