Our tabloid culture is out of control.

P.T.Barnum would be proud…

I’ve known a few transgendered people. Sure, I sometimes accidentally slip up on the pronouns, but I attempt to respect their wishes. I figure getting the wrong pronoun on a transgendered person would be like people calling me “she” or “her” my whole life, even though I’m male. It would be distracting, saddening and infuriating.

And for the women who see this as some sort of hatred of women (Soran Suleiman, for one), you could not be further from the truth. I’m left-handed. I’ve always known this; One could say I identify as a left handed person. This doesn’t mean I find something wrong with the right hand, or right handed people, it’s just something in my brain setting up a random preference to one side or another.

On the other (murder) post, a commenter from Canada said he felt like he was looking at an alien planet. I completely understand his feelings. It’s an odd feeling so out of place in my country of birth, and on the 4th of July weekend, too.

Also, I used to work with a woman who had Frasier Syndrome. She was born with all the female parts, but had XY chromosomes — making her genetically male. She wasn’t a transgender person. She considered herself all female and did not look like, nor want to be surgerized into a man.

Women have babies all the time. This one just prefers not to think of herself as a woman. It’s pretty silly, but that’s between her and the therapist.

“I would think that referring to this woman as a “man” because she’s had her breasts removed is terribly offensive to women who have lost their breasts to cancer.”

Seriously? Number one, we don’t refer to him as a man just because his breasts were removed. We refer to him as a man because that is how he prefers it. Number two, have you asked any women who have had their breasts removed if they find this offensive? I asked my grandmother what she thought. She lost both her breasts to cancer. She thought I was nuts! After all, they are two completely different situations! One is a lifestyle choice, the other is from sickness.

I sympathize. Have you ever heard one who is still troubled even after their alterations?

I have. Many times. Every time I do I can’t help but think that gender isn’t the only problem they are facing.

And it is heart wrenching. I don’t enjoy other people’s pain.

And while you slam me for being intolerant, I note that you are so tolerant of my fondness for truth that you wish agony on my children. The epitome of tolerance! As is often the case with those who feign moral superiority.

Fortunately, your wish has been denied. One grown son who is quite happy in his manly skin.

You want me to accept a falsehood.

I want you to accept a fact.

Eliminate the shame of being gender confused. Or gender flexible. Eliminate the shame of being one gender over another. Then you needn’t worry over misused pronouns. There would be no agony involved. Folk could simply declare themselves flexible. Or confused. Or in extreme drag.

I see no conflict between being honest and being sympathetic.

People what is wrong with being a female? Is it sign of being weak? Is it a shame? Is it a sin? Why should we change our gender?

I also would like to repeat the following sentence:

“I would think that referring to this woman as a “man” because she’s had her breasts removed is terribly offensive to women who have lost their breasts to cancer.”

My child can put on a cape and pretend he’s superman, and I might indulge him for a while. But if he’s 30 and still running around with a cape? Then I think it’s time for reality to set in. No more pretending.

Let’s start treating these people like adults.

On another note, I don’t think this guy had any reason to broadcast his story all over the news and milk it on every talk show for so long, I think it was unnecessary and just made a spectacle of the transgendered community.

What offends me is the twisting of language into lies that we are expected to believe because of some psychobabble and self esteem issues.

This person can call herself anything she wants. I knew a nut who thought he was an alien deposited on Earth to save the world. But he wasn’t. He was a nut.

The media and society should not indulge these nuts.

Reality is that this person was born a female and no amount of hormones or language twisting can change that. Her chromosomes are female, therefore she is female. A female in extreme drag. (Do they call it drag when it’s a woman?)

Gender is not a choice, it is a fact of nature. As are all the natural mutations between one gender and the other.

How we behave within that gender is another matter. And how we, as a society, treat or judge people who behave differently is an important issue as well.

This woman’s choice isn’t one I would have made. And that’s okay with me. Obviously, she’s free to do this and the technology is there to help her.

But please, let’s be honest with the language.

A woman who looks like a man gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

I wish them and the child luck.

I wish we would all learn that labels and language is there to identify things and express thoughts. Not twist reality.

L

Too bad it’s a holiday weekend; probably take a while for this post to get the burial it so terribly deserves.

Now I can just point and go blam! Furthermore no-one has a right to question or be offended by my digit-assignment.

As for this particular birth. Good for them. I wish them all the happiness in the world. However, I have to agree that it’s not that big a deal. If he had been born a man and had a kid as a man, then I would be impressed.

I could be wrong, but I think that’s what happened.

As filangieri mentioned, sex and gender are two very different things, a fact of which most people seem to be blissfully unaware. It’s really not that complicated, though. Nor is it that hard to respect those whose sex and gender may not overlap exactly perfectly as you think they should.

This person seems to want to eat the cake and have it too.

The hype centers on the person’s gender as it relates to the pregnancy, as though this were a biological miracle.

Biologically, however, this is a female. As such, there is nothing amazing about the pregnancy. No more so than my getting breast implants, shaving my beard, calling myself a woman and ending up in the papers for producing sperm.

Live and let live, but let’s stop purporting this to be the impossible made possible.