Yes, This Is Happening

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2 Comments for “Yes, This Is Happening”

  1. posted by JohnInCA on

    Reading the article…

    How can lesbianism be redefined as having sex with someone who has a penis, they argue, without undermining the concept of lesbianism as a whole?

    Because no one is doing that.

    Simply put, a lesbian could be celibate for all her life and still be lesbian. Or she could have sex with a million penises and still be lesbian. Orientation is not determined by behavior, and any attempt to define it that way is going to fail.

    It implies that a tomboy who loves sports is not a girl interested in stereotypically boyish things, but possibly a boy trapped in a female body.
    Nope. It implies that a tomboy might not be a girl, but might a transboy. It doesn’t make assumptions.

    A gay man loves and desires other men, and a lesbian desires and loves other women,” explains Sky Gilbert, a drag queen. “This defines the existential state of being gay. If there is no such thing as ‘male’ or ‘female,’ the entire self-definition of gay identity, which we have spent generations seeking to validate and protect from bigots, collapses.”

    Doing away with concepts of “male” and “female” is the talk of sci-fi, but even if happened, so what? Being a person interested in people with penises could be no more transgressive then being interested in blondes, or folks taller then 6’2″.

    Why is this concept scary?

    If the concept of a man is deconstructed, so that someone without a penis is a man, then homosexuality itself is deconstructed.

    All the gay men dating and married to gay transmen disagree.

    Simply put, Sullivan puts way too much emphasis on sex. I am not gay because I have sex with a man. I was gay before I ever had sex, and if I live to the age where I no longer can have sex, I will still be gay. And if I decide to have a kid the “natural” way and lose my gold star, I will still be gay. And if I become a widower and start dating again, and I date a transman, I will still be gay.

    The community spent ages making it clear that being LGB wasn’t about sex. Why, to spite the T, are we bringing back the notion that it’s all about sex?

  2. posted by Jorge on

    “The core disagreement, it seems to me, is whether a trans woman is right to say that she has always been a woman, was born female, and is indistinguishable from and interchangeable with biological women.”

    So that’s become a “core” disagreement now, has it?

    “Most of us, however, intuitively find this argument hard to swallow entirely. We may accept that Caitlyn Jenner, who came out as a woman in 2015, always understood herself as a woman, and see this psychological conviction as sincere and to be respected. But we also see a difference between someone who lived her life as a man for decades, under the full influence of male chromosomes and testosterone, and who was socially accepted as male and then transitioned … and a woman to whom none of those apply. It is highly doubtful that a non-trans woman could have successfully competed against men in athletics in the Olympic decathlon, no less. Whether you look at this biologically (hormones and genitals matter) or socially (Jenner was not subjected to sexism as a man for most of her life), there is a difference. If there weren’t, would the concept of “trans” even exist?”

    Someone brought to my attention a US powerlifting association that made a decision to “ban” transgender athletes using the following reasoning: 1. Those who use hormone therapy to support their transition are using the same category of hormones that are banned for performance-enhancement reasons; 2. Looking at male-to-female athletes, the effect of naturally occurring hormones of the same type as those artificial hormones that are banned on the body has created a measurable competitive advantage that is permanent, and not mitigated by the use of hormone therapy.

    It took all this mumbo-jumbo to just say the obvious, but it’s phrased in a way to comply to the letter of discrimination bans.

    The community spent ages making it clear that being LGB wasn’t about sex. Why, to spite the T, are we bringing back the notion that it’s all about sex?

    I don’t remember the “it’s not about what’s between the legs” argument ever being used on behalf of anyone but transgender people. For sexual orientation the argument has only ever been about intimate relations. So the two overlap. Sue me.

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