Former Stake President Excommunicated for being a woman.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

There's a good subthread about treating the mind of trans folks rather than treating the body. One should read this entire subthread for a good reason why trying to correct the brain can be disastrous:

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/commen ... r/dkn8deo/

Which reminds me of a book I read about David Reimer, sheesh, back in 2004 I think:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

David Peter Reimer (August 22, 1965 – May 4, 2004) was a Canadian man born biologically male but reassigned as a girl and raised female following medical advice and intervention after his penis was accidentally destroyed during a botched circumcision in infancy.[2]

Psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned. Academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer failed to identify as female since the age of 9 to 11,[3] and transitioned to living as a male at age 15. Well known in medical circles for years anonymously as the "John/Joan" case, Reimer later went public with his story to help discourage similar medical practices. He later committed suicide after suffering years of severe depression, financial instability, and a troubled marriage.[4]

The poor kid had his dick literally burned off as a baby in a botched circumcision procedure, and the medical establishment at the time thought raising him as a girl would be the best way forward for him.

The dude was soooooo screwed up from everything associated with the treatment. He ended up committing suicide. Just a tragic deal. Even though his assigned gender was female, he could never get away from the notion that he was actually a male.

You gotta read this book if you have the time:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/r ... giert.html

It's absolutely fascinating and tragic.

- Doc

[_Kishkumen]

While things have bounced around in this thread, for me all of this goes back to the OP. What is the relevance to the OP? And nobody will really say. It is implied that the church is somehow wrong for excommunicating this man. And I'm a terrible bigot for some unspecific reason.

Here is how this gets back to the OP. I grant that in some ways I am wandering from it, but I think the two things actually do relate.

As I have noted numerous times, and I have not really seen you respond to this, identity is subjective. As others point out, you have an essentialist view of gender that, in my view, does not allow for the legitimate existence of anything beyond female plumbing, male plumbing, and aberrant plumbing that should be ideally be resolved one way or the other.

At the same time, you are caught up in a religious culture that teaches as a point of doctrine the idea that your spirit (not accounted for scientifically, by the way) existed before you were born and still resides in you as a distinct component of you. It also has traditionally taught that many of its members are literal descendants of tribes of Israel (something else that is not scientifically established), and it continues to teach that people will be resurrected after they die and some of them will, through a combination of the miracle of Jesus' atonement, their own obedience, and their participation in certain religious rituals and covenants, become gods in their own right and create new worlds.

So, I think it is fair to say that we all know a lot about what it means to possess subjective identities, and what it means to respect and take seriously people's subjective identities. We take for granted that these identities are extremely important, to the point that, although there is no scientific basis for their reality, we protect people's rights to hold such beliefs and pursue them untrammeled, so long as people are not breaking the law in doing so (and sometimes, as in the use of restricted substances in religious rituals by certain minority religious groups, even allowing that).

For you to come out and say you know a transgender person is really "X" and not "Y" is nothing more than your personal opinion based on your own culturally conditioned, simplistic understanding of gender. And, moreover, it is pretty rude. If you won't respect one person's subjective identity, then you are likely not to respect someone else's. All the while, the hypocrisy of coming from a group that has a very elaborate subjective identity is apparent, if not specifically true about you. This is why I don't receive your certainty very well. I think it is mistaken, and I think you would be better off not acting so certain.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

You, uh, didn't read the thread. Like. Read it. All of it. Click on the related links. Read them. You're just skimming looking for anything that you think can substantiate your position. What you've quoted above makes me embarrassed for you because you're just seeing the words and not understanding them because you haven't bothered to actually read the thread and see how those words are contextualized.

I think Rev. Kish made a good point, and you should consider his words for a bit.

- Doc

[_I have a question]

I think this is interesting:

Most societies view sex as a binary concept, with two rigidly fixed options: male or female, both based on a person’s reproductive functions (genitals, sex chromosomes, gonads, hormones, reproductive structures). But a sex binary fails to capture even the biological aspect of gender. While most bodies have one of two forms of genitalia, which are classified as “female” or “male,” there are naturally occurring Intersex conditions that demonstrate that sex exists across a continuum of possibilities. This biological spectrum by itself should be enough to dispel the simplistic notion of the “Gender binary”- there are not just two sexes.

https://www.genderspectrum.org/quick-li ... ng-gender/

[_Kishkumen]

Some Native American and Southeast Asian cultures actually do recognize more than two genders.

[_Polygamy-Porter]

by the way, still not a single shred of actual scientific evidence presented to support the idea that this male is actually a female.

I agree.

I am very open minded.

Good. Then who decides the gender of an intersex child and on what basis?

Leave them be. Leave both parts. If the female parts are more functional than the male, so be it, female.

Honestly, aren't these type cases very rare?

Back to my original point of view. This man was clearly born male. No surgery or any amount of makeup, hair spray, or female fashion will change that.

