What is the proper way to interact with a transvestite/ transgendered person?

[meetmehere]

Well then you you and your family will have to hide in a cave. Does transsexual fall under your umbrella definition of queer? One my transtition to feame gets in geer and full time, I’m not hiding from the world like some would like me too.

why should i be the one hiding in the cave, maybe they should hide in a cave, and maybe they will stop having such a bad influence on my family.

 

[tbcrawford]

We are ALL God’s children irrespective of gender, race, faith or any other thing.No-one should judge us except our Blessed Lord.We are commanded to love one another.
As I have stated much earlier in this thread…the proper way to interact with anyone is …hello my name is…
God bless

 

[meetmehere]

yah no one should judge except the lord, then how come transvestites judged the lords actions and then tryed to change those desicions with normally horrible results

 

[tbcrawford]

yah no one should judge except the lord, then how come transvestites judged the lords actions and then tryed to change those desicions with normally horrible results

It is entirely up to each of our own consciounces as to how we behave so as I have said no-one but The Lord should judge.If others judge The Lord that is between that person and the Lord.
God bless

 

[meetmehere]

omg are u dense. he was born a guy and wanted to be a girl, thats goin against the lord. i bet u would tell the guy who lilkes dragons thats cool too. what is this world coming too

 

[JaneGrey]

omg are u dense. he was born a guy and wanted to be a girl, thats goin against the lord. i bet u would tell the guy who lilkes dragons thats cool too. what is this world coming too

Who are you to call anyone anything? Read your posts. She is not going against the Lord. It is not God’s fault she was born that way, but she needed to change it. Going by your logic are you saying its wrong for people born with illnesses to underog surgery and other measures to correct it? Please learn to open your mind.

 

[aspawloski4th]

why should i be the one hiding in the cave, maybe they should hide in a cave, and maybe they will stop having such a bad influence on my family.

You must not think well of the intellegence of your family then. Or think someone like me is all powerful. If your family memeber can think for themselves you don’t have a worry. If I and other like me were all powerful getting helth insurance to pay for our care wouldn’t be like pulling teeth, and my type would have a 70% unemployement rate or a 50% suicide attempt rate by age 20. If we were all powerful there wouldn’t have been cause for the day of rememeberence vigil I went to last night for the 99 transsexuals murdered in the last year for just merely being who they are. The public dmoain is everybody’s not just yours!

 

[aspawloski4th]

Ultimately you treat a transsexual just like you would anyone else. Thats all we ask.

 

[milimac]

From Rene Descarte to “Chaz” Bono

 

[erinnamarie]

Although I do believe in loving yourself the way God has created you, I also believe freedom.

I have questioned whether I can call myself a true Catholic because of some of my modern opinions. I have many homosexual friends. And although I do not agree with their way of life, it is their life and not mine. No matter the race, color, gender, or sexual orientation… these people are still people.

Love each other as you wish to be loved.

A few of my homosexual friends did not confess their orientation to me until well into our friendship. What was I supposed to do? Stop being friends with them because of the way they chose to live their life?

God bless and best wishes for the new year

 

[victorthomas]

Treat a person the way he or she presents.

This thread could go back and forth forever regarding the morality of transitioning, but there are a few practical things to keep in mind:

1. You don’t know the person is in fact trans, as someone pointed out before. Imagine the insult you would delivering if you started treating a biologically female woman as a man!
2. If she is indeed a transsexual, then she went through a lot of soul-searching to get to the point where she is now – that is, presenting herself as a woman in public. It is not your place, as an apparently casual acquaintance, to deny the conclusion that she certainly pondered (and yes, maybe even prayed about) long and hard before reaching. Using masculine pronouns in an attempt not to feed into her “delusion” isn’t going to make her “snap out of it.”
3. If she is trans, and you notice, that doesn’t mean that everyone else she interacts with notices as well. It would be contrary to basic principles of dignity and respect to out her to other people by calling her “he” or “him.” All it will accomplish is to make her uncomfortable, make you look like a fool or a jerk (depending on how well she passes), and confuse people who may not realize she is trans, and therefore who you are talking about. Depending on who’s within earshot, it could also put her safety in jeopardy.

Ultimately, Church teaching is neither clear nor definitive in its approach to transitioning from one mode of gender expression to another (there is nothing in the Catechism that directly speaks to this issue). Even a sub secretum Vatican document about sex change operations (which she may or may not have had) states that they can be justified when there is a probability that such a surgery will “cure” the “disorder” – and many, many studies have found that transitioning does in fact improve the lives of trans people. Christopher West (see article linked to above) and others can argue that the body is the final determinant of sex AND gender, but psychology (good, reputable psychology, I might add) takes a more nuanced approach based on the reality that some people have a gender identity that does not match their physical sex.

We are constantly learning, in all branches of science, that God has made our world more complicated than we realize. Transitioning may someday come to be seen as something positive – rather than thinking that transsexuals are “correcting a mistake that God (supposedly) made,” we may come to see that they are embracing their situation, given intentionally and lovingly to them by God: born into a body that implies a gender role that does not fit them, they are given the unique call to transcend gender boundaries, and in the process to tacitly teach us all something about courage and authenticity.

