I'm sorry to insult bums. Street corner bums belong in the slammer and transgenders belong in the looney bin.

What a wonderful uplifting thread! I bet the same people arguing against genderless ID would have argued against raceless ID. At one time race was a bigger issue than gender, but now that most of the race issue has been retired, it's time to find a new group of people to demonize.

Kris Kristopherson wrote a great song called JESUS WAS A CAPRICORN:

Jesus was a Capricorn, He ate organic food, He believed in love and peace, and never wore no shoes.

Long-hair, beard, and sandals and a funky bunch of friends, reckon they'd just nail Him up if He come down again.

Everybody needs somebody to look down on, who they can be better than at any time they choose, someone doin' something dirty that decent folks can frown on--you can't find somebody else, then help yourself to me.

(This whole argument makes me wonder who's going to be the next pariah when science finally shows that being gay or transgendered is biologically determined before birth.)

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

I agree with you that the number sounds high, but if it's just a mental illness, then what do you suppose causes it? We know that most mental illnesses have an organic basis, some are hereditary, and others can be caused by familial tendencies. Is it possible that this is a birth defect caused by hormonal miswiring resulting in a body/brain incongurity which causes a gender identity dysphoia?

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

Tal,

I firmly believe I am a dragon trapped in a human body. I wonder if I move to San Francisco I can get dragon listed as my race.

In Power,
Enemisis

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Haha...not very different than some dedicated nerds having some fun and attempting to arrange to have election ballots printed in "Klingon". Laugh, but the bullshit criteria used to support the "multicultural debacle" were just as applicable to Klingon as, say, Vietnamese.

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"Compassionate Conservatism"?!?! That is a stupid phrase. Conservatism is inherently compassionate. It is liberalism that is cruel for the sake of maintaining a constituency.

Tal,

Most people don't realize that Klingon is the most widely spoken artificial language in history. Even more so than Esperanto which was designed to be a universal language.

In Power,
Enemisis

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Hey, I was rooting for the nerds!

Klingon must be a helluva language - it actually managed to make Christopher Lloyd sound menacing and authoritative (attributes his character lost when he stopped with the Klingon and started speaking regular old "Reverend Jim" English ).

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"Compassionate Conservatism"?!?! That is a stupid phrase. Conservatism is inherently compassionate. It is liberalism that is cruel for the sake of maintaining a constituency.

Your first sentence it true, but the rest of your post is based on a misunderstanding. Transgendered people never REALLY were either gender, they all started out with a mix of sexual/gender attributes that put them out in the middle somewhere. All the surgeries and legal transitions do is let them look more like the person they think they should be and let them live their lives as the gender they feel that they are.

No one is talking about taking a normal male and trying to make a normal female out of him, that's not possible with our level of technology. But more important is the fact that any "normal" male will not wish to be made into a female, and vice versa, but it's only the people born with this birth defect (which is simply a less extreme, and therefore less visible, version of what used to be called hermaphroditism) that struggle to change themselves to a state more congruent with their internal view of themselves. None of us are ever going to be real women in the sense that we have periods, can have children, or that we have lived all our lives with female hormones in our bodies, and that we have gotten the female enculturation that all girls get. All we are trying to do is get as close to what we feel we are as possible. The surgery allows us to get rid of unnecessary body parts, parts that stand in the way of our living as who we feel we are.

I have never been able to understand the vitriol poured upon us, people curse and excoriate us like God will reduce THEIR personal share of Heaven if they don't attack us. Why?

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

Because they don't understand, and it is our nature to fear what we don't understand.

I think that the attacks are particularly virulent against male-to-female transitions because you also attack their self-important sense that possesion of a penis is the ultimate in superiority.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

ID cards don't in fact list race at all, so it's a non issue (at least, my drivers license dosen't). As would be not listing gender, except that the idea seems to get peoples knickers in a twist.

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please click and help the eggs hatch!

"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love"
-Anias Nin

I've suspected something like that. I think that homophobia plays into it too, especially where male to female transsexuals are concerned. What if Taut was to meet a woman and find out she's wonderful, fun, sexy, and she liked him. What if they had sex? And then he found out that she was a post-op transsexual--Oh God! Would that mean that Taut is QUEER?

If a male to female transsexual transitions early enough in life she will indistinquishable--visually and tactilly--from a genetic girl. One of the babes in one of the James Bond movies was a post-op tranny, I'll bet that no one can pick her out. And this very fact makes some men (rather a lot of men apparently) very afraid. This makes it very dangerous for MtF transsexuals because when he finds out sometimes the man feels afraid and the only way to deal with that fear is to beat or kill the girl in question.

The really stupid thing here is that so many people think that MtF transsexuals are just gay men. Hello? Gay men like other men, they like their penises and other men's penises, no gay man will give up his penis and risk not being able to ever have sex again just so he can look like a woman. The journey from pre-op transsexual to post-op transsexual is incredibly arduous, expensive, painful, and dangerous. Nobody does it for fun or sexual kicks, because after the transition you probably won't be able to have an orgasm again anyway. Gay men do not take chances like that, only transsexuals do, we pay the price and we're happy to do so. IT'S NOT ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATION, IT'S ABOUT GENDER.

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

I think it would be great if you could legally transition to dragon, then you would be on the receiving end of the same cultural sanctions and abuse that you are pushing on transpeople.

As a dragon, you would be an animal and you don't support animals' rights, but maybe that would change. It would be illegal for anyone to have sex with because beastiality is illegal. You could not vote or own property, you would, in fact, have no more rights that Michael Vick's dogs. With no bank accounts and no money you would be of no consequence in HUMAN society, except for hunting season because you can bet that people would line up to hunt dragons.

One of the differences between us is that you are a poser and I am not. I transitioned and I accepted all the restrictions of second class citizenship that come with being a woman. I am a woman and I am willing to live as one even though it cost me all of the male privileges. You, on the other hand, want all the same perks of a male human but still to be an animal with the lack of responsibility that goes along with being a creature incapable of a moral sense. This allows you to prey on others at will with no moral strictures whatsoever. Someone bent on amassing so much power seems like someone dealing with a lot of fear.

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.