June 3, 2014. 9:12 am, Posted by: Jillian Page

It's nice to see the media in the United States putting more emphasis of the "T" in LGBT. Everybody (in the media) seems to be jumping on the bandwagon now that Time Magazine has decided to go with a cover story on Laverne Cox. Though I had to laugh at a statement in an article on Washington Post site: "And since the modern LGBT civil-rights movement got underway with the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969, the nation has gotten to know the L, G and B

More: http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2014/06/03/transgender-issues-the-hate-remains-the-same/

This quote from the article really bothers me:

QuoteIt's amazing how many laypeople out there think they know more about all of this than the scientific community does

Problem is that the scientific community has been so arrogantly wrong before, that they're really impossible to respect. Only a couple decades ago, gender was widely believed to be socially constructed, until some disastrous practices (such as giving infants sex changes) led to a reevaluation.

But regardless of whatever groupthink doctors and scientists are involved in they always are sure they are 100% right (until someone proves them wrong) and suffer no one to disagree with them.

No, the problem with the public's understanding of us is not that they distrust doctors and scientists.

It's that we aren't out there educating people. It's not up to the scientists to tell people about us. They're going to get it wrong. It's up to us.

Quote from: CandiceSkirvin on June 04, 2014, 09:42:16 AM
As a future MD I must tell you how very sorry I am about some of the ideas and actions of those before me.  Don't write us all off though.  The beautiful thing about science is that it never stops learning and adapting to new facts.

Science by its very nature is trial and error. Testing. Some people even people who say the only mistake you can make is not learning from it. end to not like mistakes made by other people. And if its not broke don't fix it. But they don't realise that what doesn't affect them can still be broke.

Its up to both, science and us as people to teach people.
Scientist need the trans perspective,
And trans need to pay attention to scientific discoveries.

I had a truly wonderful time last October speaking to a group of first year medical students at the University Of Southern California's Keck School Of Medicine.  The students there were very open, and in fact eager to get to know myself and the Trans* man who was my co-presenter as people.  I hope I will be invited back this coming year.  The topic was on how our medical providers had reacted to us being Trans* when we came out to them.  Both "J" and I had told them that we had had to train our doctors to work with us, but that where the doctors had the spirit of openness to new learning, it had been positive for all of us, no matter how frustrating it had been to the two of us Trans* folk in the beginning.