 

[JaneGrey]

Treat a person the way he or she presents.

This thread could go back and forth forever regarding the morality of transitioning, but there are a few practical things to keep in mind:

1. You don’t know the person is in fact trans, as someone pointed out before. Imagine the insult you would delivering if you started treating a biologically female woman as a man!
2. If she is indeed a transsexual, then she went through a lot of soul-searching to get to the point where she is now – that is, presenting herself as a woman in public. It is not your place, as an apparently casual acquaintance, to deny the conclusion that she certainly pondered (and yes, maybe even prayed about) long and hard before reaching. Using masculine pronouns in an attempt not to feed into her “delusion” isn’t going to make her “snap out of it.”
3. If she is trans, and you notice, that doesn’t mean that everyone else she interacts with notices as well. It would be contrary to basic principles of dignity and respect to out her to other people by calling her “he” or “him.” All it will accomplish is to make her uncomfortable, make you look like a fool or a jerk (depending on how well she passes), and confuse people who may not realize she is trans, and therefore who you are talking about. Depending on who’s within earshot, it could also put her safety in jeopardy.

Ultimately, Church teaching is neither clear nor definitive in its approach to transitioning from one mode of gender expression to another (there is nothing in the Catechism that directly speaks to this issue). Even a sub secretum Vatican document about sex change operations (which she may or may not have had) states that they can be justified when there is a probability that such a surgery will “cure” the “disorder” – and many, many studies have found that transitioning does in fact improve the lives of trans people. Christopher West (see article linked to above) and others can argue that the body is the final determinant of sex AND gender, but psychology (good, reputable psychology, I might add) takes a more nuanced approach based on the reality that some people have a gender identity that does not match their physical sex.

We are constantly learning, in all branches of science, that God has made our world more complicated than we realize. Transitioning may someday come to be seen as something positive – rather than thinking that transsexuals are “correcting a mistake that God (supposedly) made,” we may come to see that they are embracing their situation, given intentionally and lovingly to them by God: born into a body that implies a gender role that does not fit them, they are given the unique call to transcend gender boundaries, and in the process to tacitly teach us all something about courage and authenticity.

Amazingly well said.

 

[Zoe_Brain]

From Rene Descarte to “Chaz” Bono

A complete refutation of the thesis.

 

[Zoe_Brain]

Transgender, Transsexual, Transvestite (aka “Crossdressers”):

Note that many Transsexual people, and virtually all Intersexed people, object vehemently to being included in the “transgender umbrella”. But other people get to define the word, they don’t. They have no say at all in what others call them.

http://lgbt.studentaffairs.duke.edu/images/transgenderumbrella.gif

 

[PaulinVA]

A complete refutation of the thesis.

Zoe, could you please spell it out? I don’t see any relationship in the article you posted to the article written by Christopher West.

One is talking about a rare physical defect called male pseudohermaphrodism. The other is talking about a mental issue that causes someone to refuse to accept the sex they were born with.

Are you saying they are the same?

 

[Zoe_Brain]

The thesis is the unchangeable soul’s sex is set by the bodily appearance at birth.

And thus that the body cannot change naturally, as that would require the unchangeable soul to change.

Any change to the body has to be man-made, and is thus merely superficial, an interference with God’s Natural Order…

The refutation is that the body can and does change naturally in some cases. If it happened only once in the whole of human history, that would be enough for disproof. Either body and soul are distinct, or sex of the soul is mutable.

There is another refutation, just a bit more complex.

If one states that Intersex conditions are exceptional, that if a physical, biological condition is different from a psychological one, then one has to prove that Transsexuality has no biological basis, at least on the balance of probabilities. That it is at least probably wholly psychological. That Transsexuals do not have any body parts of the opposite sex in their natural state.

All of the evidence is to the contrary, viz:

Neuroimaging Differences in Spatial Cognition between Men and Male-to-Female Transsexuals Before and During Hormone Therapy by Scoening et al J Sex Med. 2009 Sep 14.

Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypothalamus activation when smelling odorous steroids by Berglund et al Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(8):1900-1908;

Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041

Sexual differentiation of the human brain: relevance for gender identity, transsexualism and sexual orientation. Swaab Gynecol Endocrinol (2004) 19:301–312.

A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality. by Zhou et al Nature (1995) 378:68–70.

A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity by Garcia-Falgueras et al Brain. 2008 Dec;131(Pt 12):3132-46.

And several hundred other papers on the subject.

In short, the evidence is that Chaz Bono always had a male BSTc Layer in the Hypothalamus, a male Left Frontal Gyrus, a completely male Lymbic system, and for all we know, may even have the 46,XY chromosomes most men have.

e.g.

“A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.”

• J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Jan;93(1):182-9

He was Intersexed, with a body partly male and partly female. He just looked superficially female at birth. Just as those men in Gaza did. They had a natural change to align their brains with their bodies - Chaz had to have medical treatment to accomplish the same process.

