Need help with extended family member

[MissDanielle]

I have an extended family member that has no problem legally accepting a post-op trans woman as a woman but they won't accept pre-op or non-op trans women as women when it comes to being able to use the bathroom. They also think the only trans women allowed in the bathrooms are those that have had their gender marker changed on the birth certificate.

They see sex and gender as the same thing and just can't get over the bathroom issue.

They say that they are anti-discrimination but by limiting it to just post-op, they are discriminating IMO.

They have no problem with me being trans.

[Jennifer-GWN]

Srs is not always a prerequisite for gender marker change is one point to keep in mind as is the fact that many don't have srs... I feel bad when gov restricts those to srs for marker change as cruel. Happily my marker has been changed with srs to follow at some point mostly out of my control. Damned if I'd be visiting the men's room. No chance of that.

[whowhatwhen]

Put this to her:
There's a good chance I'm not going to be medically able to get SRS, does that mean I should continue using the men's room despite no longer passing for male?

[PretzelGirl]

There are four primary barriers: desire, cost, medical reasons (i.e.: weak heart), and accessibility. I don't know if you can make that fly with them, but less than 33% of TS people have had any affirming surgery.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/03/13/watch-debunking-surgery-top-priority-trans-people-myth

[MissDanielle]

Srs is not always a prerequisite for gender marker change is one point to keep in mind as is the fact that many don't have srs... I feel bad when gov restricts those to srs for marker change as cruel. Happily my marker has been changed with srs to follow at some point mostly out of my control. Damned if I'd be visiting the men's room. No chance of that.Sadly, in Kentucky, I have to have SRS to change the marker on my birth certificate. I met with a pro bono attorney recently to discuss name change in Illinois and they said I should be able to change the gender marker when I get an Illinois driver's license. As much as I want the name change done quickly, I also want a feminine photo on my license. That's the big hold up right now on that front.



Put this to her:
There's a good chance I'm not going to be medically able to get SRS, does that mean I should continue using the men's room despite no longer passing for male?This extended family member is a he. He keeps mentioning that it's unfair how expensive SRS is. My insurance is unlikely to cover at the moment (short term plan)...hoping this changes when I get a comprehensive plan in the near future.

[I Am Paula]

Have you thought of just not talking to him?

[Megan G]

This person sounds like he is fairly accepting of you being trans so IMHO I would tread lightly on how much push back to want to give in this area. You don't want to turn him against you, especially since you are still at the beginning parts of transition and are still hiding..

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, right or wrong. So all you can do is explain your side of the story and leave it at that. Why force the issue?

[Marcelle]

Hi Miss D,

I do have a question . . . Does this family member know you are trans? I know it may seem like a redundant question but if he does not then perhaps a talk with him would be warranted. I had extended family members who did not know early in my coming out and we got into some discussion on transgender folk. He (cousin) did not get the whole Trans thing so I tried to discuss it with him, he could not see reason so I just told him . . . I am trans and here is how it affects me on a personal level. Sometimes when family members can put a close face to the issue their take on things soften (with time). BTW he did come around.

Now if he already knows you are trans, I would just keep things civil and keep working on him with education . . . he may come around or he may not. At the end of the day, what others think is their business and we need to be able to accept sometimes we can't change people's minds.

Cheers

Marcelle

[JanePeterson]

Here's something to consider....

How involved is this person in your life? Are they a daily source of strength and support for you? If they're just a extended family member and not immediately involved in your emotional support, I'd recommend just leaving them alone while you focus on your transition; if we try and convince everyone and/or invest ourselves emotionally in other people's reactions... It's just impossible and will drain you dry. If you focus instead on what you need to do to advance your transition in a successful way, they'll eventually get onboard. It's not your job to spread trans acceptance in the world, it's your job to accept yourself and transition the best way you can; the others will follow in time. Or they won't.

[Eringirl]

Pick your battles....they don't need to know what bathroom you use????. As SRS (and HRT to a degree) results in permanent sterility, requiring it for gender marker change is essentially forced sterilization, which is a violation of human rights.....just sayin'.....

[Nigella]

An opinion needs to be respected, on both sides. No-one can not say it is invalid. You do not have to agree with a differing opinion to yours, what you should do is, politely (sp) inform the other person that you disagree with them. Experience is the only sure way of changing an opinion, argument is not. This is for everything in life.

[MissDanielle]

I do have a question . . . Does this family member know you are trans?

I am completely out as trans on Facebook. One of his cousins, who is not related to me, and the brother of another cousin that married into the family, tried to talk some sense into him. All things considered, family fallout has been very minimal. I have an uncle that is not talking to me not because I'm trans but because I called him out for falling for a celebrity death hoax.

Here is what he messaged last night when I sent some links over:
"As family, I say go to the woman's bathroom

"Politically i say I can't write a law when on this definition when people can switch day to day"

[Nicole Erin]

Why does it matter what he thinks?
Also, is this someone you associate with real life or just another one of those facebook activists?

Third, why is there all this talk lately about TG rights? We are far and few between, no matter what part of the spectrum or label we fall into.

[MissDanielle]

There's all the talk because of the bathroom lawsuits...and states signing LGBT discrimination bills into law.

[PaulaQ]

MissDanielle - another argument, and a rather dismal one, is that there are not enough surgeons who are qualified to do GCS, and it's quite unlikely that there will be anytime soon. Marci Bowers, one of the preeminent gender surgeons has a three year waiting list. It's not going to get shorter as more of us have insurance policies that are inclusive - it's going to become a much LONGER wait. There are no medical schools that teach this. If you don't learn from someone who knows it, you get to develop your own technique and experiment on folks. Good luck to your first few patients.

The main problem with your family member's argument equating sex to gender - and especially genitals to sex to gender, is that sex is every bit as much of a social construct as is gender. Look, there are a very large number of intersex conditions - ambiguous genitalia, people with external genitalia of one sex, but internal organs of the other. People with ambiguous chromosomes. People who have one visible set of genitals, but are hormonally the opposite sex. There are a LARGE number of such conditions. They are about as common as people who have red hair, and for many of these people, the 30 second exam the doctor gives them at birth to assign a sex can't possibly yield a meaningful result. I mean, what do you call someone with a penis, testicles, and ovaries? (BTW, she generates her own estrogen now that she has begun transition - she needs next to no supplemental estrogen, in fact she may not need any, because HRT seems to have jump started her ovaries, and spiro is keeping her T down to nothing.) This isn't some rare, impossible 6 people in the world kind of case - I know *many* intersex people, many of whom are trans. (Which just shows that the doc really can't reliably tell.) Sure, Male and Female work for MOST PEOPLE - but those categories only exist because we created the labels. They are a social convention, every bit as much as is "man" and "woman".

This is the big problem I think many people run into - they assume "male" and "female' and "man" and "woman" are ordained by some supreme entity and nothing else can exist. When confronted with people who don't fit those assumptions, rather than junk their obviously faulty assumptions, they hang on to them, and deny the reality in front of them.