A Few Minor Points...

I screwed up yesterday...

After noticing Elizabeth's post on Notes From the T Side I made the mistake of thinking she had gotten over her little snit fit, and might be willing to put stuff behind us.  Not even close.  I don't know what it is, but some early transitioning transsexuals, at least ones who transitioned back in the Sixties, seem to have some major insecurities.  The classic example, of course, is Suzan Cooke.  Granted Cooke has gone full tilt as a transgender apologist, apparently deciding the ego strokes she gets from the men in dresses bunch is worth it.

I can understand having some identification with a possible early transitioning transsexual such as might be the case in Colorado.  Now, I say might be simply because we really have pretty much zero valid information.  Almost everything published has been filtered through either the Pacific Justice Institute, or Mr. "Cristan" Williams.  Simply put, this means it is highly probable that the facts have been lost in their attempts to "spin" the story to fit their extremist agendas.  

I tried to explain this to Elizabeth, but she is the sort of person who sees things as you either totally accept her extremely rigid viewpoint, or well, you can expect a vicious and rather nasty attack.  

And yes, I know some of the extremists would accuse me of the same thing, but well, they would be wrong.  I don't have a lot of patience when others do such things, and when they do, I will generally give them a full dose of reality.  But if someone is willing to engage in a rational, and reasonable discussion, I can be quite pleasant about it.  I have a lot of friends with whom I may disagree on some points.  We are able to discuss this, and if necessary, agree to disagree, without resorting to accusations of bigotry, hatred, and intolerance, or the need to toss insults, profanity, or profane insults.

I'm sorry, but I won't be bullied into agreeing to something I don't believe.  And if that causes someone to resort to ridiculous attacks in an attempt to do so, I will generally either confront them with their own failures, or, possibly just walk away if the area of disagreement is relatively narrow.  In the case of extremist kooks like Mr. Williams, or Mr. "Autumn" Sandeen, I will generally expose their lies, and take apart their illogical arguments.  In the case of Elizabeth, I am more disappointed than anything else.

I mean seriously...  She seems to have some need to act like a character out of some bad teen flick.  She seems to want to play the "mean girl."  Between impugning my intelligence, and questioning my validity as a transsexual, she pretty much went off on some ridiculous tangents.

Her principle argument that the person who has been labeled "Jane Doe" by Mr. Williams must be a transsexual amounted to "no kid that age would subject themselves to the abuse and ridicule" unless they really were.  Well, I obviously did not agree with that position, and a recent situation here in the Bay Area, where a teenage boy who has chosen to act out by claiming to be "agender" and wearing skirts, was set on fire when he fell asleep on a bus.  I was a little surprised that the trans kooks were a bit slow picking up on the story, but they seem to have finally discovered it.  But, as horrible as this crime is (NO ONE SHOULD EVER BE SET ON FIRE FOR ANY REASON) it does expose the fact that, well, Elizabeth was simply wrong.  

Instead of saying, "Okay, I don't agree, but I can see your point," she slings more insults and tries to claim it is two different things.  Well, I agree, clearly claiming to be "agender" is not exactly the same as claiming to be transgender, or perhaps transsexual, but it is also not really that much different in terms of possible stigma, and in fact, claiming to be "agender" is probably going to invite even more stigma.

Bottom line, the argument that no teenager would claim to be a transsexual, who is not actually one, is totally without merit.  So, without more accurate information, I am going to withhold judgement.

The other area where Elizabeth showed extremely poor reasoning was first off, adding to something I said in a comment so she could attack me (i.e. a straw man argument), and then using a "No True Scotsman" fallacy based on that.

I mentioned a very personal, and largely private period in my life.  There is a lot about that time I simply am not going to talk about publicly, and which I have only discussed, in detail with a few very close and trusted friends.  I usually some it up, in a very over-simplified manner, by saying it was triggered, in part. because of a very poor therapist.  The bottom line is, I went through an emotional crisis, and detransitioned for about seven years.  Elizabeth seized on that small bit of information, and claimed I had "failed at transition."  That is not even remotely accurate.  I delayed my transition because I decided, for deeply personal reasons that are really not any of her business, to attempt to find a lesser path. 

Now, some might argue that I should reveal all, but I am not going to do so for several reasons.  First, doing so would invade the privacy of other people.  Second, there was a lot of pain involved in that period of my life.  And third, as I have discussed here before, there are people who spend a lot of time online stalking others, and I am not going to give them information they would gladly abuse.  

If Elizabeth really needs to look down on others to feel better, that is her failing, not mine.  If she wants to imagine things, based on a small amount of knowledge, and a large amount of insecurity, well...that is her problem.  I really don't need her permission or her imprimatur to be a woman.  If she wants to set some absurd criteria to judge someone's validity, she can join the kooks like Bailey and Blanchard who have made a career of doing such.  

Again, I have pointed out that some, such as Mr. Williams and Mr. Sandeen, are neither transsexuals, or women.  This is  based on arguable facts, not whether or not they followed the exact same path I did, or whether or not they adhere to some political viewpoint.