Why do some feminists hate transgender people?

[Gromit]

People get upset/disturbed discussing some things they care about. So fucking what, you smug cunt?

Reported.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Reported.

Aren't you a "smug cunt", then?

 

[stethoscope]

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Reported.

Thanks for the six or so frivolous reported posts. Have a temp ban.

 

[Vintage Paw]

I wrote this in another thread a couple of weeks ago. I'm not editing it for the context of this thread because I'm ill at the moment and don't have the energy. Anyway:

I saw a thing a while back, talking about the science that shows identifiable differences between male and female brains. Rather than saying "HA! told you there's a biological difference" it looked at how we know brains to be plastic, and how brains change due to the things we do -- they're not set in stone when we come out of the womb, they develop over time. Specifically it looked at how boys are encouraged to engage in certain types of play, and girls in others. Encouraged not just through one specific thing, like a teacher saying "you're a boy, you go play with that" but rather a whole host of things from familial reinforcement, branding and marketing, peer pressure, etc. It's never just one thing, it's a huge messy web of many.

Anyway, boys were seen to be doing more things like block work, and girls were doing more stuff around dolls. (This is broadly - there will have been overlap, differences, outliers, etc, as well as other activities, I'm just mentioning two in particular.) As a result, brains will develop in relation to those tasks and activities. It's not hard to see how from that we get the idea that boys are good with spatial awareness and girls are good at creativity. They well might be, generally - but because their brains were trained to be like that. But that tendency towards being good at certain things gets used as essentialist proof that boys and girls are biologically hardwired to be different from the get-go.

We don't understand the extent to which -- to use simplistic terms but ones that everyone understands -- nature and nurture interact, but it becomes increasingly clear year after year that it's not a simple either/or, but a complex interaction between the two.

It's not enough for feminists to say "gender is a construct" because it oftentimes ignores the biological reality of brains seemingly being wired in different ways within gendered groups. And likewise it's disingenuous to say "boys and girls are inherently different, the science says so" because it ignores the feedback loop of nature-nurture influencing each other.

I understand (don't agree with, but understand) the fear some feminists have around trans issues because of how it makes 'gender is a construct' far more difficult to talk about, especially when that has been the primary argument against sexism. But that isn't solved by telling trans people they're wrong, or by holing yourself up in some essentialist notion of gender -- because not only are you throwing an entire group of people under the bus, you're misrepresenting the science, and you're undermining your own bloody arguments about gender construction to begin with (gender is a construct; I as a woman have a unique experience that men can't understand; my body codes me in a certain way and I am disadvantaged in society because of that; there's nothing inherent about being a woman; I am a woman and you are not).

Far better to be open about how there's a lot we don't understand, and find better ways to tackle sexism that embrace everyone rather than clinging desperately to one argument that doesn't actually fully realise the ways biology and society interact and constitute each other. Even if it means having to do the very hard work of developing a more nuanced and complex understanding of something that has worked quite well for feminism so far.

---

The important bit is the last two paragraphs. In this context you can even substitute "essentialist notion of gender" with "essentialist notion of sex" because they are both constructed positions.

When Thora or whoever says there's nothing innate about gender but I am a woman and you are not, that's shaky ground. Premising it all on the body means nothing, because we code men and women's bodies according to patriarchal notions of gender.

This is an excellent article (that I actually read after I'd first posted the above): Get mad and get even

I'll quote part of it in length:

A few weeks before I went to the conference, a student petition emerged from Cardiff University calling for the cancellation of a lecture on twentieth-century feminism to be given by Germaine Greer. The petition’s author, Rachael Melhuish, objected to Greer’s beliefs concerning transgender people: ‘Greer has demonstrated time and time again her misogynistic views towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and denying the existence of transphobia altogether,’ it reads.

Greer responded to the petition on BBC Newsnight: ‘Apparently people have decided that because I don’t think that post-operative transgender men are women, I’m not to be allowed to talk,’ she said. ‘I’m not saying that people should not be allowed to go through that procedure, what I’m saying is it doesn’t make them a woman.’

In the ensuing debates, much of the conflict concerned whether calling for Greer’s exclusion from the university constituted a threat to freedom of speech and, more broadly, whether the current culture of campus feminism is oversensitive or censorious. Commentators who disagreed with her views on the ontology and political valence of trans people’s genders mostly didn’t enter into explicit arguments about why, instead pointing out the obvious reality that trans people are subjected to severe discrimination and violence, and that Greer implicitly endorses the beliefs by which transphobic violence is normalised and excused. That is, they took issue with her opinions in a functional capacity, rather than directly engaging with them.

