Tucker Carlson's hysteria over his "boys" in a discussion about transgender issues

Great post, Pam

Tucker Carlson is a classic case of overcompensation.  He doesn't fit the butch macho ideal of his penis-worshiping party, so he feels the need to assert his masculinity by reverting to middle school boy mode and taunting others.  What is sad is, I don't think that he is really that pin-headed, just that cowardly.

I like the way that you frame the biology/choice issue too.  I don't think that anyone ever makes a rational decision about who they will be sexually attracted to, but you are right that it is not as rigid as gay gene or straight gene, swishy sachet or manly swagger. 

 Lots of straight guys are attracted to another man on some level at some time.  Many probably think of sticking to their general preference, women, as their "choice", without ever ever ever feeling secure enough to talk about it openly.  Then they feel the need to attack the gays lest anyone suspects them.  That is my take, based on weird experiences, conversations, and the testimony of some of the straight guys who come from those non-homophobic pockets that are beginning to bloom in our culture.

 

What the hell was I doing in Oaxaca in 1992, on the eve of the Zapatista revolution?

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by: Cambridge Kid @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 08:37:09 AM CDT

Carlson's "Richardson Moment"

Yea, Carlson had a "Richardson Moment" when it came to transitioning. Other than that, the show was pretty good on the LOGO debate, with the cast repeatedly scratching their heads wondering why the leading Dems say they are for full GLBT equality, yet oppose gay marriage. None of them (the big four friontrunners at the debate) succeeded in explaining this dichotomy. I think the explanation is simple: none of them have the COURAGE to LEAD and to TAKE A STAND in favor of full equality and equal justice for the gay community. They blew it, period. I'm off in search of a third party candidate.

Jim Kelly, Cherry Grove, NY

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by: skeptic49 @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 08:42:11 AM CDT

WARNING! Icky medical stuff ahead!

For Tucker's enlightenment (and anyone else who doesn't know) M2F reassignment surgery does NOT remove the penis; it's basically just turned inside out.  The only parts that are actually removed are the testicles.  The scrotum is also retained and used to form the labia.  Yes, it's a lot more complicated than that, but in broad [no pun intended] terms, that's what's done.

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by: Jami @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 09:46:45 AM CDT

Good ol' Isaac Asimov

taught me that way back when I was 14or so.  One trans character had the biggest penis in recent memory, and when she underwent her MTF operation, someone suggested preserving it - I guess as a curiosity.  But oh no, the biggest dick still had more genital records to shatter!

Its funny that I wasn't allowed to watch Beauty and the Beast, but I got away with reading that. 

What the hell was I doing in Oaxaca in 1992, on the eve of the Zapatista revolution?

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by: Cambridge Kid @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 10:11:03 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Asimov

Do you recall what story that was in?

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by: Stephanie, in Victoria @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 10:50:11 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I am trying to remember

It was part of his Elijah Baley detective series - it may have even been in Caves of Steel or Naked Sun, but I think that it was a short story that I found that was part of a larger collection.  It was after humans had colonized other planets, but before the Empire and all of that.

I remember some of his other novels, dealing with the very distant future also played with the biological evolution of humanity into new genders.  Maybe I should reread some of that stuff, it was fun.

What the hell was I doing in Oaxaca in 1992, on the eve of the Zapatista revolution?

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by: Cambridge Kid @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 11:10:00 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Naked Sun

Well, I, Robot is traditionally considered part of the Robot series, even though it has nothing to do with Baley. I don't remember a transgender themed story in it though. As for The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun I'm pretty sure that the theme didn't surface; maybe that's a good thing, The Naked Sun is, after all pretty twisted!

<3 Sam

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by: Samie D @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 11:31:12 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Tucker and the Ts, etc.

I didn't catch the exchange this morning, but he was in typical form yesterday on his afternoon show.  His methinks-he-might-be-protestin'-too-much moment about trans folks on that show occurred after his other rant: against hate crime laws.

Here, though, he came in second in the stupidity derby to the 'community' representative (a man whose name, unfortunately, has escaped me.)  Tucker repeated the required christianist talking point about hate crime laws somehow making some lives unequal to others.  However, he went off the rail - offering as an example him and the other man being murdered, the latter because he's gay and Tucker because he's straight.  According to Lord Tucker of Legal Scholardom, the two murders would be trated differently under a 'sexual orientation' hate crime law.

