Quote from: comatose on August 25, 2011, 06:47:50 AM
By the way, I don't like children and I don't understand why anyone would want something like that, but that's my personal opinion and very offtopic.
i think this is the problem with the discussion you're having here. If you don't like and don't want kids of your own, how could you understand that someone else would go through an unpleasant, complicated time to have them. For your information, pregnancy is equally annoying for many, many women going through it - it's not like if you're a woman you like being pregnant, it's not like that at all. It's about wanting to have kids - it's about the "result".
Someone who doesn't understand the wish to become a parent judging others who do have that wish is like my mom who always wanted to be a woman judging my wish to be a man. It is very natural for her not to understand why anyone would want to go through all the ftm-related troubles when "living life as a woman" is the preferable option in her mind. It is very natural for you not to understand why anyone wold want to go through all the ftm-pregnancy-related troubles when "living life without biological children" is the preferable option in your mind.
We ask others to respect us, pretty much asking "I know my problem isn't yours, and I know you can't relate to this in any ways. But please don't judge what I'm doing with my life, because I need to do this to be happy, or make peace with myself." I think we should grant this same "don't judge" to those whose motifs we may not understand. And this goes beyond trying to understand the motifs of an ftm if your mtf and vice versa.
Thomas Beatie's wife, by the way, could not get pregnant, that was the first thing they tried
While I'm not a big fan of people going public with their lives, in general, I am inclined to believe he may have had the same desire to show that there are alternative ways to lead your life out there and that these are just as "right" (or wrong, at times) as the "common way" to live. So he's not so far from Balian Buschbaum (the dude that keeps talking about his phalloplasty on TV) or Erik Schinegger (the intersex guy who once was a women's world champion skiier).
As for your comment on transsexuals who "like" their female parts being transgender, but not transsexual - there are so many therapists out there who tell their ftm patients to try and "redefine" their parts as "male" (since it is a part of a male body, because an ftm is male, and thus it's a MALE body part), in order to enable them to have a sex life.
Also, I am guessing you're European, and that phalloplasty is covered by insurance where you live, but that's just a guess, correct me if I'm wrong. Because e.g. in the U.S., unless you are very lucky, you may never (or not for many years) be able to afford bottom surgery, so the "trick" to define your parts as male, whatever their outer appearance may be, is actually a vital step for many people.
As an ftm, I think it is a very bad idea to say "you are not truly this and that because you don't have this and that feature" - "you are not an ftm because you don't hate your womb" (wtf, i don't even see my womb, why would i hate it?), is not very different, in its reasoning, from "you are not a man because you can't ejaculate/don't naturally have male testosterone levels/because your penis and chest are the work of a surgeon/etc.)".
Ftms are men by their own definition. We are men because we define ourselves as men, whether we still have or always will have or no longer have a vagina and whether we have made peace with out body parts or loathe them does not matter. If it were not for our own definition, there wouldn't be any ftms. We do not "become" male because others judge our decisions or our looks to be male. We are male because we feel so and say so.
unrelated side note: while i am not and probably never will be a seahorse, i am sympathetic to seahorses, because they don't adhere to the most fundamental biologistic principal, and they don't even care.
