Gender is Optional?

[Natasha]

Gender is Optional?

http://newsblaze.com/story/20100212114125nanc.nb/topstory.html
Nancy Morgan
1/12/10

Here in the U.S., the IRS ruled earlier this month that a Massachusetts woman should be allowed to deduct the costs of her sex-change operation. And in Portland, Oregon, there is a move afoot to have the city pay for the sex-change operations of any employees that decide they are unhappy with their gender. Hollywood is firmly on board, as they plan a new film about the world's first post-operative transsexual, starring heavyweights Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Over in Italy, the first prison for transsexuals is now open for business.

These cases represent the tip of the iceberg in the growing movement to make gender optional. When coupled with increasingly successful campaign to legitimize same sex unions via gay marriage, the result is an all out assault on the centuries old concepts of family and marriage.

[Muffin]

wow! I have goosebumps! ^_^

[PanoramaIsland]

Hey, it looks like a right-winger got the message! Yes, gender should be very MUCH optional. Too bad she's scared silly by the thought. Oh well...

[Legora]

Now I'm the first to say that gender is a pointless social construct that equates you biology to your behavior, but...

This does raise some worrisome implications.  Mainly I'm talking about prison.  I can't imagine literally any system that doesn't endanger transsexual people.  Let's imagine a "FtM" person who's committed a crime.  Firstly, do you count a pre-op person as transexual?  hat about someone who isn't living 24/7 yet?  Where do you legally draw the line?

Okay, let's say you've sorted that out.  You obviously can't put her in with the male prisoners, but you also can't put her in with the female prisoners either.  Bare in mind that she may be pre-op.  She may even have been convicted of rape, something that would not sit well in a female prison.  I want to stress that this is an extreme example, but given enough time, eventually anything could happen.

Okay, so those two options are out of the picture, what about keeping them in protective custody in an isolated area of a prison?  Well, that's functionally solitary confinement, a punishment.

Okay, so all that is out the door.  What about a transsexuals-only prison?  Well, IF you can figure out how to segregate the prisoners based on the many variations of transsexuality that exist, then in might work in some countries.  but in the US, most criminal law is conducted by the states, and so you would have to conduct at least 51 transsexual prisons (one for each state, and one for the Federal crime system).  And bare in mind that some of these states are tiny - they may only have a few dozen transsexual people, and none of them currently serving time.

So, uh... yeah.  I can ramble on for a bit... the point being that this is all a lot more complicated than it might originally seem.

[Silver]

Let's imagine a "FtM" person who's committed a crime.  Firstly, do you count a pre-op person as transexual?  hat about someone who isn't living 24/7 yet?  Where do you legally draw the line?

Okay, let's say you've sorted that out.  You obviously can't put her in with the male prisoners, but you also can't put her in with the female prisoners either.  Bare in mind that she may be pre-op.  She may even have been convicted of rape, something that would not sit well in a female prison.

Hmm? FTM or MTF?

[kyril]

(1) Why are you referring to your hypothetical FTM prisoner as "she"?

(2) In general, the best way to gender-segregate inmates is by their blood chemistry (hormonal sex) because to the extent that there are gender differences in how aggression is felt and expressed, hormones are largely responsible.

(3) That means that hormone treatment for GID - both initial and continued treatment - needs to be available in prisons, and transfers need to be possible once a hormonal transition is underway.

(4) That means that transitioning or transitioned FTMs belong in men's prisons - where they're going to need to be housed specially, probably with gay men and other vulnerable populations. Unfortunately the treatment of vulnerable populations in U.S. men's prisons is appalling, but to the extent that we find the present situation acceptable in general, there's no reason why FTMs in particular should warrant special treatment. We're not worth more than gay men.

(5) It also means transitioning or transitioned MTFs belong in women's prisons. I don't know if they need special protection, or if so to what extent. I do know that they shouldn't be segregated just to placate the prejudices of the cis women there - after all, we don't segregate women's prisons by race to appease the racists (I'll leave the men's prisons out of that discussion because sadly the U.S. seems to have major trouble keeping men safe in custody so almost everything has been tried).

[Legora]

Damn!  I got my terminology and pronouns wrong.  This is all so complicated...

I mean to be talking about someone born with a Y chromosome who self-identified as female.  I guess that's... is it "Mtf"?

[kyril]

Damn!  I got my terminology and pronouns wrong.  This is all so complicated...

I mean to be talking about someone born with a Y chromosome who self-identified as female.  I guess that's... is it "Mtf"?

OK. That's right, someone born with a male body who wants to transition/is transitioning/has transitioned to a female body/gender is a male-to-female trans person, or MTF.

[Legora]

OK. That's right, someone born with a male body who wants to transition/is transitioning/has transitioned to a female body/gender is a male-to-female trans person, or MTF.