Now - here's why Tucker was only second in the stupidity derby: the 'community' representative didn't point out how moronic Tucker's analysis was: BOTH would have been crimes based on sexual orientation and BOTH would have been eliglble for hate crime enhancements.

In general, the 'community' representative looked out of his league.

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 10:16:55 AM CDT

Adding insult to paranoia

BTW...

Tucker, just to remind you, in 2004 this transsexual woman was close enough to you to take this photo. 

Were your manberries shivering?

 

Carlson and Begala at the University of Iowa (the plaza outside Papajohn Hall) a few days before the 2004 Iowa Caucuses

What's that?  They were shivering?

Good.  After all, it was something like, oh I don't recall exactly, ZERO degrees that day.  If they weren't shivering, I'd be wondering what you were doing before you came out of the CNN bus.

Kat

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 10:32:21 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Tucker Carlson: You don't have to get GRS if you don't want it.

If it will help Mr Carlson feel better about his "boys", there are no laws requiring GRS, transitioning, or even simple orchiectomy for anyone who fails to proclaim his manhood from pillar to post.  I cannot even imagine such a ludicrous scenario.

It is a strictly an optional procedure for transwomen, those whose internal sense of gender doesn't match their appearance.  We're not very common, TC.

I'm post-op, Tucker, and it really has helped improve my life (though transitioning my life was much more important.)  There are many transwomen, and transmen, who don't or can't get the operation, for their own reasons, or sadly because it is very expensive.  What's in their underpants is only a small part of what makes them a person. 

No one wants your gonads, Tucker.  I especially do not want them.

Hate stops a beating heart.

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by: KarenS @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 10:21:27 AM CDT

No, it's not, Karen

Not if you want all your rights secured. Many agencies require surgery before they will recognise your transition.

<3 Sam

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by: Samie D @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 11:21:44 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Including MA

You can't get your gender changed on a MA drivers license without proof that you have had GRS performed.  We also don't include transgender people in our hate crimes and discrimination laws, except where they are mistaken for being gay.

Fortunately some major changes are in the works, and MassEquality may even be moving in that direction now that they secured gay marriage, but in such a liberal state it is truly insulting and pathetic.

What the hell was I doing in Oaxaca in 1992, on the eve of the Zapatista revolution?

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by: Cambridge Kid @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 11:34:15 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

maybe

"Fortunately some major changes are in the works, and MassEquality may even be moving in that direction now that they secured gay marriage."

Maybe it will happen in time for the 20th anniversary of the state's gay-only rights law.

Or - maybe in time for the 20th anniversary of Goodridge.

I'll believe it when its on the books.

Kat

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 12:46:06 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Including MI, too.

Oh, yes, I had to live with the "M" on my driver's license until just last fall...

Hate stops a beating heart.

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by: KarenS @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 13:43:03 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Spain

AFAIK, Spain is so far the only jurisdiction where one can get their gender marker changed without surgery. NYC came close last year but backed off. Here in BC, you can get your driver's license changed with just a note from your doctor, but changing your birth certificate/passport requires surgery. Fortunately surgery is cover by universal health care in this province.

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by: Stephanie, in Victoria @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 19:36:04 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Not just Spain - sort of

Iowa's transsexual birth certificate statute specifically contemplates non-surgical procedures as well as SRS/GRS, however, it is my understanding that people in charge of issuing amended/new certificates have gone to great lengths to not approve of any non-surgical changes.

Kat

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 21:45:47 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

But that's not what I was addressing

None of those things are necessary for someone who fails to pass the Tucker Carlson manhood test.  Nor was Tucker Carlson was not talking about legal matters when he grabbed for his boys. 

Yes, if one wants a gender transition to be legally recognised in many states, one must have had GRS. Even with that, in some states one's surgery won't change one's legal status.

One's functional status, on the other hand, can be changed.  That is in fact, what "transitioning" is all about.

In my state for example, one cannot change the gender marker on one's DL (Driver's License) without surgery.   One can function in a new gender role, however, except in places where the DL is required.  In fact, the Benjamin Standard of Care (if you follow them, I did) require it before GRS.

Many, many people do function in a transgender capacity without GRS...all across that spectrum. 

 

Hate stops a beating heart.

