h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rising Tide

No. The Polish woman was apparently female in accordance with most of the primary and secondary sexual features as identified by Dr. Hunter in the 1830's. And apparently by "standard" sexual inclination too since she fell in love with, married and stayed with her sergeant.
Though I suppose I only have the word of the Doctor who wrote the book.


Cass

So, has anyone mentioned an answer? How does gay marriage harm marriage?

77?thread=779585" >F19585?thread=8290514&skip=24&show=1

That's that question solved then.

Dragging myself back to Casseroleon's original observation about his neighbour, her lover and their children.

We met my husband's gynecologist socially some time after my husband's gender reassignment surgery. The gyne is a bit of a rugger bugger and was slightly drunk at the time; he kept on saying "good for you mate" to my husband and then he blinked at me and said "but you look so straight..."

Indeed.

Holy gosh. I wonder why.

Lord knows if I am straight or bi- or an article of furniture* - it really doesn't matter. As it happens, I don't need the comfort of a label, though I can see that some people in my position might.



I put in a lot of stuff here about my own situation and the options and non-options available to me and my husband. Then I decided it was too complicated and too private, so I took it out.



I love it when Sandi Toskvig mentions her children on Radio 4's News Quiz. I think they were born to her partner, they may have been adopted, but that's irrelevant: there is a loving parental / child relationship between Sandi and her kids, and that is all that matters.

That's the point really; what matters most is that the children are loved and that the adults have a functional relationship. That's it. Given the total balls-up that hets can (and all too often do) make of breeding, it's pretty fekkin rich for someone to challenge and make so many intrusive assumptions about his neighbours' parenting skills on the sole basis of a couple of conversations and their hair-cuts and fashion choices.

Sorry, I am more annoyed about this today than I was yesterday, for some reason.



There really is nothing wrong, nothing sad, nothing dysfunctional, nothing inappropriate, nothing particularly difficult about being trans. It really IS everyone else who has the problem. The happy functional way in which so many gay men and lesbians forge life-long partnerships and strong families proves that people are just people, and society is the bitch.



* There's no term for someone who's in a sexual relationship with a Trans-person; the nearest is SOFFA, which is Significant Other, Friends or FAmily. I am of course my husband's wife.

"what matters most is that the children are loved and that the adults have a functional relationship. That's it. Given the total balls-up that hets can (and all too often do) make of breeding, it's pretty fekkin rich for someone to challenge and make so many intrusive assumptions about his neighbours' parenting skills on the sole basis of a couple of conversations and their hair-cuts and fashion choices."

Rising Tide.

Regarding the case of athletics I believe that gender testing based upon hormonal analysis was initiated when it was realised that the female athletes in power events and perhaps swimming representing countries run by Communist Parties were being "doped up" with male hormones of the kind that were used by men bodybuiders, and by US cattle ranchers seeking extra "beef".

Cass

>> No. The Polish woman was apparently female in accordance with most of the primary and secondary sexual features as identified by Dr. Hunter in the 1830's. And apparently by "standard" sexual inclination too since she fell in love with, married and stayed with her sergeant.

>> Though I suppose I only have the word of the Doctor who wrote the book.

So you assign gender based on the definitions given in a book written in the 1830s?

Sweet jeeeeebers.



Can you accept that there is a difference between Gender Identity and chromosomal gender? That the Polish soldier may have identified as a man, as James Barrie did at the other end of the 19th century?

And if we stick in the world of biology, we come across conditions like Androgen Insensitivity where someone who is chromonsonally male cannot process their own testosterone and therefore develop as female. This specific condition is often only diagnosed when the woman proves to be infertile in adulthood.

I'm going to have to not be in this thread for a while, I think.

Girl Three.

didn't sex testing in sport start after the 1936 olympics in part due to questions concerning a British shotputer?

There's an up-coming edited entry on Transgender and Intersex Olympians: A87730383

I strongly suggest those in this thread read it.

RT, remind yourself that you're talking to someone who can't correctly distinguish, at a second attempt, between a noun and adjective.

Why do you expect them to do better with something actually complicated?

Maria

Well I did refer to my image..not my total knowledge, though some of that is closely linked to the two year course on Latin American history from 1500 to the 1960's that I did at university.

