I was quite surprised when I was recently told about someone living in the north of the Netherlands, a child of Jehovah's Witnesses, that was born and raised in the faith as a boy and then a few years ago while in her mid twenties became a woman. The surprising thing: Her congregation is actually accepting her as a woman! She even goes door-to-door like they all do. From what I heard did the leadership in the USA sent a letter to the local congregation which was read durring one of their meetings and from that point on she was to be considered a woman by the congregation.

Does anyone else have other surprising examples of acceptance in unlikely places?

I think it was Iran, Iraq or some other predominately Muslim country that is okay with transwomen but not with gay men.  If I'm remembering correctly, if you're gay, you could be put to death, but if you're MTF and have had SRS, they are okay with it.

Julie, I believe that it was Iran who has this. I remember reading this sometime last year. hin

Iran gives gay men the choice of SRS or death.  I wouldn't say that's acceptance by any means, nor is it pro-trans as it is forcing a sex and gender opposite of what someone might be (forcing gay men to become women is not pro-trans).  Forcing someone to transition is no different than denying someone the ability to transition.

Acceptance means that people can live as who they are.  For trans-acceptance, it means people can live as the sex and gender as they choose/desire/are-born/etc.

Those people are not okay with trans people, it's simply legal there. But I'm sure you guys are aware of that.

Quote from: Slanan on April 07, 2012, 12:29:54 AM
Forcing someone to transition is no different than denying someone the ability to transition.

It's way worse.

Anyways, I did watch a Youtube video about a Mormon family who allowed their little daughter to transition. Also, a person on here had her Mormon church tell her that she was doing nothing wrong and that her transition was perfectly fine so long as she didn't, A) sleep with guys, or B) Get the SRS surgery.

Didn't the UK in the past also have a policy that gay men where forced to become women? I believe this is what drove Alan Turing to kill himself?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_indecency

Edit: I updated link to a (slightly) more reliable source.

Surprising choice of suicide. An impregnated apple could certainly be left by a third party. Drink cyanide would be quicker I think.

We do have to be cautious about the past and how 'things' were treated differently. For divorce in the UK until the 60's (?) one party had to demonstrate in a court of how the other party was being unfaithful in often a variety of grotesque or salacious situations that were the food of a particular newspaper. The News of the World. Recently closed down for reporters hacking into phone networks. It never had a fine history, it was always putrid IMO.

As for gaoling homosexual men, I don't think homosexuality was a crime between woman, it was used to destroy many men who were seen as outspoken in society. It is still used in Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia to destroy political rivals.

Quote from: Artemis on April 07, 2012, 02:22:16 AM
Didn't the UK in the past also have a policy that gay men where forced to become women? I believe this is what drove Alan Turing to kill himself?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_indecency

Edit: I updated link to a (slightly) more reliable source.

He wasn't being forced to be a woman, the drugs were intended to reduce his libido. We can surmise, from that, what we wish. But it's wrong to judge the past on the standards of the present.

My parents thought they could make me a man, in the 50s and 60s, by beating me up. They believed, as most people did, that it was their responsibility, as parents, to raise their sons to potentially serve in the armed forces.

That didn't make them or anyone else, bad people. It made them normal people for their time.

An additional complication, in the Turing case, is that, from at least the 30s, till the 60s, there were a number of prominent, upper class men, educated in Cambridge, holding governmental positions, who were flamboyantly homosexual. Many, as it turned out, used their behaviour to hide activities that were detrimental to the western powers. I believe that the reason the Soviet Union managed to build their first A Bomb was because of such a betrayal by a Cambridge educated, upper class ****. Philby, Burgess and MacLean.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five

It's not uncommon, in the UK, to hear people referring to those who go to Cambridge University as Poofs and Spies.

Quote from: Cindy James on April 07, 2012, 02:36:20 AM
As for gaoling homosexual men, I don't think homosexuality was a crime between woman, it was used to destroy many men who were seen as outspoken in society. It is still used in Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia to destroy political rivals.

