jlc

What do you consider a human who is an XY female?

Jan

AG -

You are replying to a post of mine in which I describe a natural condition in which an XY individual is physically female in every outward respect. There is no mutilation occurring in this instance...but you have not commented on that aspect of transgender existence.

We already know that I totally disagree with you with respect to conscious choice to get a face lift or decide to become another gender - but I am curious to see your take on natural transgenderism.

Jan

I agree with you, helidrvr, and - in spite of a lot of interesting discussion on this list - I cannot support the idea of Constitutional Rights being natural rights.

There has never been a tribe or government in history that has been able to repeal gravity. On the other hand, most tribes or governments do not respect those rights we call Constitutional Rights in their citizens or subjects.

When someone asks me if I believe in God's Laws, I answer, "Yes, I do. I call them 'Physics'." Since Constitutional Rights can be taken away (and generally are), they must exist at a different level than Physics. These Constitutional Rights define 'the universe I want to live in' as opposed to 'the universe that exists on its own'. They are not inviolable; they just should be.

Jan

There are natural XY females. The part of the Y that triggers the rest is one tiny little gene on the tip of the non-homologous portion. If that gene is defective, then all of the other sexual differentiating genes don't 'fire' and the fetus remains female. (In our species, the fetus begins as female and differentiates into male if it has a functioning Y. Other species work differently.)

You cannot distinguish a natural XY female from an XX female - they have periods and breasts and all other characteristics we associate with being a woman. They cannot get pregnant (naturally - I believe one has done so with modern med techniques), but since many women are sterile that cannot be used as a distinguishing characteristic.

So, while you need a Y to be a guy genetically, having a Y does not insure that you are. (And there are a lot of other natural XY combinations that are interesting.)

Jan

Exactly. I cannot really imagine these folks endorsing a law that says, "Society has a right to control the sexual habits of consenting adults."

Perhaps people are reacting to their personal preferences and the projecting their emotions. I certainly have 'my own' preferences, but it is no concern of mine what other folks do - within the stated parameters.

Thank you for your response.

Jan

Then we are at an impasse. I have no problem with your disagreeing with me.

I also have no problem with incest, plural marriages, and a lot of other things that I regard as 'no business of anyone but the participants'.

Jan

This should be the norm, not the exception. I hope all your kids know how to shoot.

Jan

Badgood.

Jan

I don't consider it mental illness. I think of it more like having mousy brown hair and dying it red because you always wanted to be a redhead.

Jan, does not dye hair

I do not actually make the same distinction you do: to me, getting a facelift or tats are the same as changing gender: You are sculpting your body into what YOU want it to be. (You and I agree on societal pressure.)

On the topic of backlash - yeah. That is fine. Other people have other opinions and they should be able to state them. You can mod your body; they can rag on your for so doing.

Egyptian and Polynesian monarchies encoded adult incest into the marriage customs of their royal families. So did European dynasties, though they had to get the pope's permission (and that would not be for siblings or offspring). Unlike you (and I am not a mother, please note), I have no problems with the concept of incest.

Jan

I do not understand. What is wrong with someone changing their gender? It is their body and their life and as long as they are paying for it with their bucks, it is just fine. If someone feels more comfy being a gender they were not born in, then more power to them to change that aspect of their lives. If they want to be 'something in between' genders, then that is fine too.

I am in favor of the individual and the right of the individual to choose their own course in life. I do not find it in any way wrong or abnormal to change genders, have a facelift, or get tats all over your body. I may not choose to do this, but that is my right to choose too.

Jan

I agree with Mike Rowe on his statement that the human baseline is that people do not want to work - those who do are the exceptions. I base this on my experience in Malaysia: If you are Malaysian ethnicity (about 50%), you have a guaranteed income, cushy jobs in the gov, and Malaysia will pay for all of your education - at any school in the world. Very few people take advantage of the schooling or jobs because...they have a guaranteed income. These are not 'bad' people - they are just people who do not need to work, so they don't.

I like the 'soft skills' term. Is there such a thing as 'medium hard skills' I wonder? That would be literacy, the ability to write an intelligent email, show up to work on time. (I assume that 'hard skills' are actual job skills.)

Jan

Nice phrasing.

Jan

I don't actually think that fossil fuels are doing much discernible damage to the environment. My main reason for interest in deprecating the use of fossil fuels is to disembowel the oil hierarchy in the Middle East, with a secondary purpose of saving petroleum for products rather than fuel.

Jan

I think that most of us agree with that. Dystopic prophecies tend to ignore innovation. As you point out, 200 years is plenty of time in which to innovate.

Jan

I would rather use nuclear power for electricity and use oil for bowls and cell phones. Some of the engines that oil powers are ones I do not want to support.

Jan

If this happened to me they would never have trouble with that SWAT team again.

Jan

Ha. I do not have a TV, though I occasionally watch shows on my computer. The ads on those are pretty pathetic.

Jan

Reading some of the comments below, I wonder if there are statistics on 'how many business try to start and are stopped by regulations'? (Unfortunately, there is no way to tell how many people decided to NOT start a business because of a prior example.)

When Wm and I founded Schuyler House, we filled out a single form that said, "We are starting a corporation." paid about $200 and got a set of papers back that told us what to do next. That was in Calif in about 1993...

It was all very encouraging.

Jan

I will trade you: I will take the snakes if you take the spiders. Neither of us want the scorpions.

(Killed a rattlesnake over the weekend. A friend of mine cooked it (Since I was working on a dog-run/chicken-coop project; I had killed it outside her front door, and she cut its head off with garden shears.) - she barbecued it. She says that next time she will use oil instead of a dry rub since it is wild meat. It was better than the last rattlesnake I killed, which was skinny and stringy, but I think she is right about the oil. The builder who was with us when this happened was rather bemused.)

Jan, likes snakes...sometimes sauteed

Just looked it up. You are right!

Risk averse, risk averse, risk averse...(need to retrain the fingies).

But still staring right back.

Jan

You are welcome. I think that people who watch a lot of TV have learned to tune them out instead of studying them.

Jan

I do not like to think of mine own gender in this manner, but consider it a 'lowest common denominator' situation: If one of the parents is silent and the other one says , "There are monsters under your bed." then you imagine monsters.

So, in spite of the fact that more dads are involved in raising their children, the advent of women into politics and work has tilted our society in the direction of risk adverse - the 'monster'. A parental team would have to work together to counterbalance this, or a dad would have to be strongly charismatic and risk tolerant to counter it by himself.

Jan

When I am sitting in a waiting room, sometimes the TV is on - and I see ads. And I watch the billboards.

Since about the mid-1990's, car ads have presented the theme of, 'buy this car means buying love' (family, spouse, strangers). Dealers advertise that if you buy a car from them you will purchase their friendship. These are not overtly sexy ads, but seem to say that you can be loved, but their car is the entry fee.

More recently, what I have been seeing/hearing is car ads that say 'this car is yours and while you are in it you are comfortable and in control'. The ads suggest that when your boss is mean or your significant other is bad moody you get in your car and there life is perfect and YOU are in charge.

Not rationally based - these ads pander to insecurity, low self esteem, and the willingness of the listener to buy into the illusion that the car is they key to a better life for them.

Jan

I think you are correct there. I know several 'house husbands'; these guys would not have been socially acceptable when I was young. But my Reply to your post was not to indicate that you are wrong, but to suggest that, even as a father would teach his son baseball (though his mother took care of the child every day), the mother would still have influence on the child, even though the child was raised primarily by the dad.

Jan