Tag: Transition
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Progenitor trans
🇬🇧 🇺🇸 This piece is published in English elsewhere on my blog: Trans parent.
«¿De verdad que necesitas hacer esto? ¿No te importamos el resto de nosotros para nada?», preguntó mi esposa, Stephanie. Pero mis energías estaban desbordadas por mis propias necesidades; era un enfoque que no dejaba sitio para nadie más. Después de toda una vida ocultando mi agitación interior, mi mente gozaba con lo que pensé que eran nuevas libertades. Estaba hablando de mi identidad de género; cómo era una mujer atrapada en el cuerpo de un hombre y por qué necesitaba hacer la transición. Eso fue hace ocho años*, en 2012. Es difícil para mí recordar cómo se apoderó de mi vida, aunque tal vez sea más fácil para Stephanie, que tuvo que mantener los pies en el suelo mientras mi cabeza estaba en las nubes.
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We Need an Honest Debate
Agradeço a Daniel Reynaldo por traduzir meu artigo para o português.
Sentimentos e opiniões deslocaram fatos e evidências em muitas áreas das ciências humanas. Isso não é novidade. Um fenômeno mais recente, no entanto, é a extensão dessa tendência no campo da biologia, que foi vítima da ideia de que os homens podem se tornar mulheres – e vice-versa – apenas recitando uma declaração de crença. É um movimento insidioso que combina o desprezo pós-moderno pela verdade objetiva com superstições religiosas pré-modernas sobre a natureza da alma humana.
A subordinação da ciência ao mito foi exemplificada no recente caso britânico de Maya Forstater, que perdeu o emprego depois de apontar a pura verdade de que pessoas trans como eu não podem mudar nosso sexo biológico por proclamação. “Concluo a partir de … da totalidade das evidências, que [Forstater] é absolutista em sua visão do sexo e é um componente essencial de sua crença que ela se referirá a uma pessoa pelo sexo que considerou apropriado”, concluiu o juiz James Tayler no seu tribunal da justiça trabalhista. “A abordagem não é digna de respeito em uma sociedade democrática.”
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Trans parent
Debbie Hayton shared her journey exclusively with Hood magazine. Stories are central to the human experience. By sharing them we make profound connections, we understand more acutely, and our compassion grows. Here, Debbie Hayton shares hers…
Do you really need to do this? Do you not care about the rest of us at all?’ asked my wife, Stephanie. But my energies were overwhelmed by my own needs; an inward focus that left nothing for anyone else. After a lifetime spent hiding my inner turmoil, my mind revelled in what I thought were new freedoms. I was talking about my gender identity; how I was a woman trapped in a man’s body, and why I needed to transition. That was eight years ago, in 2012. It’s hard for me to remember how it took over my life, though maybe easier for Stephanie, who had to keep her feet on the ground while my head was in the clouds.
Feelings and opinions have displaced facts and evidence in many areas of the liberal arts. This is nothing new. A more recent phenomenon, however, is the extension of this trend into the realm of biology, which has fallen victim to the idea that men can become women—and vice versa—merely by reciting a statement of belief. It is an insidious movement that combines the postmodern contempt for objective truth with pre-modern religious superstitions regarding the nature of the human soul.
The subordination of science to myth was exemplified in the recent British case of Maya Forstater, who’d lost her job after pointing out the plain truth that transgender people like me cannot change our biological sex by proclamation. “I conclude from…the totality of the evidence, that [Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate,” concluded Judge James Tayler at her employment tribunal. “The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”
Este año se popularizó la expresión no binario. El equipo lexicográfico del diccionario Collins en el Reino Unido ya recoge la entrada non-binary y la define como “identidad sexual o de género que no pertenece a las categorías binarias masculino/femenino, heterosexual/homosexual”.
La expresión no binario también figura en el manifiesto del partido Liberal Demócrata del Reino Unido, aunque para estas alturas la parlamentaria Jo Swinson quizás se esté arrepintiendo de ello. Es fácil hacerse propaganda con las palabras no binario, pero mucho más difícil explicarlas al electorado… o a periodistas. En una serie de complicadas entrevistas durante la semana, incluso negó el hecho de que todo ser humano es de sexo masculino o de sexo femenino. Soy docente y enseño ciencias: si la parlamentaria fuera mi estudiante, la esperanza se me habría ido al suelo.
This was the year that the word ‘non-binary’ went mainstream. It has now officially entered the dictionary — lexicographers at Collins have defined the term as ‘a gender or sexual identity that does not belong to the binary categories of male or female, heterosexual or homosexual’.
Non-binary also entered the Liberal Democrat manifesto, though Jo Swinson may now be regretting this decision. Non-binary is easy to announce; it’s rather more challenging to explain to the electorate — or to journalists. In a series of difficult interviews this week, she even denied the fact that every human being is either male or female. I’m a science teacher; if she had been one of my pupils, I think I would have despaired.
As a child of the 1970s, I can still recall the trauma of watching Elvis Costello jab his finger at me as he sang “Called careers information; have you got yourself an occupation?” My dreams of becoming an astronaut had already evaporated by then and I feared I needed to make a hasty decision before I was conscripted into Oliver’s Army — or worse.
A generation later, the stakes are far higher for our kids. Today the refrain might be Called social media; have you got yourself a gender identity?
On Wednesday night [21 November 2018], Channel 4 broadcast a much-debated documentary examining the staggering rise in children being referred for consultation on gender re-assignment. In the last nine years, referrals for children to the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service have risen some 2500 per cent.
Debbie Hayton 