Old Thunder
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I wouldn't say it's a "maladjustment". Gender dysphoria has been classified as a disorder given that people who suffer from it are outside of the societal norm and most people never have that. I can tell you from personal experience that it's something hard to understand until you actually start to question yourself. But it's not a negative disorder in and of itself. The "cure" for it is going through with transitioning to the extent that you feel satisfied with. For some, that's transitioning to a woman or man - one or other side of the gender binary. Others, which fall under the non-binary identity, have different approaches, like:I do feel trans people have some psychological maladjustment, which manifests itself in their abnormally high depression and suicide rates. This is not to deny their humanity, it’s a serious condition and I wish them Godspeed in getting help.
I don't understandone girl on YouTube posted she doesn’t identify as male or female, she’s a thing. And that strips all the humanity from her, and that’s what she wants to be addressed as. To complete the deal, she shaved her head and painted her face so grotesque there is little semblance left to being a female.
Except the parts she was born with.
That's a common mistake a lot of people make. "Being trans is like wearing blackface." "What if I was transracial?" You're right, race isn't malleable (regardless of how much Ariana Grande tans herself lol). If you're white, you're white. If you're black, you're black. But the concept of race is something that we made up based around people's skin colors, and reinforced it with millennia of oppressing people who didn't look like us. It's due to that reason that we consider blackface to be racist, because it's a white person making themselves look like a black person and taking on the negative stereotypes of black people as an implied punchline. They're black and I'll make fun of them for being black.I’m still trying to come to grips with all this.
It was deemed ridiculous when Elizabeth Warren, who had 1/126 Indian blood, still tried to pass herself off as a woman of color.
That would be like me passing myself off as black. No way, no how, could I ever pull that off. How absurd would it sound if I said I identify as black, but white was the race assigned to me at birth? Something like that isn’t malleable.
Therein lies the conflict with trans people.
But while gender is also a concept we made up based around the biological sexes, being a trans person does not mean you're dressing up as a woman or man to make fun of them. You're transitioning so that you feel at ease within yourself. Gender identity is inherent just as your birth sex is. And just as your race is. The issue is that people conflate sex with gender. The two are not the same. Sex involves the body parts you were born with, your chromosomes, and how your hormones interact with your body. (And sex is a spectrum just as gender is, given that intersex people exist.) Meanwhile, gender encompasses how you feel about yourself, how society sees you and how you want to be viewed by society. Having an ovary is a female sex characteristic; wearing a dress is a female gender norm.
So where blackface is negative because you're making fun of a group of people, being trans is just something you are.
And again, I don't actually believe that Chappelle is transphobic on a personal level (other people disagree with me). I think he just said a lot of things that reinforce trans stereotypes and can potentially harm trans people. I certainly hope that The Closer doesn't do that, but given that it's already been weaponized by right-wing bigots in response to the outcry from the left, it makes me very concerned.Again, I wish trans people all the support in resolving their conflict before anothe one takes their life.
I’m not trying to defend or excuse Chappelle, but I really have to think how malicious was his material.