This was a pity, because teasing out the threads of ideological disagreement between Greer and the petition-signers is thoroughly illuminating if you can stand the sound of people shouting at each other from across a 45-year gap. Greer’s belief that surgery can’t ‘turn a man into a woman’ and the biological essentialism to which this commits her, is not just a hallmark of Second Wave feminism, but the very basis on which it sought to build a common movement. It’s not some wacky metaphysical conceit she and many other feminists of her era happen to believe for no reason; it is, or historically was, invested with a tremendous amount of productive and positive meaning that made feminism possible as a project. Whatever criticisms of seventies feminism are warranted (I won’t go through them because I don’t have all day), it did achieve substantial progress for many women, partially enabled by this belief.

The burden of reproductive labour that has characterised women’s oppression—sexual availability, pregnancy, birth, childrearing, housework, the constant threat of rape and assault—arises, on this account, directly from biological causes. It’s not hard to see why the existence of trans people poses a challenge for Greer; if she accepts trans women as women, her account of the material basis for female solidarity—biological sex—is extinguished. Her rejection of the legitimacy of trans identities is therefore a sort of cipher for fears about the stability and cohesion of the ‘women’s movement’ as a whole.

Of course Greer is seriously misguided with respect to her specifics. Biology means nothing in a vacuum; only the forces of culture and society intervening on biology can be said to produce any meaning at all, including oppression. ‘Female bodies’, which she defines as bodies capable of pregnancy and birth, only become the instrument by which women are subjugated when patriarchal social forces, the class interests of men, act to produce this state of affairs. This might seem an insignificant point, but it really is crucial. When Greer refers to women’s biology, she is referring to a constructed set of meanings that are produced by oppressive social forces. By reifying these meanings, she implicitly accepts a model of women’s bodies that is created by and serves the interests of patriarchy.

Similar oppressive forces shape the meaning of trans women’s bodies, and produce trans misogyny. That’s why it makes complete sense for non-trans, or cis, women to take trans women at their word regarding their identities: what we all have in common is that our lives are shaped by the operation of sexism. Cis women’s occupation of an inferior spot within the gendered hierarchy is also the only thing that we all have in common. It’s class all the way down.

When Greer says trans women aren’t women, she is policing a line of demarcation she perceives as the enabling force of collective struggle. Unfortunately, what her words effect is an attack on nascent forms of solidarity she doesn’t understand.

This is one of the reasons feminism is in trouble. Parts of it are refusing to expand to include more of what we understand to be shared struggles, things that bind us together. And why? Because doing so would mean having to rethink some tactics and strategies that actually worked quite well in the past. But they were shortcuts. They didn't address the totality of what happens when we engage with gender and sex. And to some extent, that's fair enough - you can't arrive at a final enlightened point before you've been through the work of getting there... but we're making strides towards getting closer now. Why resist? Fear? I can understand fear. But that excuses none of this. Especially not the vitriol and hate that is spewed at trans and other non-binary people. Because they threaten the apple cart? No. What threatens to undermine the fight against patriarchy is refusing to engage with ALL the ways patriarchy acts on all types of gender expression, all gender identities, all biological sexes, and to understand a shared struggle.

 

[Vintage Paw]

That article isn't all about Greer, btw.

It's a very good piece on the limits of and problems with liberal feminism in general. Long but worthwhile read.

 

[revol68]

I think Greer's position is rather seductive. If I thought that gender identity was purely a product of social conditioning then I too would not be able to take gender dysphoria seriously. I might well think that people are free to do what they want with their bodies and that they should be treated equally (which I think is Greer's position anyway). But I would think that either transgender people have been brought up atypically (possibly "wrongly" if you want to be judgemental) or that they are motivated by superficial desires such as attention seeking. You can't fault her consistency.

I just reject the idea that gender identity is purely a product of social conditioning.

Same with sexual identity.

What utter drivel, firstly not all trans people agree with the gender dysphoria narrative, rejecting the idea of "being trapped in the wrong body" as regressive and fundamentally a cop out that functions to actually reinforce gender typing and determinism, basically it's easier for a brutally gendered society to accept someone transgressing those divisions if it can be put down to some sort of medical condition, which is a large part of the reason Iran performs so many sex change ops.

