Most insidious, we use the same language that opponents of transgender people use, carelessly referring to women who are trans as having \u201cmale genitals\u201d or being \u201cborn with a male body\u201d or being \u201canatomically male.\u201d This language is both factually wrong and dangerous.<\/p>\n
There is plainly no one type of body that we could accurately label a \u201cmale body.\u201d<\/p>\n
At birth, we classify infants as male or female based solely on the appearance of their external genitalia. Notably, this classification serves population control and surveillance and not medical purposes. The medical experts I have spoken with could not identify a single medical purpose for assigning sex at birth and explain that the components of sex are far more complex than just external genitalia and include, at least, chromosomes, genes, hormones, internal genitalia, gender identity, and secondary sex characteristics. By embracing a narrative that one is born with a \u201cmale body,\u201d we reinforce the idea that only the bodies we assign male at birth\u2014\u200abodies that have medically normative penises\u2014\u200aare male.<\/p>\n
But that simply isn\u2019t true. It is a choice to refer to some bodies as male and some bodies as female, not a fact. Our genital characteristics are one component of who we are and do not define, medically or biologically, our sex. . . .<\/p>\n
I was assigned female at birth, but I have never had a female body. If it takes longer to convince the world of that than it would to simply say that I was born with a female body but am now male, I am invested in that longer path, because ultimately we will all be better off when we can challenge the idea that our body parts define us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As usual, Strangio then takes the small percentage of the population born intersex to make a generalized, universal, claim \u2014 that because there are exceptions to this general rule, the rule itself doesn\u2019t exist. \u00a0(What next? \u00a0There\u2019s no such thing as \u201crich\u201d and \u201cpoor\u201d because some people are middle class and fit in neither category?)<\/p>\n
The very notion that classifying people as \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cfemale\u201d is about \u201cpopulation control and surveillance\u201d is bizarre. \u00a0It is of medical significance to treat individuals with the capacity for getting pregnant differently from those with the capacity for impregnating others \u2014 and fairly foolish to abandon a word that is descriptive of this difference. \u00a0Even in childhood, it is relevant to note whether a child is \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cfemale\u201d as development is monitored. \u00a0In other areas of life (among them, competitive sports), it is important to distinguish between individuals of a chromosomal type that means their adult bodies are, in general, significantly larger and more muscular, vs. smaller and less muscular. \u00a0Why would we abandon the use of the words \u201cmale\u201d and \u201cfemale\u201d to describe these categories of people?<\/p>\n
What Strangio is proposing simply, to define \u201cfemale body\u201d as \u201cthe body of someone who, at that point in time, identifies as female,\u201d doesn\u2019t just defy common sense; it renders the words without meaning. \u00a0The word Orwellian is overused, but, if anything fits that label, this is it. \u00a0And Strangio\u2019s side is, right now, winning the political battle.<\/p>\n
Clarification: \u00a0I\u2019ve written on transgender issues before. \u00a0Except for a small minority, humans can be classified as \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cfemale\u201d by their chromosomes and physiology; the remaining small percentage are legitimately indeterminate and intersex. \u00a0Commenters claiming that my statment means that\u00a0a woman with a masectomy or a hysterectomy is\u00a0no longer a woman are deliberately missing the point. \u00a0I\u2019ve said in other posts that I recognize that for most advocates of \u201cidentity\u201d as the determinant, they believe that identity is shaped in a real way by one\u2019s brain, so this is just as real and \u201cphysiological\u201d as anything else. \u00a0What\u2019s more, the recognition of an individual who has undergone a hormone regimen and the relevant cosmetic surgery, as having \u201cchanged sex,\u201d is a legal construct, not a \u201ctrue fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
All this aside, transgender advocates are taking things to a wholly new level in denying that \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cfemale\u201d has anything to do with physiology.<\/p>\n
UPDATE: \u00a0Here\u2019s another article, from Buzzfeed<\/a>. \u00a0A transgender individual, identifying as a woman but without any of the relevant surgery, called up a salon for a Brazilian wax, then filed a complaint when the tech refused to do the job, seeing as how the salon only provided genital waxing services for women, and considered the male anatomy to require training their techs didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\nKaren Parker, a researcher at La Trobe University, booked a Brazilian wax at Brazilica, in Brunswick, as a birthday present to herself in October last year.<\/p>\n
However, when the waxer saw Parker had not had sex reassignment surgery, she immediately said it wasn\u2019t possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said \u2018Let\u2019s get started\u2019, I took the towel off, she looked at me in horror,\u201d Parker told BuzzFeed News. \u201cI felt really humiliated.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No surprise, I guess, but a Slate author, Chase Strangio,\u00a0went further than I\u2019ve yet seen towards making the assertion that whether one is male or female has only to do with how one identifies, and nothing at all to do with one\u2019s physiology. Most insidious, we use the same language that opponents of transgender people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-4825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-transgender"],"yoast_head":"\n
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