One of the main laws being used to jail people during the time of Stonewall in NYC was a law that required the wearing of "appropriate" gender clothing.  You had to wear at least three pieces of masculine clothing if you were male, three pieces of feminine clothing if you were female.  Obviously that hurt trans people, but also was used against gay and lesbian people.  Women did get in trouble for being lesbian.

(EDIT: In fact, it was a woman being arrested for being a lesbian that was the trigger point for the Stonewall riots)

As for Turing and spies: There were plenty of straight traitors, but straight people weren't banned from government service.  (part of that was the chicken and egg problem - justification often was that if you had something in your personal life that could get you arrested, that could be used against you by a foreign agent, through blackmail)  Sadly, Turing was about as far from a traitor as someone could be - and could have continued to make huge contributions to society if the laws just let him be.  Finally the drugs used on him had permanent effects.  They didn't make him a woman, but did have a permanent effect.  It's a pretty shameful thing.

Quote from: Slanan on April 07, 2012, 08:15:20 AM

As for Turing and spies: There were plenty of straight traitors, but straight people weren't banned from government service.  (part of that was the chicken and egg problem - justification often was that if you had something in your personal life that could get you arrested, that could be used against you by a foreign agent, through blackmail)  Sadly, Turing was about as far from a traitor as someone could be - and could have continued to make huge contributions to society if the laws just let him be.  Finally the drugs used on him had permanent effects.  They didn't make him a woman, but did have a permanent effect.  It's a pretty shameful thing.

At the risk of hijacking this thread, the issue was the times.

The issues are complicated by the numbers of upper class English people, including our monarchy, who were (are) sympathetic to nazism. Whether we like it or not, Stalan was a nazi as much as Hitler, as much as a substantial part of the British aristocracy.

But as I said, the issues are actually quite complicated, not least because of the enormous amounts of fabrications and nonsense which have been used over the years, to create impressions. (Has anyone noticed how China is suddenly quite a nice place. One or two examples of repression, but we discover that people there are not all automatons, wandering around mindlessly brainwashed. Meanwhile N Korea remains a bad place and strangely, it's  become almost as bad as anti-semitism to criticise the US. What a funny old world we share).

Still, all good for a laugh. 

Most people sharing a prejudice during a time in the past doesn't make them right.  It might make it understandable, but not right.  Slavery in the US was "understandable" and accepted by too many during the time it was practiced, but definitely not right, then or now.  I agree that most Germans in WWII, most whites in the USA south during the era of slavery, and most people in England who supported government rules against gays, along with numerous other people who played a part in various sad chapters in history, are not necessarily "bad" people.  But the actions were bad, regardless of whether the people themselves were good or not.

As Gordon Brown stated in the official apology for Turing's actions, delivered sadly too late in 2009, "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly. Over the years, millions more lived in fear in conviction. I am proud that those days are gone and that in the past 12 years this Government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan's status as one of Britain's most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality, and long overdue."

I'd add "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."  I agree you can be good and do nothing, but I also agree that it's better to stand up for others.

Quote from: ~RoadToTrista~ on April 07, 2012, 02:14:03 AM
Also, a person on here had her Mormon church tell her that she was doing nothing wrong and that her transition was perfectly fine so long as she didn't, A) sleep with guys, or B) Get the SRS surgery.

That's not acceptance.  The whole "don't sleep with guys" part shows they view her solely as a man.

Quote from: Slanan on April 07, 2012, 09:39:52 AM
Most people sharing a prejudice during a time in the past doesn't make them right.  It might make it understandable, but not right. 

Sadly, there we will need to disagree.

The past is for understanding, not criticism. Actions can be criticised, based upon the standards of the day, but that is not the same thing.

The intransigence of the 18th century British toward the American colonists, which resulted in the revolt of 1776 was stupid then. It is now.

Sad, though slavery was, it was also a fact of life for many people, going back thousands of years. African slaves were mostly obtained from African leaders. Most European slaves, the Slavs, from whom the word slave originates, were simply unable to defend themselves.

The slavery that continues today, in Saudi Arabia for example, and many parts of Africa are part of the local culture. It remains to be seen how the future looks back on these current obscenities.