The second point is that it is totally possible to reject gender dysphoria as a "medical" condition and to take seriously those who are experiencing it but understand it is a fundamentally social condition, brought about by a transgressive disconnect between your identity and the identity your body is expected to map to. To argue against medicalisation models is not to make the experience any less real, you wouldn't argue that depression is any less real just because it is brought on my social factors. The idea that rejecting such a model leads to the assumption those experiencing it are faking it or looking for attention is ridiculous, there is more to this world than things being a whimsy free choice or biological, unfortunately our society hanging on the threadbare ideology of an impoverished individualism finds itself yo-yoing between determinism and deliberate rational choices. You can see it in the response to depression, in order to accept it as a real thing but protect our alienated social relations from any kind of critique it instead jumps to medicalise it, to make it an illness in a biological sense, the "alternative" position being the "snap out of it" type, as such it's hardly surprising that those suffering will seek solace in the medical approach in so much as it absolves them of guilt and blame. Apparently the idea that depression is real but in large socially produced must remain off the shelf.

 

[revol68]

oh and it's also perfectly reasonable to oppose medicalisation models and support the right of individuals to have "gender realignment" (a misnomer in my opinion) as perfectly rational response that can help them navigate a heavily gendered world.

again it's rather like opposing the medicalisation of huge swathes of depression and the pushing of anti depressants as the answer and at the same time recognising that anti depressants can also be of great help to individuals in getting through a depressing world.

Why some rad fems are so brutally opposed to trans folk is beyond me, it certainly goes beyond intellectual disagreement, and frankly the idea that trans women are just wolves in sheeps clothing out to colonise women's space is batshit. On the otherhand the shrill outrage at the likes of Greer is fucking daft, as is the willingness of some third wavers to embrace gender as some self affirmitive thing is just shitting on over a century of feminist struggle and theory.

 

[Knotted]

What utter drivel, firstly not all trans people agree with the gender dysphoria narrative, rejecting the idea of "being trapped in the wrong body" as regressive and fundamentally a cop out that functions to actually reinforce gender typing and determinism, basically it's easier for a brutally gendered society to accept someone transgressing those divisions if it can be put down to some sort of medical condition, which is a large part of the reason Iran performs so many sex change ops.

The second point is that it is totally possible to reject gender dysphoria as a "medical" condition and to take seriously those who are experiencing it but understand it is a fundamentally social condition, brought about by a transgressive disconnect between your identity and the identity your body is expected to map to. To argue against medicalisation models is not to make the experience any less real, you wouldn't argue that depression is any less real just because it is brought on my social factors. The idea that rejecting such a model leads to the assumption those experiencing it are faking it or looking for attention is ridiculous, there is more to this world than things being a whimsy free choice or biological, unfortunately our society hanging on the threadbare ideology of an impoverished individualism finds itself yo-yoing between determinism and deliberate rational choices. You can see it in the response to depression, in order to accept it as a real thing but protect our alienated social relations from any kind of critique it instead jumps to medicalise it, to make it an illness in a biological sense, the "alternative" position being the "snap out of it" type, as such it's hardly surprising that those suffering will seek solace in the medical approach in so much as it absolves them of guilt and blame. Apparently the idea that depression is real but in large socially produced must remain off the shelf.

Don't disagree but I think it is reasonable to judge people who are affected by social conditions. Actually not just reasonable but necessary.

 

[toggle]

oh and it's also perfectly reasonable to oppose medicalisation models and support the right of individuals to have "gender realignment" (a misnomer in my opinion) as perfectly rational response that can help them navigate a heavily gendered world.

nods



the terf position is absolutely not about the rejection of gender roles, but also the willingness to sacrifice a group of vulnerable people on the altar of their own power structures (the more feminist than thou shall be the speaker for all women and this crap they spout that somehow i'm going to learn how to aggree with them if i just read the right text - catch the religious parallels there. they are the self appointed ecclesiastic of feminism)

but yes. even if they are right in their perception that trans existence would go away if all gender differentiation went away, what happens to those folk in the meantime? sacrifice their right to find their own peace with the world on the alter of a goal that none of us have a chance to ever see happen in our lifetimes and is probably not possible without doing away with sex differentiations. reading some of the criticisms of white feminism and this shit exemplifies the reason that so many spent so long believing feminism was not for them. the one size fits all doctrine, the solidarity for those whose face fits.


if we as feminists can't engage with the idea of protecting people that as a group are more vulnerable than us, people who ID as women (because their argument is always about trans women, not any other forms of trans) then we need to pack up and go the fuck home. because we're not worth shit if we do that.

