JCC Transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer

I still have issues with certain things as I understand them, but I am very willing to be educated, to learn more because my intention is to understand people better.

 

That's a good attitude to have. I will say that I was somewhat taken aback that anyone in this section of the JCF would believe that hormones or surgeries were available for kids under 10. Those things aren't allowed for anyone unless they are 18 or older. I personally had my surgery when I was 28, and I had begun taking estradiol when I was 27. But thanks to DeSantis and the Republicans, we are in the middle of a rainbow scare, and there is a lot of false information about transgender people and LGBTQ+ people in general floating around.



And here is the result of it. The dark orange states are where anti-trans laws have been passed by Republicans. Only a few states like New Jersey, Maryland, New Mexico, and Minnesota have passed better laws for trans people. Florida is the worst state for transgender people due to DeSantis' policies. Two of my friends who are a lesbian couple moved out of Florida in 2021 and settled in LA because they saw this coming, and LGBTQ+ folks have fled the state because of them.



Lizzo condemned Nebraska's anti-trans law in Nebraska, and her audience approved. Not all citizens of these states approve of these laws. But the Republicans in Nebraska passed the anti-trans bill along with an expansion of their abortion ban from 6 weeks to 12 weeks. I became acutely aware that Republicans' hatred for abortion is only equaled by their hatred for gay people back in 2004 when Bush was obsessed with those issues. And Republicans' support for those authoritarian measures, as well as their dumb support for the Iraq War, is what convinced me that Republicans were deeply immoral and deeply unintelligent during high school. Meanwhile, DeSantis is prepared to begin his White House bid with Elon Musk's help.

 

Thanks so much for being so open and helping us all @SateleNovelist11 . I worry so much that people are not free to be who they are. Harmless loving people. That's how I see the LGBTQ+ community, just a group of people who are always kind and welcoming. I really enjoy your posts and insights. Keep them coming.

 

No problem. I'm always happy to help and supply information. I haven't been a victim of any transphobia in person this year, probably because I live in Western Oregon, but I did receive some inappropriate comments on TikTok back in March. I just blocked the people who sent them. Everyone else liked my videos. I mean, all I was doing was advertising Mo's Seafood Restaurant in Newport, Oregon, and a couple of guys said transphobic things and asked, "What's next? Women's sports?" As though that was some type of "gotcha" question. Haters are gonna hate, but they shouldn't ruin the lives of trans kids or any LGBTQ+ folks.

Btw, from what I've read and heard, trans girls in women's sports are of equal strength to cis girls. How do I know this? Well, Jessie Gender on YouTube produces excellent videos in which she explains and defends the transgender community. She went over how puberty blockers or (in the case of adults) estrogen intake makes trans girls and women physically weaker than cis men and on the same level as cis girls/women. I mean, a doctor who works for the Olympics defended trans girls/women in sports. Jessie Gender pretty much said, "Yeah, two trans girls outran this cis girl in Connecticut and won the track race, but she later outran them and won." Arguing that trans females have some sort of inherent advantage over other women is so dumb.

 

I have a question.

Would it matter to you if they did have an advantage? I’m not trying to get into an argument over whether they do or not because people get so animated about it. So, I’d rather ask: how much would your position change if it was proven there were genetic advantages for transwomen?

An argument I’ve seen used before that essentially says it wouldn’t matter if there were genetic advantages is that sports are innately based on using whatever genetic advantages one has to come out victorious.

 

My answer is that they ought to be on puberty blockers or hormones (depending on what age) in order to compete. I would defer to Jessie Gender’s 2021 YouTube video on this subject for a more thorough answer and examination.

For trans boys/men, puberty blockers and hormones make them stronger, and as such, they belong in male sports. Denying trans kids the right to be in the spots which correspond to their gender lowers their self-esteem. Unfortunately, while most of the country supports trans adults, there’s a lot of confusion about trans youth, and they don’t understand stand that the republicans are waging a genocide in the states where they have control.

 

Thank you for the response!

 

Miguel on the Humanist Report has done a great job in explaining these things. Like I said, even though I am trans, I honestly didn't fully understand transgender people until my friends and experts like Jessie Gender helped me out. I was like, "Okay. Why is this so complicated?" Then I was like, "Oh, okay. This is simple."

The problem is that the Republicans believe that being gay and being trans can spread. They believe that their presence and influence can make other people gay or trans who are not. And that makes no sense. That's what the Nazis believed. Now, Hitler himself probably didn't know or care about gay/trans issues. But Himmler did. He hated it. Many far-right figures including the Nazis despised Magnus Hierschfeld, a kind and empathetic sexologist scientist who defended all people regardless of gender identity or orientation. I don't think Hierschfeld fully understood transgender people any more than Emma Goldman did, but both were supportive of them. Dr. Hierschfeld was the kind of guy who would defend lesbians in Africa not only from gender stereotypes but also racist propaganda. He liked the gay culture of Chicago when he visited the U.S. So, he set up a clinic where adults could have the world's first sex-changes. And he works with the authorities in Berlin and other cities to get special papers for people to show that they did not identify as the gender that they were labeled at birth. So, he was very helpful. The Nazis hated him and burned his clinic. He lost his best friends and was forced into exile in France.

