Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't chimerism in humans a kind of a mixture of both sexes, with the signs being anything from "hitchhiker's thumb" in one hand and a "normal" in the other, to ambiguous genitalia? IMO it is one of the cases where nature had problems along the way, something I have mentioned in earlier posts. I would think that with chimerism exact terminology is more important than ever, and the 5-way thing GA offered a couple of posts back wouldn't make explaining chimerism easier at all. Not sure it would even be relevant, tbh.
In your posts here and here you simplify it as people being "born to" one gender or the other - either that or something "psychologically" went wrong. But you don't account for the possibility that one's feeling of self-identification might be the first indication of an abnormality. Here you say your problem is with giving people special treatment, here you say it's because it takes a conscious effort, but here you say you don't hate groups, you hate individuals. So, what, you won't expend conscious effort on special treatment unless it's special hatred? 
My post about individuals was a bit tongue-in-cheek but above all made in a context, and others (Soph?) called me out on it, and quite fairly at that because groups such as Nazis provided me enough thought to see that I posted that one without thinking it through. The special treatment comment was specifically made in reference to not being allowed to joke about trans people, something that I believe was clear in my post and the context in which it was posted. In no way does it defeat my basic approach, about conscious effort.
I don't specifically account for one's feelings being the first sign of a problem, no, because I wasn't discussing chimerism or in any way detailing the causes of the problems. In other words, I wasn't talking about diagnosing problems.
Did you have a point with all this, Pyraxis, or were you just trying to make us follow links for fun? IMO I've made my stance very clear.
But seriously, my problem was with the bits later on when you started saying that trans people were trying to shove pronouns down your throat and you refused to redefine what a man and a woman were. That hundreds of years of evolutionary science backed up your position, and that intentions (who's intentions? Mother nature's? God's?)
I believe I have consistently used "nature".
were what defined the result. I don't think calling people herms, merms and ferms is the answer either, but - what are you worried about? That somebody like GA would flipflop and want to be called a male one day, a female the next, male the next, and back to female again? I get that that would be ridiculous, but since a transition is a once-off, I don't see the big deal.
No, I believe you don't. I do, however, because I am a firm believer in well-defined and consistent vocabulary, and what A et al are saying just isn't consistent. It's what they want, for all kinds of reasons, but it's not well-defined and it's not consistent. I'm saying that GA was born male and while he in later years has been working towards becoming a woman, that pronoun would, in my mind, not adequately describe the result because a "woman" is a "human female", biologically and genetically speaking, and that's not just the case.
It doesn't get easier for me to consider such an inaccuracy when people like Rissy come here and basically say I'm trolling or disrespectful because my stance differs from theirs.
I fail to see why chimerism is relevant here. If I've read up correctly on the subject, transgenderism is not about chimerism at all. There aren't any detectable signs, nothing like an erring chromosome, no ambiguous genitalia, nothing like that.
How many of the people exploring transgenderism have actually had their sex chromosomes tested? Has GA?
See Ren's answer for GA.
As for the rest, you are missing part of my point. I am basically indifferent. If somebody I meet appears to be a woman and says she is, I am not going to require proof or doubt the statement or anything. I will accept it as a fact, according to the definitions I have outlined.
If, later, somebody shows that the woman in question is biologically a man, I would most likely remain indifferent and continue with the pronouns offered to me at that earlier point. I don't really care, see. My comments here are all about terminology and cases like GA's where I seem to be required to change my pronouns (that have been accepted and OK for years) or else I'm disrespectful and included in some fancy *new* definition using a word that I had to look up to know it exists in current urban terminology (but not, yet, in a printed dictionary).
You seem hell-bent on showing that I must have ulterior motives, that I'm really a bigot of some new and exciting definition, but I just don't think that is the case.
I don't think people should have to provide genetic test results before asking people to refer to them by their identified gender.
Neither do I. See above.