 

[revol68]

Don't disagree but I think it is reasonable to judge people who are affected by social conditions. Actually not just reasonable but necessary.

Well that's a stupidly broad statement, I mean I can't disagree with it but it's pitched at such a level as to make it meaningless in regards to this discussion.

I mean I oppose restrictive gender roles and arguments that seek to reify them yet at the same time I clearly have to navigate the world as a socialised individual and not a living political tract, that means that with all the best will in the world I can't help but be part of their reproduction to some extent, much as a worker I clearly an involved in reproducing capitalism, whilst I'm obviously opposed to it.

This is half the problem with the whole debate, it is personalised to the point where disagreement is seen as invalidating peoples very being, there is no recognition of the necessary gap between the political discussion and judgement of individuals. Personally I'm not interested in asking people to justify themselves and how they choose to live. I don't think it anymore appropriate to question a trans person about their decision to transition than I do to start lecturing men who watch football or do other "gender normative" things, it's fucking rude for a start. On the otherhand if some guy in a pub started going on about how he was naturally born to like football or that it's cos "that's what men do innit" or someother essentialist shit, then yeah I'd take issue with their argument because the argument isn't about the reality of their love for football it is about them essentialising that in a reactionary manner.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Hello revol!

 

[bimble]

Why some rad fems are so brutally opposed to trans folk is beyond me, it certainly goes beyond intellectual disagreement, and frankly the idea that trans women are just wolves in sheeps clothing out to colonise women's space is batshit.

I think the argument in the article above & what Vintage Paw is saying is solid, and is the way forward, but also think there's an obvious problem with it that might explain why some feminists (including me) might struggle in this area.

The argument is that this whole gender thing is nothing but a class issue.

Ok. But if you agree with that (and I do) then isn't there an obvious difficultly that comes along with that?
Remember the outrage and loathing about Rachel Dolezal ?
It's not a million miles away far as i can see.
Basically, what if some members of a long oppressed group / class are naturally going to struggle with the full acceptance of people who are apparently choosing to leave their position as part of the oppressor class in order to join it?

It's something I've been pondering in a different but maybe not entirely irrelevant way:
I grew up as a Jew in an environment where that was a very oppressive difficult shitty thing to be (I was the only one at my school & suffered lots of serious antisemitism). Now, decades later, I know a guy who grew up in a C of E english family and for reasons which he can't explain to me converted to judaism a few years ago.
It's not easy to do that - he went through circumcision, as an adult (ouch) and he did the exams you have to do, it obviously means a lot to him. Possibly it means more to him than it does to me but in a totally different way.

Anyway, instead of just being happy for him that he's found this thing that feels right for him, and even though I am the most rubbish Jew you could ever meet (am totally disconnected from anything at all to do with the religion or the community) I will probably never be able to accept him as part of my imagined community / class of oppressed jews, of which I had no choice but to be a part. Because he's chosen to join what I perceive as an oppressed class, and I didn't choose it (and neither did my grandparents who were rounded up into the camps etc)- I just can't accept him as 'one of us', whatever that means.

So if gender is a class issue, as that article says it is, as in fact feminism says it is, then maybe it's understandable that some women will feel the need, right or wrong, to police the borders.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

On the otherhand the shrill outrage at the likes of Greer is fucking daft, as is the willingness of some third wavers to embrace gender as some self affirmitive thing is just shitting on over a century of feminist struggle and theory.

I liked this post up to this point. Greer's history does not excuse her for now being wrong. This is not being 'shrill', it is calling out nonsense on stilts.

 

[revol68]

I liked this post up to this point. Greer's history does not excuse her for now being wrong. This is not being 'shrill', it is calling out nonsense on stilts.

I don't think she is wrong per se, I think she has a point, I think she doesn't articulate it very well and it's stupidly personalised but there is a kernel of reason in it and screaming transphobe at her is a dumb response. She is atleast vaguely consistent in her feminist politics, the thirdwavers who embrace gender as a self affirmitive thing are a bigger issue, they are the neo liberal face of gender essentialism.