Oh, I uh... hmm... embarassing.  I didn't realize those letters actually stood for something.  It seems... blindingly obvious now.  It... hmm... this is getting more awkward by the second... Sorry...

Here, the point I was trying to get across is that prisons are, you know... pretty dangerous places for the average person, let alone someone who the inmates picture as being of a different gender.  So... I mean, I don't have an answer as to what should be done, but I know that the current situation is... really dangerous.  See, I based a lot of what I wrote around a news story I read a while ago about a genetic man being kept in a women's prison because her legal sex had been changed on her birth certificate and it just... I mean, I was really worried for her.

And yes, this whole thing is a sub-problem of the larger issue of prison reform.  Transsexuals aren't by any stretch of the imagination the only populations in prisons that face violence.  If we could keep prisons safer, this would be much less of an issue, but... sometimes even I need to live in the real world and figure the stuff out.  And stuff...

[Dryad]

I don´t really know about US prisons, but from what I do know of the NL prisons, the ´dangerous place where guys become someone´s b*itch' is a myth fróm the US. It doesn't really happen in the NL. Sure; there are fights, and there is the occasional abuse, but it's not exactly commonplace.

This raises the question: Are US prisons really that dangerous? Or is it some kind of publicity stunt that looks good in the media, and is a system that tries to fear people out of criminal behaviour, much like the death penalty?

Also; as for the rape convicts: To be honest, the larger percentage of juvenile girls imprisoned in the NL, I thought it was 70% or something a few years back, was convicted for (causing) sexual assault on others.

Me; I think, at least in the NL, a separated prison for trans people is a bad idea. It's a step back to differentiate; it doesn't 'make gender optional;' rather, it enforces the belief of gender reparation.
Not only that, but you'll effectively have a prison with men and women tossed in together. Now, me; I don't really see a problem with that, as mostly, people just stick to their (walled) cells, anyway, apart from meal-time, work hours and social hours.
I do salute the other things, though! Yay for sponsored surgery!

[Legora]

I don´t really know about US prisons, but from what I do know of the NL prisons, the ´dangerous place where guys become someone´s b*itch' is a myth fróm the US. It doesn't really happen in the NL. Sure; there are fights, and there is the occasional abuse, but it's not exactly commonplace.

This raises the question: Are US prisons really that dangerous? Or is it some kind of publicity stunt that looks good in the media, and is a system that tries to fear people out of criminal behaviour, much like the death penalty?

Also; as for the rape convicts: To be honest, the larger percentage of juvenile girls imprisoned in the NL, I thought it was 70% or something a few years back, was convicted for (causing) sexual assault on others.

Me; I think, at least in the NL, a separated prison for trans people is a bad idea. It's a step back to differentiate; it doesn't 'make gender optional;' rather, it enforces the belief of gender reparation.
Not only that, but you'll effectively have a prison with men and women tossed in together. Now, me; I don't really see a problem with that, as mostly, people just stick to their (walled) cells, anyway, apart from meal-time, work hours and social hours.
I do salute the other things, though! Yay for sponsored surgery!

I'm no expert, and I've never been to prison, but my father has.  And as far as I can tell, they are fairly dangerous in the US.  I don't know much about NL prisons (that stands for Netherlands, right?), but I've seen a few documentaries, and in the US it does seem more social, with people being out of their cells for most of the day in a common cellblock, or in the yard for a little while.  Maybe they're not all Oz (have you seen that?  good show), and it does vary from state to state and prison to prison, but overall it's not pretty.  Firstly, if I remember correctly, we have the largest incarceration rate of any country on the planet, and there is a huge prison overpopulation problem.  Prison guards are often not very well trained, and not very well supervised.  White prisoners, homosexual inmates, sex offenders, etc. are usually in the greatest risk of abuse and rape.  Again, I hate talking in broad terms because someone always jumps down my throat, so just know that it does vary a lot within the penal system.

[Muffin]

"Gender is Optional?"

I thought that an individuals gender is fixed? And that the issue with TSs is that we feel we have a gender and sex that do not match and the assigned gender at birth was an unfortunate mistake that needs to be addressed.
So really we don't change the gender at all.. the only thing optional is telling someone that you were assigned the wrong gender at birth, and that you require to change your sex to match it???

Also that movie with nicole kidman, I read that book a few years ago and... well ...(spoiler alert)in the book she was intersexed yet in every blurb about it they mention she's transsexual. So yeah the book pretty much towards the end focuses heavily around the fact that she IS intersexed during the time she undergoes surgery. So I'm not sure if they will edit that or what. Or have people coming away from the movie confused about the differences between intersex and transexualism. Shall be interesting to find out for sures!