@Tiruin: if I understand you correctly, you're obecting to the character of my post rather than the content.
Ok. Allow me to rephrase:
It seems to me that there's a tendency to perceive gender issues as being somehow special and sacrosanct. I don't particularly think they are. This same phenomenon happens routinely with racial issues, and I don't see those as special either.
If somebody punches you in the face for being gay, I don't see that as somehow "worse" than somebody punching you in the face for having a lisp, or for not being on the football team, or whatever "you're not one of us" characteristic isn't popular that day.
The basic phenomenon I see at work here is the same as the "chicken with one red father" experiment. Take a group of chickens, paint a feather on one of them red, and the other chickens peck that chicken to death for being different.
It wouldn't matter if you paint the feather blue instead of red. They're still going to pick the chicken to death. And being pecked to death for having a red feather isn't somehow magically worse than being pecked to death for having a blue feather.
And yet if somebody is beaten up for being gay instead of beaten up for wearing glasses, or if somebody makes less money for being female rather than
makes less money for being short, somehow the people with exactly the same problems are perceived as having it worse, and their problems are perceived as more valid...solely because of the gender angle.
I look at this, and conclude that the people with gender-issue related problems
don't have it worse. They are a socially protected class. This is trivial to demonstrate. It is
illegal to discriminate based on sexual preference or status. You can hire and fire anybody you want for having a speech impediment, or being ugly, or any of a number of other traits you like. Not only legal protections, but cultural protections as well. It's not at all socially acceptable to make fun of gays, for example. There are stereotypes about "every girl wanting a gay friend" for example. Because having a gay friend is some sort of special thing that is valued and sought after for some reason. There are movies about this, songs about it, a quick google check reveals wikihow to guide for finding gay friends...it's so pervasive it even has a
Tvtropes entry. Being
gay or bisexual is considered cool and trendy in a lot of places. I once heard a teenager introduce himself by telling me he was bisexual. Like, before he gave me his name he threw that out there. Wasn't sure how to respond, so I asked if he preferred being on the giving or receiving end of gay sex. He was shocked and horrified at the thought, and as it turned out he wasn't bisexual at all. He was simply pretending to be because it was the trendy thing to be.
And yet still these communities insist that their particular form of victimhood is more horrible than that of others. And many people
agree with them. Which tells me that the entire premise that society views them more critically is simply false. Consider the fact that we're even having this discussion. People
care about gender discrimination. If somebody makes less money because they're a woman, society will go on a crusade over it. If a gay man is murdered, it's perceived as a horrible travesty that is somehow worse than if he'd been heterosexual.
People
care about gender issues. And yes, people care about racial issues and a few others. If somebody beats up a guy in a wheelchair, that will be perceived as a greater injustice than somebody not in a wheelchair being beaten up. People with gender issues are not the only protected class. But they are
are a protected class. Have a problem because you're gay, or had a sex change, or female, or whatever...and people will shower you with sympathy and crusade on your behalf. The treatment you will receive will be better than somebody who has the exact same problem for other reasons.
@VectorWell, sorry that you're not one of the fortunate ones. The tides of culture are fickle. When I was a kid it was socially acceptable to make fun of gays. Now they're a protected class. So are women in general, but I think masculine women are not, right now. Maybe next year. Maybe next decade. Hard to say.
I will reiterate what I've said previously in the thread: these problems may be real, but you having difficulty because of gender issues is not particularly more holy and sacrosanct than people who have the same issues for other reasons, and gender issues in particular are very likely to go away in the next decade or two. There is an expiration date on these problems. People insisting that people who've had sex changes are not "really" changed will have a very difficult time maintaining that view once the technology improves to the point that the new bodies are indistinguishable. When MTF people can get pregnant and give birth it's going to be very difficult to say they're not female. When couples are popping sex change pills, and fraternities are making "hey dude, tonight you're the gang bang girl for all twenty of us" part of their new member initiations, when anybody can put on their AR and VR headsets and "try out" being a different sex for the night and when it becomes commonplace to do this...I think an inevitable result will be that everybody is going to have a lot more
understanding what it's like for everyone else. People will be more accepting of other people's situations. A lot of current gender lines and social expectations are going to blur. And as a result, the people in the weird places in the middle between binary genders are likely to find themselves becoming the new normal.
It might not be tomorrow. It might not be next year. But it's going to happen.
Your difficulties might be real, but
they will come to an end. You're not stuck with this. None of you are. It
will end.