 

[revol68]

also I hate the pathetic safe space student twats more than Greer who can atleast make an impassioned rant rather than a passive aggressive whinge.

 

[toggle]

yep. by that logic, i'm a shrill to criticise Fawcett's imperialism, pro militarism, racism and classism, because she was a figurehead in the suffrage campaigns. it is entirely possible for us to consider that someone who achieved something interesting in one facet of feminism can be talking out of their arse in others. i know that there's a belief that by opening up the door to criticism of the ideas of influential feminists, we negate their achievements, that we also open the door to discussion of rolling back feminism, but we don't have to set up heroes on pedastals who can do no wrong. and i think that we loose a great deal by rejecting critical discourse.

 

[revol68]

Hello revol!

hey!

 

[bimble]

It's shit that all discussion ends up being all about Greer herself / free speech instead of actually talking about the issues raised.
As Vintage Paw 's link says

"Greer’s belief that surgery can’t ‘turn a man into a woman’ and the biological essentialism to which this commits her, is not just a hallmark of Second Wave feminism, but the very basis on which it sought to build a common movement. . .

Get mad and get even

 

[littlebabyjesus]

also I hate the pathetic safe space student twats more than Greer who can atleast make an impassioned rant rather than a passive aggressive whinge.

I'm not defending them. Dunno if you saw in this thread or another the attack that was made on Peter Tatchell merely for signing a thing in support of the right for Greer to speak. No that's crap - the right to a 'safe space' being translated into the right 'not to be challenged'. They can fuck off with that.

 

[spanglechick]

I think the argument in the article above & what Vintage Paw is saying is solid, and is the way forward, but also think there's an obvious problem with it that might explain why some feminists (including me) might struggle in this area.

The argument is that this whole gender thing is nothing but a class issue.

Ok. But if you agree with that (and I do) then isn't there an obvious difficultly that comes along with that?
Remember the outrage and loathing about Rachel Dolezal ?
It's not a million miles away far as i can see.
Basically, what if some members of a long oppressed group / class are naturally going to struggle with the full acceptance of people who are apparently choosing to leave their position as part of the oppressor class in order to join it?

It's something I've been pondering for quite a long time in a different but maybe not entirely irrelevant way:
I grew up as a Jew in an environment where that was a very oppressive difficult shitty thing to be (I was the only one at my school & suffered lots of serious antisemitism). Now, decades later, I know a guy who grew up in a C of E english family and for reasons which he can't explain to me converted to judaism a few years ago.
It's not easy to do that - he went through circumcision, as an adult (ouch) and he did the exams you have to do, it obviously means a lot to him. Possibly it means more to him than it does to me but in a totally different way.

Anyway, instead of just being happy for him that he's found this thing that feels right for him, and even though I am the most rubbish Jew you could ever meet (am totally disconnected from anything at all to do with the religion or the community) I will probably never be able to accept him as part of my imagined community / class of oppressed jews, of which I had no choice but to be a part. Because he's chosen to join what I perceive as an oppressed class, and I didn't choose it (and neither did my grandparents who were rounded up into the camps etc)- I just can't accept him as 'one of us', whatever that means.

So if gender is a class issue, as that article says it is, as in fact feminism says it is, then maybe it's understandable that some women will feel the need, right or wrong, to police the borders.

I don't think you can equate what Dolezal or your Jewish friend have done with people who are trans. You keep using the word "choice". Trans isn't choice. Even revol's argument doesn't claim that.

 

[bimble]

I don't think you can equate what Dolezal or your Jewish friend have done with people who are trans. You keep using the word "choice". Trans isn't choice. Even revol's argument doesn't claim that.

Yep I was expecting that riposte at the very least.
I didn't use the word choice as in 'they just felt like it, like a consumer choice or voluntary thing. That bloke whom I can't accept as a jew underwent painful surgery, and lives according to strict rules, it wasn't like he just chose something off a shelf for a laugh.
My point was simple: If women are an oppressed class, and have been for 99 % of forever, then it may be understandable that the borders for those born into the oppressor class joining that oppressed class are policed.

 

[toggle]

It's shit that all discussion ends up being all about Greer herself / free speech instead of actually talking about the issues raised.
As Vintage Paw 's link says

"Greer’s belief that surgery can’t ‘turn a man into a woman’ and the biological essentialism to which this commits her, is not just a hallmark of Second Wave feminism, but the very basis on which it sought to build a common movement. . .