And the fact that Spain has changed radically would not surprise me..There was the democratically elected left-wing goverment that led to the Civil War and the Franco period..

There are many countries where people individually and collectively would like to re-invent themselves and escape from history.. I know that the desire is strong in France. But just because you wish to put catastrophes behind you does not mean that it is either easy or possible to escape.

I suppose I come back frequently to the tale (perhaps from the 1001 nights) of the man who tried to escape Death, when he had seen him gesticulate towards him one morning in a market. He rushed off as fast as he could, right into the most desolate part of a desert town. And there Death found him and told him it was his time.

"But why did you threaten me in the market in *whatever town* three days ago".

"I'm sorry. I did not mean to allarm you. I was just so surprised to see you there and then, when I knew I was to meet you here and now, so far away."

Spain cannot escape from its history any more than England or any of us. And as a teacher of English history I often had to point out that the 300-odd people that Mary Tudor killed in three years during her persecutions has resonated down our history as one of the worst attrocities. Within England the killing of a dozen people is "massacre", hence the government's problem with the net migration figures again today.. Suddenly in this uncertain world the rate of emigration has fallen quite dramatically. As I said England is less of a place for catastrophe and disaster than most.

Mary may well have wondered what all the fuss was about. When Christian Spain was created was it 28,000 Iberian Jews who were executed because they refused to leave their homeland and refused to give up their faith? And Mary's husband Phillip tightened the laws and the Inquisition to make sure that people were still not using Muslim names and engaging in Islamic practices like taking baths.

I am sure that most countries have moved on considerably since those days of weighty conformity "or else".

Cass

Rising Tide

As I said originally the book was the Penguin Book "Sex and Society" written by Dr. Kenneth Walker and published in the 1960's . It was only in the 1830 that Dr. Hunter produced a scientific breakdown of the primary and secondary gender differences between men and women.

Cass

Can I but it to you, C, that knowledge in this area might also have moved on a little since the 1960s?

Maria

I have noticed that there will be a documentary next Thursday UK ITV 10.35 pm in which two families will "share their experience of watching the man in the house become a woman"..The title is "My Dad is a Woman".. I will make a point of watching it.

Cass

OFFS!!! And now your telling us that you're going to get your information from one of those exploitative, largely fictional peep shows posing as documentaries?

Edward the Bonobo

As I understand it the basics of that classification are still more or less accepted. And I doubt whether any more evidence can be gathered about that particular case. We presumably only know about it because of the evidence presented in the actual case.

You could bring up the speculation- perhaps in part exploited by Virginia Woolf's "Orlando"- about the actual sex of Queen Elizabeth I.

Has anyone challenged the vedict of the Doctors who were called in to examine the Chevalier D'Eon when he died in London in the late Eighteenth Century? It was a crucial diagnosis. Many people had placed large bets on whether he was actually a man or a woman, and apparently the Lady with whom he shared his House fainted with shock on being told that he was a man.

Cass

Cass:
<<<There was the democratically elected left-wing goverment that led to the Civil War and the Franco period..<<<


I´m going to answer those words, just in case there´s someone who feel confused about who started the Spanish Civil War.

Franco gave a militar coup d´etat on 18th July , 1936. The democraticly elected government , a coalition of left forces, fell. The war started among two bands, the republican left, los rojos, los Republicanos, against the Nacionales, these had the support of the Church and the remnants of aristocracy, owners of big extensions of land.
It´s really complex to explain, but if you really want to know more, read Paul Preston

( As for the rest of the post, more than confused I feel dizzy, you mix too many things in one post, so at one point or another I give up reading, sorry if it sounds rude, but if you want to communicate something be precise and concise, not profuse and diffuse.)

Edward the Bonobo

I share your reservations.. but these are things that are supposed to be informing, and shaping the times that we are living in ,or perhaps more accurately misinforming and misleading.

I was particularly interested in finding evidence for Maria's idea that the process of change is "Hell" or not.. I notice that the Dad/Jane is quoted as saying "What Im doing is selfish." And it seems that what was finally intolerable by the age of c51 was living with "gender dysphoria".

Cass

Please stop using the word "actually". There is nothing actual about gender.

Biologically there are a wide range of intersex and cross-sex conditions, and once we leave biology behind, gender is a social construct.

(Several paragraphs have been snipped).

Girl Three