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by: KarenS @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 14:00:46 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

And that would have been a better focus

Instead of, "Isn't it weird and icky that some men get their balls cut off, geez I'D never do that!" it could have been, "Should we really make such a big deal of assigning gender to people? Can't they do that for themselves?"

If we have decided, as a society, that men and women are equal, does it really matter?  Are we so worried about someone mistakenly or falsely claiming to be transgender that we have to assign more hurdles?  I mean, heaven forbid that someone should put the wrong letter on her/his driver's license.

The way I see it, it is a medical decision, between a person and his or her doctor, just like an abortion.  Nobody should be required to get GRS, nobody should be pressured to get GRS, but nobody who hasn't had to walk in those shoes has any place criticizing.

What the hell was I doing in Oaxaca in 1992, on the eve of the Zapatista revolution?

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by: Cambridge Kid @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 14:17:00 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Kid, there's an chat in this month's issue of Curve Magazine where...

...a transwoman argues that transwoman-phobia is actually misogyny.  I think that's so.

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by: Holly Capote @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 15:15:42 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Absolutely, Holly

All of the jokes and feigned horror boil down to two basic assumptions:

1) It is better to be a man than a woman.

2) Women are on earth to be sexual objects for men.

1) If cisgender men don't want GRS, they don't have to have it. The only reason it could possibly bother them, is that it undermines the assumption of male superiority.  If they are afraid of accidentally being attracted to a transgender woman, that could be attributed to homophobia; but, on an even deeper level, both homophobia and transphobia are rooted in the chilling fear that a man could willingly assume the role of a woman and (shudder!) ENJOY it!

It is the same dynamic that forced the character in To Kill a Mockingbird to drink his coke out of a paper bag, so that respectable white people would assume that he was an alcoholic and let him hang out with black people without being lynched.

2) All of the "ugly trannie" jokes are rooted in the second assumption, along with the bull dyke jokes and the hysteria over FTM transgender people getting mastectomies.  Women aren't allowed to be physically unappealing to men, because that is their purpose on this earth.  A rational person would say, If you think a MTF person is unattractive, don't flirt with her! She probably doesn't think that you are any prize either! But it isn't about that, it is about maintaining gender inequality.  If people can traverse gender lines, even for medically valid reasons, male power is threatened.

There, that's my gender theory rant for the day.

What the hell was I doing in Oaxaca in 1992, on the eve of the Zapatista revolution?

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by: Cambridge Kid @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 16:10:59 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

That's a great rant.

Sometimes I can't imagine you as the fundy kid you once were.  You're so smart...and that's my bias showing.  I think of fundy kids as compliant, and through that compliance, their brains never bulked up.  A brain lays new circuitry through trial and error.  If you believe in the inerrant word of God and all you have to do is what you're told to do, I assume that the brain would be stagnant...or atrophy. 

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by: Holly Capote @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 17:11:00 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Haha, thanks Holly!

People underestimate fundies to their own peril.  Critical thinking skills, within carefully controlled environments, are developed more carefully in fundie private schools than in public schools.  There is an assumption that eventually the kids will have to engage a broader culture that is as sophisticated and hostile as the devil himself.  To prepare, fundie students are taught how to:

1) Defend their own beliefs

2) Undermine the beliefs of others

3) Present themselves in the most positive light possible (although this can be difficult).

I learned most of what I know about debating, social and literary criticism, legal reasoning, and logic from my fundie educators.  We started from different (I would say untenable) premises, but they certainly kept us sharp for the battle ahead.

What the hell was I doing in Oaxaca in 1992, on the eve of the Zapatista revolution?

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by: Cambridge Kid @ Mon Aug 13, 2007 at 13:56:49 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Mutiple sources

They hate women.

They hate men they perceive as unmanly.

They hate gay men.

They project this tripartate hate onto anyone trans.

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

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by: Lev Raphael @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 17:16:55 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Oh, yeah.

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by: Holly Capote @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 18:33:47 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Julia Serano

I don't know if it is the same person you saw in Curve Magazine, but I just discovered Julia Serano, who has published a book entitled Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity.

Back Cover Copy:
A provocative manifesto, Whipping Girl is a gripping, no holds barred account that debunks popular misconceptions about transsexuality, while exposing the depth of the cultural belief that femininity is frivolous, weak, and passive. Julia Serano, a transsexual woman, shares her experiences pre- and post-transition, revealing at every turn the ways in which fear, contempt, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole.

