The paper that was written for one is transphobic in and of itself. It was written with a very clear and specific intent of giving transphobic people a published paper to try and act like there’s controversy on the subject of gender dysphoria. There really isn’t, it’s much like global warming, it’s real and this is something written specifically to muddy the waters and harm trans people.
The websites the author chose to run a survey on are also transphobic havens, all of them are full of transphobic people trying to harm and denying our existence; or worse trying to find ways do directly harm us. The author would have to be extremely ignorant to not be transphobic. I find that very unbelievable that the author would be that ignorant.
So there’s a few things here, for one when asked to stop using a term the person using the term needs to right away. The person using the word isn’t entitled to an explanation, or reason, or education from the person asking as well. Trans folks have to constantly justify their existence, day in and day out. Educating people gets tiring, especially when there are resources like GLAAD and other educational resources out on the web. I can say for myself that my patience wears extremely thin on having to do this so much.
From what you’ve written, even “gender” isn’t so much the problem as the expectations that other people hang on them. I say we just ditch all the ridiculous roles and let our individual freak flags fly!
I agree that you don’t owe anyone anything. It is helpful if you are offended by something for the person to know why they caused offense. But clearly something you are not required to do. That being said, I appreciate the time you have taken to do so in my case.
One other thing for me is I don’t speak in terms of offense, I will usually talk in terms of hurt and harm in things like this. One other thing to keep in mind that often in asking for explanations of why something is harmful forces the person harmed to relive some or all of the harm done. This is one of the reasons harms never get reported. A few days ago at work one of my coworkers did something that severely hurt me. I couldn’t get myself to explain that I was hurt and why because I just couldn’t deal with the pain of revisiting it all again.
I completely get the point that sex is not equal to gender, as made by several people here. And agree with it. That does not mean that the two are unrelated, however.
Coincidentally, I was listening to the recently discussed Joe Rogan podcast today, and the relationship between sex and gender was discussed in depth. http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/bret-weinstein-heather-heying
Certainly worth listening to, whatever your politics.
