Sunday 20 March 2011

Are transgender people normal? What sex are they?

Although the writing isn't very good, I do usually browse through The Bangkok Post before class for coverage of local news. Today's edition contains a report on yet another episode of inept fumbling by the Thai military. In "Army Renames Transgender Conscripts" the general issue the annually recurring one of how best to force unwilling Thai citizens to serve the excessive number of generals who need servants (2011). The specific problem is, what to do with transgender people; that is women who used to be men, and perhaps men who used to be women, and maybe some who are somewhere in between.

The author says that the army is trying to avoid offending people and to increase the pool of available conscripts by stopping its former practice of labelling transgender people as having a "psychological abnormality" or a "gender identity disorder" (¶ 5). The army's "solution" is to start labelling people as Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3.

The army's director of the academic resources seems to rather miss the most important point here, which is exactly the one that is competently raised in "What is Abnormal?" in Quest 2, where the What is Abnormal Behaviour? section sensibly address the far more fundamental issue over the course of three full paragraphs (Hartmann, 2007, p. 173 - 175).

As I read and reflected on "Army Renames Transgender Conscripts", I thought that there were really two basic questions that need sorting out here.
  1. What sex are transgender people?
    and
  2. Are they normal? 
What do you think? Is a woman who used to be a man a man or a woman? Is that person normal or abnormal? (And what is largely irrelevant to these questions?)

__________
References
Army renames transgender conscripts. (2011, March 20). Bangkok Post. Retrieved March 20, 2011 from http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/227594/army-renames-transgender-conscripts
Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Download from https://sites.google.com/site/aepwritings/copied-texts/Quest2WhatisAbnormal3p.doc?attredirects=0&d=1 [MSWord doc] or https://sites.google.com/site/aepwritings/copied-texts/Quest2WhatisAbnormal3p.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1 [pdf file]

3 comments:

  1. Your topic is very interesting. I think, they are a woman even though they are used to a man for a long time. I distinguish them not only present appearance, but also their feeling and behavior. Therefore, they are normal people who just want to change some part of their body to make they are very happy. In addition, they don’t hurt others body, they just make the right body to fit in the right mind. How we know who is normal or abnormal? The answer base on background, knowledge, belief, and so on.

    In case of lady-boy that they are normal people, they did not do anything wrong. It is not their fault, they just were born in the wrong gender only. Why people decide who is normal or abnormal by general appearance. Is abnormal person who is very good person that you can accept them, or not? Hence, we have to ignore general appearance of people when we know someone, but we have to look for a good point in each other.

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  2. Nid,
    Thanks for kicking the discussion off with a clear statement that transgender people are normal and the apparent sex of their new bodies; that is, that women who used to be men really are women afterwards, and that they are normal all the time.

    I have one follow up question to clarify: Were they women before they looked like women, or did they start out as men and become women? I mean, have they really changed sex or not?

    (Although I think it's a little easier to warm up on, I hope everyone can see the obvious parallels with the far more controversial argumentative essay topics.)

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  3. “Don't judge the book by its cover”. For me in this sense, it means don't discriminate people my gender and appearances. I also agree with Nid that there’s nothing wrong with transgender people. Are they abnormal? The answer for me to this question is “NO” .They don’t have rights to pick which sex they want to born in and I’m saying it’s not their false at all. I once watched the TV show about the lady-boys and there was one line that grasped my attention and reading this topic leads me to think about what he said. “Thinking about one morning if you wake up and change into the opposite gender you are now. Are you going to do anything about it or just let it go.” Think about it in logical way, most about would prefer to change to the gender that they were before. Even though they might try hard to be another gender and for other views they’re considered awkward doing overreact actions. Still, I believe that they have rights to do so, and doing that is only what they want their appearance to be. And I also think that the transgender people also have right to choose whether they want to be male or female like I mention earlier.

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