Spidey243 : Chromosomes actually reflect SEX (XY, XX). Gender identity is acting according to what society expects from both sexes. I do not know about coconut manners, but I certainly find ridiculous those 'neutral" pronouns like Ze of Mx. I mean come on, can we not at least recognize that humans are still divided in two sexes?

Txgangsta : Be careful with the counselling part. This "therapy" is still used with teenagers whose parents do not accept their "heretic" sexual orientation. And from what I hear these "therapies" are mostly mental torture to "correct" this "abnormality. As far as sex operation: could it be like homosexuality and the brain is wired differently? From the few stories I heard about transsexuals they all felt they were born with the wrong body. Are they right or wrong? Only they can tell. However, I believe we can agree that government has NO business financing these changes. I read a few stories of male prisoners having hormonal therapy paid for by the state; a California judge even deemed it a "constitutional right" last year.

ARedLetterDay : love the sarcastic tone . And do not worry; modern civilization can help you in your "transcolorism"!

SWTerra : He was probably referring to society at large, since the debate here has indeed been respectful.

janus : Ya, I doubt that any counseling will have any considerable affect on the person, and definitely do not support the "counseling" that is simply a "pray the gay away" or "I'm gunna beat the gay out of you". That's not loving, nor even helpful.

My main concern is that if the psychological problem is "I don't like my body", a sex change won't actually help. The problem is that the person is not comfortable in their own skin. When they get new skin, they still will say "I don't like my body". If the problem is just a type of body dysphoria, namely gender dysphoria, changing the body won't actually help anything. Look at the hollywood celebrities that do plastic surgery. Did Michael Jackson have one surgery on his nose, then was content? No way, he had multiple surgeries. He wasn't ever actually happy with the way he looked. The same can go with any one that embraces a kind of surgery-culture. This specific problem I think is an extreme derivative of something we hear about everyday.

So I actually doubt surgery is an adequate solution. If people are going to be unhappy with their body, they will be unhappy regardless of what their body looks like. Specific to sex changes, there are even websites for sex change regret. The problem seems to be largely psychological, and I think the effective means for helping these people is also psychological, not in physical changes.

What's worse is that people don't know any of this. They think they're being helpful, but I don't think they are. How long will Caitlyn Jenner be happy as a woman? Will the gender dysphoria pick up again when the overwhelming praise halts?

Txgangsta : According to some gossip magazines, he / she is already unhappy.

Anyway thank you for the clarification. You brought an important point: self-image. Except in the (rare?) cases of someone actually being born with the "wrong body" (I heard that there is quite a complicated psychological counselling process to get there), then you are right that the surgery will not change anything, and maybe make matters worse. The Michael Jackson example was relevant, and pretty much any "serial" plastic surgery patients...

What do you call a deaf dog?  Anything you like, it won't hear you.

Judge ye not, lest ye yourself be judged.

Man, I feel like a woman, BA BA, BA NA NA NA.

How pathetic that respect for another person could be predicated on that person's gender identity. But I suppose the world is full of people who know what's best for everyone else.

I try to adapt to what they wish to be called, but I make it very clear that I will make many mistakes in the future and will eventually get used to it. If such a simple thing as pronouns can brighten someone else's day, why not?

epic-san : I like that: as long as there is an "adaptation" period then everyone can be happy. I hope the transgender person would understand that.

Definitely respect the pronouns. As long as it's not those ridiculous trans"trender" neo-pronouns like nyanself.

As someone who has mild gender dysphoria, I want to break it down to make it understandable and easier to explain.

Think of it this way; your brain is 'programmed' with the opposite gender at birth. Like, your instincts. You know how most men tend to just naturally be all BE STRONG, DEFEND FAMILY, FIGHT ENEMY even without being socialized to be like that, right? And then women have maternal instincts. Okay, imagine you're born a man, but instead your brain comes with the package of women's and mother's instincts instead, meant to manage a female body. That's gender dysphoria- your brain is acting as an incompatible gender.

This doesn't seem all that special, but well... You know how the human body tends to react to having a component it doesn't know about. If you have gender dysphoria, there's a high chance your brain might react badly to the fact that you have the wrong hormones and genitals. On the milder side, it's just constant discomfort and confusion when you feel like you're in the wrong body and you have rather contradictory thoughts. On the severe side, however, you might get some fun stuff like constant stress, migraines, psychological break-downs, and suicidal urges.

That's why hormone therapy is the cure- it puts the compatible hormones in your body and shifts your physical sex closer to what your brain was expecting, and helps it calm down and return to working normally. The genital surgery actually isn't necessary, it's just aesthetic, so most transpeople don't go for the surgery unless they have the money and want to be 'complete'.

Most transphobes hung up over 'mutilating the body' keep arguing about curing the brain instead, but thing is, there's no medicine or psychological therapy for that way that we know of that actually works yet, or else most transpeople would be taking it instead. The religious "therapy" is just torturing the transperson until they shut up about it out of fear of being tortured further and just suffer in silence.