The Theology of the Body as regards sex is a perfect description of 59 people out of 60. For the 60th… not so much. And for 1 in 1000, one must twist the theory into pretzels to try to coerce it to fit biological reality.

It was once argued that Theologically speaking, the Sun had to orbit the Earth, and in a perfect circle. Then it was argued that OK, the Sun didn’t orbit the Earth, and the circles had “epicycles” in, perfect circles within perfect circles (within perfect circles within…). That had to be the case, because of Theological reasons.

Keppler showed the orbits were elliptical, just very close to being circular. By then., the Church had stopped serious attempts to coerce observations of reality into fitting theological dogma.

I think that maybe we might do worse than return to the compararive enlightenment of the 17th century here.

 

[milimac]

1. You don’t know the person is in fact trans, as someone pointed out before. Imagine the insult you would delivering if you started treating a biologically female woman as a man!

Good point. However in the original post the possibility of the person revealing their situation as a transvestite (or trans-something) could become known. If I do not give this person the common cultural greeting of a kiss on the cheek, I do not mean it as an insult. Perhaps there are differences between the various trans-situations as well.

1. If she is indeed a transsexual, then she went through a lot of soul-searching to get to the point where she is now – that is, presenting herself as a woman in public. It is not your place, as an apparently casual acquaintance, to deny the conclusion that she certainly pondered (and yes, maybe even prayed about) long and hard before reaching.

I wouldn’t deny that deep soul-searching or praying occurred. But that in itself does not make an action right or wrong (some people soul-search and pray and then abort their unborn child). The question is how to be be truthful and charitable at the same time.

Your point 3 gets at the crux of the problem, but I still have to believe there is a way to both act according to the truth and to be charitable. It’s one thing to refrain from using gender pronouns so as not to cause undo hurt or embarrassment, but quite another to knowingly use them incorrectly. I tend to think that there must be at least some objectivity in gender, and that it’s not purely subjective.

I suppose if it was revealed, then I would have to let “her” know that there are some cultural expressions that I would not be comfortable with. The tricky situation would be if a friend or relative that was more close to “her” was the one who revealed the secret, which I think would be the more likely scenario.

 

[Jermosh]

How do you know the sex of the person? Just becuase they have masculine looks does not mean they are a male or female. Inter-sex births are not that rare, and the parents usually make the decision without really know what sex the child is going to grow up as.

So I think its perfectly fine to adress them as they want based on the fact that you do not really know or understand them or their gender situation.

 

[Zoe_Brain]

Perhaps there are differences between the various trans-situations as well.

HUGE ones!

The fact that you’re aware that there are different trans situations puts you far ahead of the pack. A Transsexual woman may look less feminine than a transvestite man, or even a gay drag queen, and an Intersexed woman even less so, despite having given birth, but they’re quite different.

The best thing to do is treat them the way they present. Not only is it kind, it can prevent many embarrassing and hurtful mistakes.

Zoe

 

[victorthomas]

I wouldn’t deny that deep soul-searching or praying occurred. But that in itself does not make an action right or wrong (some people soul-search and pray and then abort their unborn child).

I agree that prayer before an action does not make that action right or wrong. However, I think you missed the point of the last two paragraphs in my post. Church teaching on abortion is clear. Church teaching on transitioning is unclear. You thinking that an action is wrong does not make it wrong. The fact that you do not understand or agree with someone’s conclusion doesn’t mean that they reached the wrong conclusion, no matter how genuine or faithful a position you’re coming from.

I still have to believe there is a way to both act according to the truth and to be charitable.

I’m not sure that there is, given that you’ve decided to define the “truth” of a person as the anatomical characteristics he or she was born with. There is a good amount of evidence indicating that there are physical differences between transsexual and cisgendered (i.e., non-trans) people, which supports the notion that gender identity, even when it doesn’t match physical sex, is not “entirely subjective.”

If I do not give this person the common cultural greeting of a kiss on the cheek, I do not mean it as an insult…I suppose if it was revealed, then I would have to let “her” know that there are some cultural expressions that I would not be comfortable with.

I think you need to really ask yourself why you’re so uncomfortable giving her the same greeting you would give other women. Kissing her on the cheek doesn’t mean that you’re gay, if that’s what you’re worried about. And anyone who thinks that it does and gives you a hard time about it, doesn’t understand the situation. If, after an honest self-appraisal, you just can’t bring yourself to treat her like other women, I guess you can tell her why (if you know for sure that she’s trans), but please, please, please, do it privately and tactfully. Understand that it can be very painful for some people of trans experience to be faced with others who refuse to affirm their gender.

I think that the truly charitable way to interact with this person is to bring yourself to a place where you can honestly be open to the possibility that God is working through her in ways that you don’t understand, just as he works through all of us in ways that we don’t understand. Her soul-searching doesn’t necessarily make her transition right, but your not agreeing with it doesn’t make it wrong. If a man gets ordained, and you don’t think he was really being called to the priesthood, would you refuse to call him “Father”?