[Guest]

Androgyny, condition in which characteristics of both sexes are clearly expressed in a single individual. In biology, androgyny refers to individuals with fully developed sexual organs of both sexes, also called hermaphrodites. Body build and other physical characteristics of these individuals are a blend of normal male and female features.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/androgyny

Given that the reproductive organs/genitalia of an individual in this situation aren't able to be used as the determining factor, how is gender identity decided?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Back to my original point of view. This man was clearly born male. No surgery or any amount of makeup, hair spray, or female fashion will change that.

PP,

I actually agree with you that the Church, as a private institution is free to discriminate against its membership how it sees fit. Given Mormon dogma I don't really see how they would have an alternative.

That said, you really ought to read the Reddit thread and all of its ancillary links and discussions and studies.

- Doc

[_Kishkumen]

Again I ask, what "rights and protections" are being denied to this man?

My point in talking about rights and protections was really about showing how people take subjective identities seriously.

Your comparison with the church's subjective identity is interesting. Do exmormons treat Mormons with the same respect that they treat transpeople? I would say no. Over on reddit for example, I cannot count the number of vicious posts I've read expressing a desire to tear the church down - literally. Consider what Tom Phillips did. Consider the countless calls to have the church's tax exempt status revoked. Consider what gets said around here. Contrast this with these same people who want laws creating special speech protections for transpeople. If people don't refer to them by their preferred pronouns, fine them, jail them, whatever. People around here say all manner of nasty things about the church and never get called out for it. I say I don't believe in a female brain in a male body and get called all sorts of nasty names for that.

Yeah, I get it. It always boils down to fairness and who gets which privileges. If someone poops on my parade, then we can't take anyone's claims seriously. The truth of the matter is, regardless of how people fail to behave correctly, everyone should, within reasonable boundaries, be respected as who they choose to be. I would not take angry ex-Mormons as my standard for how Mormons ought to be respected in their beliefs.

While identity may be subjective in a variety of ways, there are also objective components to it. PP points out the case of stolen valor. If a person puts on a uniform and pretends to be a veteran, as an employer should I go along with that? Perhaps a university should hire someone merely based on their "claim" to be a scholar?

And sometimes universities do hire people based on their claim to be a scholar and based on their achievements in scholarship. It is not always necessary that one hold a PhD to hold an academic position. In any case, you are talking about particular organizations that have their own standards to police the legitimacy of claims. Organizations get to decide who they will grant certain privileges to. And, yes, the Church can withhold the rights of membership from transgendered people if it so chooses. I don't like or approve of it, but I don't presume to be able to dictate to the LDS Church. I just choose not to participate in it.

I don't go around policing everyone's claims to be this or that. I tend to take them at face value until their claims directly impact me in a substantive way.

How people identify themselves and how others identify them are not always the same... goes without saying.

Do muslims recognize the subjective identity claims of jews? No.

Uh, yes, they actually do recognize them to be Jewish.

Do people in society regard Thomas Monson as a prophet? Nope. Does the gas station attendant in Florida refer to apostles as "Elder?" No.

I have heard him referred to as the Mormon prophet, or the president of the LDS Church. So, uh, yes, they often do acknowledge his identity within the organization. A gas attendant in Florida might not know that Mormon apostles are called Elder, but then, upon discovering that such is the title, may indeed use the proper title out of politeness.

Does Kevin Graham agree with Droopy's perception of himself? Do you?

I have a certain sympathy for Droopy's self-perception, and I do not challenge the fact that he has obviously aspired to be an educated person, and has, to a certain limited extent, achieved his goal.

The difference in this situation is the obvious personal rancor that exists between Kevin and Droopy. I don't think such personal rancor exists between you and a transgender person whom you do not know personally.

Again, back to the OP. If this man wants to act like a woman, he's free to do so. But he has no "right" to make demands that other people participate in his subjective identity. We all participate in each other's subjective identities, voluntarily, but only to a point. Consider the dustup on Twitter yesterday with Richard Dawkins. The man has been venomously disrespectful to Christians and held up as a hero for it, but then he made the unforgivable mistake of directing his ire to Islam, a protected class, and people lost their minds as if it was our official state religion or something.

I take your point, and I do see the absurdity of the strangely inconsistent sensitivities that develop around one thing or another, but I tend to take a pragmatic perspective on all of this. To the extent that it does no harm to allow people their subjective identities, I am happy to have people live them out. First show me the harm it does before you ask me to deny a person the same privileges and respect as the rest of us. I get that people are uncomfortable with what they do not understand, but then they take their discomfort and try to fashion a world in which what makes them uncomfortable must be punished or suppressed. And that goes for people being transgender, Christian, or what have you. It is truly unfortunately the hysteria people give in to, and I include hysterical ex-Mormonism in that.

[_Jersey Girl]

Good. Then who decides the gender of an intersex child and on what basis?

Leave them be. Leave both parts. If the female parts are more functional than the male, so be it, female.

I'm going to answer your transracial question right after making this post.

Here's my next question.

Who decides the sex of an intersex child and on what basis?