Religion aside, why are people concerned about sexually-unusual persons, especially the transgendered?
Is it the fear of the unknown...simply wondering what it must feel like? Is it the slightly-unusual physical appearance, which both fascinates and frightens, such as with the Little People? Is it a sense of "something is wrong" in a natural sense, just like an individual with a prosthesis instead of a natural limb?
Or is there another aspect that feels prominent? A desire to approach but also to avoid? A wish to encounter but fear of rejection or humiliation in the interaction?
Have any transgendered persons here had people tell you, intimately and deeply, what they felt about you upon first meeting you, before they got to know you, now experiencing you as a "regular" friend or lover?
Mike2007-08-26T15:44:36Z
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In addition to what Samantha and Diane have said about an inability to comprehend our sitaution leading to preceptions of trans people as mentally ill, deceptive, or both, I think socially conditioned abject fear plays a large part for many people.
This is not to say that discrimination in general is inevitably and solely an outgrowth of fear. But many people genuinly do appear to be afraid, both of us as individuals (preceptions of sex or gender variation as indications of sexual predators), and of the social ramifications of being associated with us.
Many heterosexual men in particular appear terrified/horrified at the prospect that someone who they may be attracted to may turn out to be chromosomally XY. I've seen men actually act as if they're the victims of sexual assault just upon learning that a person they had expressed sexual desire for (even if they'd never had any actual contact with the person) was a trans or intersex woman.
And I've seen people (again, esp. het men) be socially humiliated if it becomes known that they expressed desire for someone before realizing they were trans/intersex. For that matter, just being known as a friend, family member, co-worker, or just being see in public with a trans person can be enough to make a cisgender ("cisgender" = "not trans") the object of derision and ridicule.
The social stigma against trans people is so intense that even vague association with us appears to be enough to be considered humiliating and degrading. People are punished for associating with us, whether that association is as intimate as lovers or as distant as sitting next to each other on the bus.
I think there's also sort of the "burn patient" factor of physical fear, too. I think you're right about the combined fascination and fear/repulsion people have of the physically unusual - they want to look, but at the same time are frightened by the thought of themselves in such a situation. But since most people attribute our unusual appearance to "self-mutilation," and the obsessive focus most people have on imagining what our genitals look like, the fear is intensified.
The biggest obstacle to the acceptance of transsexualism is that it is an inconceivable and unimaginable condition to those who don't have it. Because of this, and because there is no foolproof, objective diagnostic test (while the sufferer is alive, at least), many non-trans people make a mental leap; 'if I can't imagine how it feels, and I can't tell who has it, it must therefore not exist, or exist only as a mental illness.' (This attitude can be clearly seen in some of the answers above). Having made this leap, it becomes easy to assume that transpeople are 'weird', 'deviant', 'deluded', or 'pretending' and thus to be avoided, rather than seeing us as people trying to cope with a serious medical condition, deserving of some level of respect.
Curiously enough, it's often a very abstract concern; people are uncomfortable about transpeople in general, but when the transperson is a member of your family, or a close friend, it's somehow more acceptable.
I suspect that people who are unusual in ANY way scare them to death. It's partly human nature to be scared of what's different; it's a legacy from our animal heritage - that which is different stands out and puts the group at risk. However, we are SUPPOSED to be more intelligent than animals (although personally I have my doubts about some folks), and able to rise above/beyond our animal impulses. When people don't do that, then as far as I'm concerned, they're just plain lazy.
Most people have used the religion excuse on me, my parents included. Otherwise it was either simply blind hatred by homophobes, or "you are just weird " without an explanation - Sassy fits into this group. Rejecting me because she does not understand that I am a normal woman born with a birth defect Most people I have come across have been accepting of me, aside from the church I used to belong to. I no longer go to church and have rejected religion in favor of spirituality.
I think Sassy's answer reveals a lot about the mindset that causes a lot of this trouble. I'm not trying to single her out, but there are a lot of people who insist that we are pretending to be something we're not and that implies deception. People are always uncomfortable around those they think are deceiving them.
It's hard to understand what it's like to be trans when you've never been in a position to question your own gender.