Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Marland wrote:
I expect most people who have a disability or condition feel a bit down
about it in some way at times,heck we are all probably lacking in some
ability or other compared to others, People with weight conditions they
cannot control, people who are so ugly they can¼t get laid. Some
conditions can be fixed and others cannot. Your barren male and female
examples born that way may be treatable but removing functioning
testicles or breasts with the accompanying chemical treatments to become
on outward appearance the opposite sex to what people are born as
doesn¼t take them the whole way to be a complete functioning example of
the opposite sex any more than giving someone born without legs some
prosthetic ones suddenly makes them have normal body.

If someone is so convinced their 'soul' (if you want) is of the wrong
gender that they wish to go through the trama of surgery and hormone
treatment to alter themselves to what they consider better, WTF has it got
to do with you? Other than to have compassion for them?

Indeed, it seems a strange kind of quasi-theological bigotry that says
babies born with testicles must be socialised as men and babies born
with ovaries must be socialised as women.[1] The immediate question
that strikes me is: "Why?". Either because god says so or an appeal
to some non-existent "natural law" I suppose? Perhaps what is really
the problem is the vast differences in dress, behaviour and other life
choices that are required of men and women, for no very sound or
fundamental reasons. If men or women could behave or dress in any way
they preferred then the problem of which gender to choose would perhaps
not be so severe.

[1] It is ironic that various inborn errors of development make babies
with testicles that are anatomically apparently female and babies with
ovaries that are anatomically apparently male. The bigots got this
wrong until at least the nineteenth century - how embarrassing for them!


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Roger Hayter