Besides, even that wouldn't account for cases of XX males and XY females. True, there are cases where there's no obvious physiological basis. But I don't see any good reason not to accept a person's self-identification. In ten years, if Kayleigh had fully transitioned and was using a female identity everywhere, would you still insist on clinging to your first impression and calling her a male because she was unable to have a baby?
I have already answered that, about GA specifically and about trans people in general.
What pronouns are used for chimeras? As I understand, the majority of chimeras go through life without ever realising what they are. The pronoun used is the one defined at birth, I should think. As for the cases where it's not clear, I don't know. I'm interested in finding out.
I don't know a set of official rules. The Intersex Society of North America recommends that a baby be given a gender assignment at birth, whichever is more likely, but no corrective surgery. They don't recommend that a child be raised as a "third gender", but to give them honest and accurate information about their condition, so that when they're old enough, they can decide which gender they want to be.
Your point?
With GA, it wasn't just a first impression. Far from it.
Have you considered how difficult it is to change social conditioning that's been instilled since birth? Of course GA used to exhibit masculine traits, and now as Kayleigh she is working to reprogram her brain to overcome the training and act in a way more aligned with her natural self. If you're having difficulty revising your mental concept, that task is exponentially more difficult from the inside. Not something to be undertaken on a whim, and an ongoing process.
Tell me why I should. What I'm talking about is an individual I learned to know on teh interwebs as a male, who identified himself as a male, and whose friends online identified him as a male. I used a set of pronouns when addressing him or talking about him, but there was no conscious effort on my part. Basically I was indifferent.
Why should I consider his plight later on, when I've already been told that I'm disrespectful and whatnot when I was simply continuing what I'd done earlier? Basically, it doesn't help if I'm called names.
I could also be discussing the individual's marriage but I don't really want to go there and I don't think you should either.
It's not my paradigm. It's a set of definitions that are handy and necessary for explaining human biology (including chimerism, btw). If science was to arrive at a conclusion where they could reasonably show the likelihood and necessity of some other system than binarism in human biology, I would certainly listen and perhaps change my stance. As things stand, I haven't seen it.
Here is an excellent article about transgender and intersex treatment done in the name of social normalization. It violates patients' medical rights, including lying and withholding critical information from patients and their parents, and doing unnecessary surgery on functioning sexual organs before a patient is old enough to consent. The reasoning is that it's in people's best interests to be forced to conform to the binary system, but the suicide rates of patients say otherwise.
I am discussing a vocabulary, a terminology, that is consistent. I am in no way saying what anyone can or cannot do. Why do you think you link is relevant to what I am saying?
Not directly related, but for curiosity's sake, here is an article about a woman who needed a kidney transplant and the results of the tissue-matching test told her she was not the mother of two of her biological sons. It took them ten years to figure it out - the binary system was not a heck of a lot of help.
I fail to see how changing the terminology that is essentially a biological reality to accommodate for a social minority can ever be a good idea. IMO, adding to it is better from a scientific point of view.
It's not a biological reality. Here is a list of the frequency of various intersex conditions. If you don't want to change the terminology of "he/she" and "his/hers", are you in favor of "zie" and "zer"? (FWIW some of the trans people I know prefer those pronouns and some think they sound stupid.)
I'm in favour of a well-defined terminology, whatever that may be.
My point was made in reference to yours about hermaphrodites and raising the baby as a female after chopping off body parts. The baby would still be male but a mutilated and abused one.
I notice that you avoided labelling Mowgli, though. What would he be? Wolf or human?
Why must I simplify it to an inaccurate binary? To say he was wolf would belie the biological reality - though I would do it if I were talking to somebody who understood identity on the symbolic level, ie in a spiritual discussion (I agree with what you said in the other thread about the treatment of trans people on I2 vs the treatment of religious people). To say he was human would presuppose a lot of extra behaviors that he wouldn't have. I wouldn't do it if I were dealing with someone who would mistreat him based on sloppy thinking and false expectations.
Because it is not inaccurate. It's not a spiritual discussion, simply a biological one. You are being PC, Pyraxis, and I have to say I'm a bit surprised.