Most people who have more severe gender dysphoria tend to be very sensitive about gender pronouns too, since insistently calling them the wrong gender will remind them about their situation and stress them out further. Kind of like spouting 'grape' jokes around a 'grape' victim, then continuing to do out of spite when they ask you to stop because it's stressing them out badly.


maguc :
SWTerra :

That's not what otherkin is. XD It's more like a spirit animal thing, like "I believe I'm actually a cat on the inside." Nothing to do with gender, and most of them just do it for fun or fetish.

It's usually the Tumblr bloggers and SJWs who take it too far and try to argue it's actually a religious (or for the attention-seekers, a mental disorder) thing, and the especially crazy ones actually do try to make it part of their gender when they're pretending to be trans too. They're an embarrassment to the LGBT community.

Joneithevius : Since having learned about it, I've taken to researching the term myself, so I've actually come to know what otherkin is far more than I did at first. I realize it's not a gender, but it's still pretty dumb.

Also, I'm pretty sure fictionkin and factkin are not "spirit animal" oriented. It's just dumb, lol.

Ok as a older guy and not very PC. In my mind if you have the gear of a man then your a man. And no I don't want you in the girl rest room. And no I will not call a male mama. But I would not disrespect them for their dressing chooses.

This is yet another thing that in my opinion is ridiculous! If you think that I will sympathize over a person because they have boy parts yet call themselves a woman just to make them feel better about themselves then you're wrong. People should learn to be happy with their gender no matter how much you enjoy cross dressing. I know it is a nice hobby but that doesn't mean you should label yourself as another gender that doesn't correspond with your body parts.

I respect anything that personal about someone. If someone is so torn inside they truly believe they were born into the wrong body, it's not something they did by choice. It's along the same lines as saying you wouldn't respect someone who was gay or a different race. They didn't choose this lifestyle, it's just how they are. That being said, sometimes they are too sensitive, and will make someone out to be a bigot when they never meant to be disrespectful in the first place, but that occurs few and far between. All in all, every person deserves respect. It should be a right of being a person. I hate certain people with every fiber of my being, but I would still treat them with a certain level of respect.

I'm perfectly fine with calling someone by the pronouns that they wish to be called by, as long as they make sense. I absolutely refuse to use the ridiculous neopronouns that some people insist on using, such as "bunself" and "starself" or whatever they come up with next. I can accept that gender dysphoria is a serious issue, and it really annoys me that there's so many people who claim to be transgendered just because it's the cool thing to do.

I mean, this seriously depends on how you mean. For example, an Androgine. While I understand that homosexuality is a legitimate thing, Androgine is not. It is literally just attention-seeking. I'd use a more profane term if I wasn't on here. Whatever you are, physically, is what you are. Male or female. There are only 2 natural genders. No one is born having  both male and female reproductive organs. If they got surgery to obtain them, then no, I'd never respect that. Or switching genders through surgery, as a matter of fact.

There are two genders, and that's it. Identifying as a woman if you're a man means nothing, you're a man, and vice versa.

I respect the pronouns and all that as long as they aren't some ridiculous made-up word. He/she/they are pretty much the only three that I'll completely, 100% respect. After that you're kind of crossing a line with me and though I'll still try to respect you don't expect me to exactly get the hang of it.

Minuano : Not to lecture you, but use of generic pronouns is culturally neutral. That's just how we learned to speak.
When someone is being purposefully disrespectful, the issue is not pronouns but being on the other end of ever meaningless discrimination.

A lot of young trans/trans supportive folks try to be sensitive to pronouns and treating the subject with some cultural significance, but most will get when you explain that your choice of words is just casual.

Edit: Thank you, this has been an generic On3On "wtf" post.

As a fellow human being yes I would respect them as a person, but I don't think I could respect or support what they are/there cause.

While I personally feel as though you should treat others the way you want to be treated, air go you should respect one another and show respect towards your fellow peers I think, I think its a little pointless to be bothered with political correctness when referring to what gender you "think" you want to be, at the end of the day your either male, or female from a biological stand point, their for I think transgenders should be identified by their birth gender  and be addressed as such, in addition no amount of surgery can change your gender from a biological stand point, you can only change your outer appearance and in most cases I find it easy to tell what gender you were born as but out of respect and common decency you should address a transgender as the gender they are portraying  to be.

Personally, I don't care about transgendered people. 
What they do does not affect me. 

I know a female to male transgender person, whom I respond to by their name, to avoid any pronoun confrontations. 
Obviously, if they told me "Hey, can you refer to me as ______" I'd respect it, because they said it politely and in a friendly manner.
HOWEVER, if they were to say " That's not my pronouns cis-scum wtf omg " (Y'know, the Tumblr Feminist kind of response) I would simply ignore them and continue to refer to them as their biological gender. 

It's a manner of respect, in my eyes. If they are polite and correct me in a friendly manner, I will respect their wishes.
If they're aggressive, I will completely ignore them, and retaliate with equal aggression. 

They should be treated like everyone else and not differently.