I thoughtfully volunteer for the thought experiment:
If I understand, you believe HyTran, as a proclaimed transexual (post-op?), is doing herself, and potentially, transexuals everywhere a disservice by not conforming to prescribed notions of gender based on her actions.
Putting aside for one moment issues of gender identification at all, if I understand correctly the entire purpose in transitioning, is to bring in line a persons body to their perception of themselves as a man or a woman. I would suggest that HyTran is doing that. HyTran is matching the body to the belief that she is, was, and will always be a woman. Therefore, if HyTran has completed the transition to her satisfaction, who are we to come along and question her committment or notions of what it means to be a woman?
There
are woman who like Star Trek, sound and talk like a man, dress in a careless ungroomed fashion, don't take care for their bodies in prescribed notions of beauty, who don't shave their legs, who are unattractive, who...
Now, I can't argue that HyTran might find more broad social acceptance if she took extra steps to ensure she "passed" to the best of her ability. But what exactly is HyTran recusant to? Where is the book of life that dicates how things should and shouldn't be? What standard of expectations are we measuring HyTran by? Yours? Mine? The fashion magazines? What the bigoted neighbor thinks? What Christians think?
If HyTran is happy, lives in an environment lacking in excessive hate-crimes, has friends, support groups, recreation, work, and laughs a few times a day, whose right is it to even question it? Maybe the bigot, religious, and uneducated feel obligated, but I hardly think it is the place of the apparently fragmented transgendered community to be handing out social dictums on how any individual
should be living their life. A happy HyTran in this case meets and exceeds her personal relationship with society, and more importantly with self and personal relationships.
For all intents and purposes, HyTran is now a woman, her kind of woman, the kind of woman she wants to be. The transition is complete, and as Steph suggests, she is no longer transexual, she is a woman.
On the other hand if HyTran is unhappy, constantly depressed and frustrated by a lack of joy, lack of friendship, and the painful object of reprobation because HyTran does not present effectively to any community, eschews chiding or advice from friends and community, and is otherwise just not trying to be participate at all within society, then HyTran has problems that extend much farther than whether or not the concept of multiple genders is acceptable. Even if HyTran created a worldview hinging on the validity of a gender spectrum, if HyTran is unwilling to acknowledge her role in society, and make appropriate changes at appropriate times, then HyTran will experience nothing but pain. And yet, I don't think the idea of multiple genders could possibly be blamed for the the end result of HyTran. Her worldview and powers for decision making would have been well formed long before the concept of gender was even an understandable topic.
In the scenario where HyTran is unhappy, maybe it is textbook delusion; at the very least it obviously isn't healthy. Nonetheless concepts of gender, hegemonic or rarified, are doubtful at the root of the problem; an excuse of some kind for some other shortcoming or deficiency in HyTran's mental state maybe, but not a cause.
Regarding Brianna's comment...
Quote
...transgender and transsexual don't belong in the same classification. I, personally, do not liken my own journey with that of the transvestites, and I don't wish to be corelated with them by society.
Strangely, or perhaps rationally enough, as an androgyne (until the term changes again) I do not liken my journey to that of a transvestite either. However, based on my understanding of gender, utilizing dictionary definitions, androgynes, transexuals, and transvestites are addressing gender issues that transcend or cross traditional views of birth-sex and cultural gender expectations. Based on this rationale, I can even stand by Steph's assertions that a transitioned transexual is no longer transexual, but I'm not sure how that escapes the idea of having been born transgendered, or how being transexual, especially pre-op is not a transgendered issue (again using only dictionary definitions).
Honestly I am not trying to argue or open a painful dialogue. On the contrary, by way of alleviating such frustration, I would appreciate some further explanation and basis for some of the comments that are being made in this post by a segment of the population, if not of a transgendered community, at least the community here at Susan's. Comments that some here, myself included, could perceive as incendiary instead of enlightening; I do not doubt some motive of good intention behind the comments or suggest them to be intentionally dissentious.
While the destinations and paths of the journey are without question different, by my understandings of transgendered issues, which admittedly I have clarified most by way of participation here, the impetus for that journey begins in a similar place. That place is some moment, usually very early in life, when you sense something just isn't right, isn't as people keep indicating it should be; and a long journey begins of understanding what it is, what it means, and what your options are.
For the transexual that same journey has a destination of acceptance and expression through physical transition.
For the androgyne it has a destination of acceptance and expression through naturalization.
For the cross dresser it has a destination of acceptance and expression through respite.
But each of them had that, oh too similar, frightening and/or freeing moment of realization that started them on that journey. We all make different choices for different reasons, and yet I have yet to see any reason to doubt that these people have more in common than not. I don't understand the ultimate needs of the transexual. I don't understand the ultimate needs of the cross dresser. Neither make sense for my circumstances, for how I was raised, for how I learned of my situation and potential options, for the desperate hoops I've forced my brain to leap, to find an answer that did make sense to me at the time I was capable and willing to make such decisions. And in the end I don't need to understand, but I can sympathize, try to understand, but I can't regret what are conscious decisions we all face.
If the subhead on this site means anything, and we who walk these halls are indeed standing at a crossroads of gender balanced on the edge of a sharp knife, then gender is a word every one here should be extremely famililar with; not for how it makes us different, but for how it brings us together.