Get mad and get even

wheras to counter greer, it's entirely possible to have lived through second wave feminism and have come out of it trans positive or to change their minds.



The TERFs

So now I want to be unequivocal in my words: I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of “masculine” or “feminine” and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression

wre can then move onto

Work with transsexuals, and studies of formation of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes.[/B] That information threatens to transform the traditional biology of sex difference into the radical biology of sex similarity… Every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions.

or

Male dominant society has defined women as a discrete biological group forever. If this was going to produce liberation, we’d be free.… To me, women is a political group. I never had much occasion to say that, or work with it, until the last few years when there has been a lot of discussion about whether transwomen are women… I always thought I don’t care how someone becomes a woman or a man; it does not matter to me. It is just part of their specificity, their uniqueness, like everyone else’s. Anybody who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is a woman.

so we have women who changed their minds, or who say they were never anti trans, but just it wasn't discussed for a long time, or who were talking openly about gender as a continuum not a binary in the 70s. but somehow greer's (and other terf) fundamentalism is what becomes representational of what is very clearly a much more diverse group of women.

 

[bimble]

^ "women is a political group. ..I don’t care how someone becomes a woman or a man..Anybody who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is a woman."

yep. I like that, and agree with it. I was just trying to say that if we are going with that - the idea that being a woman is nothing to do with having a womb - its about being a member of a political group, an oppressed class, then it is totally understandable that there will be some resistance and confusion at the borders.

 

[spanglechick]

Yep I was expecting that riposte at the very least.
I didn't use the word choice as in 'they just felt like it, like a consumer choice or voluntary thing. That bloke whom I can't accept as a jew underwent painful surgery, and lives according to strict rules, it wasn't like he just chose something off a shelf for a laugh.
My point was simple: If women are an oppressed class, and have been for 99 % of forever, then it may be understandable that the borders for those born into the oppressor class joining that oppressed class are policed.

But your friend did make a choice. A conscious decision, no matter how seriously felt or severe in its consequences. Transgender people are no more making a choice to be their gender than you are.

Yes, they may seek medical transitioning, but ieven that isn't much of a choice - any more than taking medication for a chronic coNdition would be.

 

[bimble]

Transgender people are no more making a choice to be their gender than you are.

I am struggling with that, exactly. A couple of weeks ago I learnt that one of my cousin's kids (aged 14, americans) is just starting out on transitioning from female to male. I know I've got confusion in this area but still feel this thing, that she (what's the word for cousin's kid?) is now a he is totally fine and unproblematic for me but that the other way around is confusing. I know it's not totally coherent but I think if you're going with the gender is nothing but class oppression stance then you might to well to acknowledge it as an issue, at least just now, at this time of unprecedented change.

 

[spanglechick]

I am struggling with that, exactly. A couple of weeks ago I learnt that one of my cousin's kids (aged 14, americans) is just starting out on transitioning from female to male. I know I've got confusion in this area but still feel this thing, that she (what's the word for cousin's kid?) is now a he is totally fine and unproblematic for me but that the other way around is confusing. I know it's not totally coherent but I think if you're going with the gender is nothing but class oppression stance then you might to well to acknowledge it as an issue, at least just now, at this time of unprecedented change.

Issue? Arguably. Choice? Nope. That was my point. People insisting on using the word choice to refer to the state of being transgender are bigots, imo. And bigotry should always be challenged.

 

[spanglechick]

Also, the child in question is your second cousin. And ffs, is not a "she".

 

[bimble]

Also, the child in question is your second cousin. And ffs, is not a "she".

Ok. I'm a bigot. I asked my second cousin (thanks for that) about that on the phone last week and they said that "she' is correct / preferred for now, btw.

 

[spanglechick]

Ok. I'm a bigot. I asked my second cousin (thanks for that) about that on the phone last week and they said that "she' is correct / preferred for now, btw.

In that case "he" from your post is the incorrect. You said "she is now a he". The grammar of that suggests to me "she" also is the present tense state. Since you already had the knowledge that he still prefers feminine identifiers, I'm at a loss as to why you brought "he" into it at all.

And imo, it's only bigotry if you insist on using the word choice after knowing its offensive and not grounded in any evidence.