So, in a way, you could say that LGBTQ+ people were the first victims of the Nazis. A friend of mine in New York said fascists target us first because we are easier targets than anyone else. There's an argument to be made that if the Nazis had not attacked Hierschfeld and his allies, then LGBTQ+ people would have been understood much better much earlier. As it is, gay and bi people gradually became accepted in some areas more than others between the 1960s and the 2000s.

The argument is that it's easier for someone like Hitler to hate Jews or Trump to hate Mexicans because hating a social construction like race/ethnicity is easier to understand for their anti-intellectual minds than hating someone for gender-related reasons. Transgender people are hard for various folks to understand. But right now many cis leftists are willing to defend us. So, in a way, that's good. I think that many transgender people on Facebook (Millennials and Gen Z members) are pretty easy to understand. At least on my Facebook, they had a lost childhood because they were mistreated by their parents and friends. I can't say I had a lost childhood. I had a lost adolescence between age 15 and 18, I guess, but I had a wonderful time in college. I think that I was a pioneer in that I was able to find cis people in college and in NRH who were willing to understand and defend me, but I became pretty good at defending myself. My late Eponym helped me to understand that I had become really great at helping others in college, but not so much myself. So, she made me stronger. While I miss her and I sometimes pull my hair as I miss her, I know she wouldn't want me to get dragged down. I was depressed enough last year missing her.

So, I think that cis people are not different than trans people. My late Eponym, for example, was pansexual, but she was very responsible...never got an STD...and she managed a few Olive Gardens and one Shari's over time. My former professor and academic advisor is cis and he's never married. But he went from being conservative to leftist over time. He started out voting for Nixon and Reagan and later switched to Democrat in 2000. He's a former minister who taught me most of my philosophy classes, and he defended gay people often despite not knowing most of the gay people he met well. I mean, that makes makes to me. I started defending LGBTQ+ folks in the ninth grade, and I didn't know if I would ever transition. I figured I would just be a lesbian masquerading as a straight guy forever. But that only really worked during college. I only dated three women in college, but I felt more or a less celibate because I loved my platonic sister-figures (the sorority girls and student-athletes) more than my own gfs. So, after I met the Transcendental Sister-Figures in 2012-2013, I found that even the most extraordinary women could start off working at a bad place and yet go on to much better things. So, I figured, if the Eponym and the Transcendental Sisterdom could go on to become managers, legal assistants, and be as wise as they were beautiful, then why couldn't I? So, yeah. Best expressed in art really.

 

I still use the lady's room when I have a good excuse. I walk right in like I belong there.

Most men's rooms are disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves. No wonder society values you less.

 

And try having a sense of fashion for once. You either dress blandly or like total slobs.

Most of you look so damn similar to one another. Especially in these college towns.

How can your girlfriends even tell you apart??

She doesn't love you. She wants you for resources and sex once in a while. To be a person to her you have to act and dress like a PERSON.

 

Not only were LGBTQ+ people the first victims of Hitler and Himmler, but Hitler had a lot of support from Christians. A prime example was the guy who was practically his pope, Pius XII, who helped to legitimize the Nazis. The irony is that Hitler and especially Himmler wanted to destroy Christianity and replace it with something that was more "Nordic" in their eyes. They didn't like how Jesus was portrayed as compassionate and, as Hitler put it, "meek." But Hitler gave these speeches about how he was a "pious man" deep down despite not going to church. Ha. The meth addict was ridik.

The whole notion that being gay or trans could "spread" came from the Nazis. It seems really, really insecure. As for drag shows, I saw some at this club called S4 in Dallas. Honestly...some of the tamest stuff I've ever seen. Lol. Just people putting on artistic and over-the-top makeup. Very skilled stuff. I have no idea why people would be insecure about that. To me, it's tame because most drag queens I heard about have been men. Not many are trans. And I guess because I'm not attracted to men, I'm just not into it, although I admire the skill and the artistry. So, I turn to right-wingers and are like, "This is what has upset you?" But they like punching powerless people like drag performers and trans folks when they're down. Makes no sense.

But, yeah. When people spread false information about gay and trans people, I say, "Yeah. So, you agree with Hitler?" Those folks who are enthusiastic about it remind me of Frollo. Very unappealing. And when those fundamentalists get obsessed with trans people, I'm like, "So, what are you hiding?"

