I have long noted a tendency among the politically correct in the various trans-communities to engage in a form of social terrorism against other members of various trans-communities for using words or phrases to describe their life experiences that are not on some list of PC terms for proper transgender warriors to use.
The tizzy in a tea cup over the word “Trannie”, a term that was in common usage among transsexuals and queens some 50 years ago when I was coming out is but one example. All the politically correct terms for what we used to call a sex change operation or sex reassignment surgery is yet another. Hell even using the word transsexual as a self descriptor rather than the politically correct word transgender causes all sorts of PC folks to get their panties all twisted in a knot.
Last week we saw where the whole PC thing goes when taken to insane extremes. Me? I’d rather live in a world where we have freedom of speech and thought.
From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoe-dolan/lets-talk-about-sex-chang_b_6418690.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices
Zoe Dolan
01/08/2015
Sex-change surgery gave me my life. I would not be who I am without it.
Nevertheless, public discourse around the subject is governed by media guidelines that operate to suppress discussion, such as this one from GLAAD: “Journalists should avoid overemphasizing the role of surgeries in the [gender] transition process.”
For me, you could not overemphasize the importance of sex-change surgery if you tried.
Consider one risk of the politically correct script of deflection: It undermines the medical necessity of sex-change surgery for many of us.
People have questions: Do you have a vagina? Can you have sexual intercourse? Is there sensation down there? Are you able to have orgasms?
So I decided to start being open about my operation, beginning by mentioning it in a talk at Chicago Ideas Week.
You may say that I’m a contrarian, but I’m not the only one.
My story is that in fourth grade I learned a word that describes me: transsexual. It was during recess, and I was in a field of grass, talking with a couple of friends, including the deaf play buddy I was paired up with to practice sign language.
Years later I would date a deaf guy for like five minutes. I thought that he, of all people, would understand the challenges of being judged based on how I was born, but no. He grimaced, stood up, and walked out of my apartment within minutes of learning about my past.
The horror of locker rooms and swimming pools began in high school, during puberty. I changed in a corner, or maybe in a bathroom stall or under a towel, to avoid the light of day in the presence of others.
Then there was the period of being in-between as an adult, after I had transitioned but before the surgery. Oh, how I loved to swim! And how I hated what my bathing suit revealed.
And then there was dating. I met a number of men who identified as straight while professing attraction to pre-operative or non-operative transgender women; two men who blinked at me in confusion during a series of questions, until they said that I was pretty and then kissed me; and a gorgeous young Italian man who made out with me in Amsterdam, then yelled and slammed the door behind him after I interrupted his caresses to explain.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoe-dolan/lets-talk-about-sex-chang_b_6418690.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices
January 12, 2015 at 4:06 pm
I am generally quite politically correct when tallking about or to people in minorities I don’t belong to (eg. the trans community). This is because I don’t want to insult people by using the “wrong” terms to identify them. Still, I believe self-identification is infinitely more important t han what is PC or not PC. I wonder, btw, what the PC term for sex-change or sexual reassignment surgery is. It isn’t like people should hide part of their life experience because others see it as not significant.
January 12, 2015 at 4:25 pm
I use SRS or sex reassignment surgery. I don’t see any real point to sharing a history of having been treated for transsexualism. It was a medical condition I had an operation to treat. I had that operation well over 40 years ago. I’ve been female for nearly 2/3s of my life. Almost all my adult life experiences have been as a woman.
I’m not transgender and the process of changing sex was so long ago I have come to think of myself as post-transsexual.
January 13, 2015 at 6:35 am
I do not feel I am “trans”-anything, especially transgender. The later term was designed to fuzz up conversation and blur the difference between those who change their sex and those who do not. I do use sex reassignment surgery (SRS) when it is appropriate to do so. The main thing is that I do not “hide” my birth condition — transsexual — nor do I “hide” my medical treatments.
January 13, 2015 at 6:36 am
And I meant to add: I do not flaunt my past either.