Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Third Sex: Illusion or Reality?
http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/content.php?nid=32770
Sadhana Ghimire

However, despite hundreds of historical examples about exceptions to these generalized sex identities, there are some humans who don't fall under the category of either male or female. Although it is said that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, these people are often deprived of some rights.

This is what happens when we are conditioned to only think in a two dimensional world.

LL&R

Maebh

I wish lawyers knew how to write in plain english instead of mucho bla bla bla to say simple things.

Quote from: Keira on December 23, 2007, 09:30:09 AM

I wish lawyers knew how to write in plain english instead of mucho bla bla bla to say simple things.

They know, but then how could they justify their inflated fees?

LLL&R

Maebh

I'm not sure that is all that legal stuff and not just a very bad translation.  The tone sounded more academic than legal, and it just might be that the way he or she wrote it just did not get a clear translation into English - which is not easy by the way.

I found it interesting that there is one person on this earth who can write something like that without judgment and with compassion.

I'm going to show this to some friends.



Rebis

QuoteSome organizations working for the rights of the people claim that they are neither male nor female. They say that these individuals are different than the general sex identities i.e. man and woman. They are somewhere in the middle, means, they possess characteristics of both men and women. Either they look like a man but behave like a woman or vice versa. The advocates claim that these people should be called the third gender (most commonly known as transgender) people who want to become a woman, despite being a man by nature, or a man despite being a woman by nature.

(emphasis mine)

It's true that in the Hindu world, "transgender" is taken to be automatically synonymous with "third gender (http://www.galva108.org/Tritiya_prakriti.html)." The phrase "neither man nor woman" is characteristic of Indian views of gender variance.

But not where I come from. I am a woman. I am not a "third gender." This is an important distinction.

About the style of language--the essay was written in South Asian English, which tends to strike us as stilted and unnatural, because English is learned in school as a second language there, not spoken as a native language. English language instruction in South Asia has long been structured on Victorian British models, like so much else over there.

The author also gets sidetracked by chromosomal intersex, and would like to seize on that as the universal explanation for transgender, and dismiss all else. These days you see lots of people struggling to understand our issues, but often based on ignorance or incomplete knowledge. I think the author has a problem with gays and wants to explain away homosexuality using intersex. Won't work. But the conclusion that we should be accepted as "real people" is at least a positive step, even if a bit condescending.

I think pretty simple. I don't believe in a third gender. I believe that there are two genders and that we are all a blend, either physically, emotionally and mentally. We all have certain traits that are more of the opposite gender and some are pretty equal in their traits. I don't see how we can clarify a third gender, where would you draw the line? How would you draw the line? Would it be genetics? Would it be physical? Or would it be emotionally or mentally or all of the above? Just how would you separate the third gender? That is why I believe in the blending of the two. We are all different, even identical twins are different. This is just my thoughts. While I was in Thailand I picked up a book about the third gender and read some of it while I was in the hospital. The way I looked at it was just a blending and that some wanted to have something different than others. We are all different but the same. We are normal human beings.
Sheila