 

Ava, let's be fair. There are some disgusting women's rooms, too. I've rarely been in any. I haven't been in a men's room since February 2014, since that was when I had an estrogen injection that would last until my June 2014 (Juneteenth, no less) surgery that allowed me to start taking estradiol pills and correct my gender in court. But I will say that it was the estrogen injection itself and the fact that I'm not attracted to men that made me find the men's room unappealing. Not the men themselves. There's no need to blame all men for what the rotten eggs have done. There are bad women as well as men. No gender is immune from bad apples. I have known a trans woman for many years now who is very attracted to cis men and she wasn't bothered by their fragrance. That's just the difference between a lesbian and a straight woman, I guess. But some of the best people I've known have been men, especially my father and some men who are like uncles to me (mostly former professors).



Now, Mike lives up here in Oregon like myself. He's a cis gay guy like some around here. He's been a great advocate for transgender people. And he is so right that cis people do not get to frame out this debate goes. I understand it can be a little confusing, particularly to folks who are a little older.

But the fact of the matter is that anti-trans rhetoric gets trans adults killed and it leads to certain people bullying and thereby giving trans kids mental health issues. As my aforementioned transgender friend once wisely put it back in January 2020, "Society makes us [trans people] crazy [through abuse]." But on the bright side of things, we are now getting to a place where a great many people on the left and in the middle and even some on the right don't have a problem with trans people. These anti-trans bills (mostly targeting transgender youth) have been a waste of time. Resources could be spent better helping people. But the anti-LGBTQ legislation has led to an internal refugee crisis, I'm told. Trans and gay people are now fleeing to other states. The irony is that more countries in the world have laws favorable to gay and trans people than abortion rights...at least on a surface level. While Obama and the Democrats ensured that one could prosecute murderers of hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people, they are rarely prosecuted.

https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-nonbinary-community-in-2023

Unfortunately, trans folks are often targeted by bigots.



Now, while these videos from the Majority Report and Mike's Humanist Report are lengthy, they are worth listening to in the car or wherever. Fascists typically target gay and trans people first before moving on to others. In Nazi Germany, the Nazis claimed that homosexuality could spread...as if people could could become LGBTQ+ involuntarily or something....which is the same absurd rhetoric that has been used by far-right terrorists in this country to justify violence against drag performers and trans people. It's one reason I compare Matt Walsh, Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, and Candace Owens to Heinrich Himmler and his ilk. They are weak. Just as Alito is weak to lie about abortion rights and Jim Crow, the far-right is weak on this issue. The same people who hate African Americans, Jewish Americans, and Hispanic people hate cisgender women and LGBTQ+ people. So, attacking gay and trans people is a harbinger of how the far-right also desires to limit women's rights and those of ethnic minorities.

Between November 2014 and May 2015, I came to understand how many bisexual and pansexual women are abused. And the same, unfortunately, is also true for bi and pan men. While I'm not black and I don't identify as either of those orientations, I cannot express how upsetting it is to know that those folks are harmed. Regardless, I do feel that many people, if not most people, in Europe and the Americas understand these issues. But I can't say that about religious fundamentalists or certain politicians.

 

meanwhile in florida a nonbinary person was sacked for asking for "mx" title. floridain the US is like hungary in europe. a stain of shame.

 

@Lady_Belligerent It feels insufficient to merely 'like' your post once. Know that I'd hit that button a dozen more times if I could.

 

DeSantis and Republicans want to expand Don't Say Gay laws.

Includes banning on trans employees from saying they're trans.

And this "deeply held biological beliefs" sounds like a short jump to "deeply held racial beliefs."

 

My favorite provision is the part that bans discrimation against anyone who discriminates against anyone on the basis of their gender identity.

 

It's obviously a horrific bill, but it does seem like as written, it would mean that religious organizations couldn't require their employees to be religious or hold any particular religious views. So that'd be entertaining. I think a whole bunch of stuff they're opposed to could also be protected on the argument that they're deeply held biology-based beliefs. As they're not keen on science stuff.
"It is an unlawful employment practice for an employer to take adverse personnel action against an employee or a contractor because of the employee's or contractor's deeply held religious or biology-based beliefs, including a belief in traditional or Biblical views of sexuality and marriage, or the employee's or contractor's disagreement with gender ideology, whether those views are expressed by the employee or contractor at or away from the worksite."

 

I truly don’t understand why people feel so threatened by 0.001% of the population.

even if your main issue is the bathroom chances are you’ll never even run into a trans person in the bathroom or it might happen at most like 3 times in your life.

or and hear me out just build those 1 stall bathrooms that are gender neutral and put those throughout the building. It’s what my university does. Along with the bigger bathrooms with 4-5 stalls.

there problem solved. Or wait until you get home like a normal person.

there are a thousand ways around this issue. I know the bathroom is just a way these wackos find it easiest to discriminate. But you get my point.

my stats were a bit off trans people represent .5% of the population. My point still stands but adjust that to like 10 people over your lifetime.

 

Conservative liars: Transgender people groom children and they are threats.

First Congregational Church of Eugene: Asks me, as trans woman to volunteer for the children's ministry. No grooming of kids done. Just listening and making them feel welcome.