Lack of News

[leora]

Random commenters on the internet are transphobic. This revelation should shock and surprise nobody. Some other random commenters on the internet were not. But anyhow, being annoyed by the bigotry, I did the futile thing of responding. In the process, I wanted to re-dig up a link I'd read before. It took some doing, so I thought I'd share it, and

Comments

[leora]

No, it's purely about sex and kudzu. But it has some fascinating information about the ways people can vary, and I think it'd get too long if it tried to cover too much, and become a bit unfocused. It does talk about how one man one woman laws will force some people to legally only be allowed to have same-sex marriages and may nullify some existing marriages.

[kirinn]

+1/Like/etc.

Most binaries in the world are oversimplifications, I find.

[leora]

Very true.

[elenbarathi]

That word 'transphobic' always throws me for a loop at first sight - my brain wants to interpret it as fear of transit, transition, transportation, transformation, etc. rather than 'fear of trans-gendered people

[leora]

Oh yeah, I can see how your mind would go to transit. And I agree with you. Historically, marriage was originally the right of the people. You could marry yourself and your partner together by joining hands. I think it was a mistake to give marriage away to any organization, although people who are religious certainly have the right to make their personal marriage be held according to their beliefs and rituals. But I'd like neither the state nor the church to have marriage, but to give it back to the people. And for religions to keep having whatever authority individuals choose to give them, and for the state to enforce contracts, which is a big part of its job. And if I make a contract with someone that we are sharing our assets or have power of attorney for each other or so forth, then the state can enforce that.

[elenbarathi]

Exactly - give marriage back to the people; let everyone define for themselves what it means, and the whole problem is solved.

The current standard marriage isn't even a 'contract' in any reasonable sense. Two people make lofty but vague and unenforceable vows to each other, "to love, honor and cherish, forsaking all others, till death do us part", with the whole unspoken cultural tradition of 'marital rights' thrown in - the assumption that the woman is granting permanent exclusive rights to the sexual use of her body in exchange for protection and support for herself and her children

[beth_leonard]

*nod*

I had no idea how many chrosome-expression mis-matches there were. And the IOC gave up gender testing because it was too complicated! Thanks for the link.

--Beth

[leora]

I hadn't either. I hadn't really thought about it, and I knew there were some unusual situations that came up, but I found it interesting to read through a bit about so many of them. There's a lot of variation out there.