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by: Stephanie, in Victoria @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 19:59:45 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yep, she's the one.

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by: Holly Capote @ Sat Aug 11, 2007 at 00:57:41 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Serano Curve interview link

http://www.curvemag....

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by: Stephanie, in Victoria @ Sat Aug 11, 2007 at 23:44:17 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Transitioning

"One's functional status, on the other hand, can be changed.  That is in fact, what 'transitioning' is all about."

You know, it's kind of hard to adapt to a role when you have a legal ball-and-chain attached to your leg.

<3 Sam

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by: Samie D @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 20:41:33 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yes, you're right, Samie.

Transitioning is very, very hard, it is one of the very hardest things I've ever done, second only to avoiding transition.

The laws do not make it easy. Nor does society. The two most courageous acts I've ever done, were telling my parents their son was a daughter inside, and telling a judge and 22 people in a probate court that I wanted to change my name from M* to Karen, and why.  He was very sweet, but that day was very stressful, even painful.  It was my birthday, no less. Most of the time, transitioning was not about law.  It was, and still is, about getting up in the morning, and no longer hating doing so.

<>Tucker Carlson doesn't seem to understand that while being trans or gay or lesbian, or intersexed, or Genderqueer, bi (shall I go on?)  is not a choice; accepting yourself, living with yourself, and thriving within your own desires is the choice.  His thinking is backward...you have to live within the narrow confines of what men and women are supposed to be.   According to his ilk, if you are assigned male at birth, you must be superior to females, and know it.  If you are born female, you must know what men tell you.

If you are gay, you are a collaborator in undermining this system.  If you are lesbian, you fail to know your place. If you are a transwoman, you are a traitor.  I imagine a transman is an uppity wannabe to Tucker Carlson...admirable ideals, in a person who must fall short.  In short if you fail to toe the line, you are pushed down.

<>So the Tucker Carlsons of the world make the laws holding you and I down, Samie, and so many others of sexual and or gender variance.  Maybe it's all gender variance.  In fact, I'm sure of it.

<>Nothing easy about being this way.  But we are real people, and somehow, many of us live with ourselves, with real lives.

I grieve for those who cannot. 

 

* Boymode name. 

Hate stops a beating heart.

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by: KarenS @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 22:24:12 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

trebling time when judge gives the order for legal name change,

It is all public record, and was hard for me to do, go into a court room that was filled with many other people with different issues, and her I am, the third called to stand in front of the judge, and tell him why I was changing my name.  I had to answer, "Yes, I am taking the hormones, and planning for the SRS, to become a woman.  and the rest of the people in the room just stared at me.

That was 2 years ago, and still remember it like yesterday.

If I make sense? it was quite by accident.

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by: HappyCat @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 22:51:20 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

No trembling for me

Fortunately, I never had to go through that to change my name since I live in a jurisdiction where that process is purely bureaucratic. You just fill out a form, get a criminal record check (only for the purpose of updating any records) and pay the fee, then in a week or two you get a nice little certificate in the mail.

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by: Stephanie, in Victoria @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 23:52:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Family Jewels,

  Conservatives talking about transgenders (MtF) make me laugh at times, because that is all they think about, the Family Jewels. Porno Pete calling them good sexual organs is a riot.

  The fact is male conservatives can't get past losing their penis, as I guess it is what makes them who they are, and what they truely think with.

If I make sense? it was quite by accident.

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by: HappyCat @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 10:30:32 AM CDT

Time to look over your shoulder, Tucker...

'cause I've got a nice shiny, sharp object that wants to come close to your "boys".  But don't worry, you won't lose your "boys", they'll just be reshaped.  That wasn't bad, was it?

/sarcasm-fit-for-a-sticks-and-stones-t-shirt

 

Social outrage is power protecting itself; it is not morality. -- Andrea Dworkin

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by: RachelPhilPa @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 11:52:09 AM CDT

His Boys?

Tucker Carlson is such a girl.  That's how adolescents behave in 8th grade Biology.

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by: Brian @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 12:19:55 PM CDT

Liars

Anyone stating they have not thought about sex with the opposite gender is a downright liar.  You may not have acted upon it but you thought about it. Everyone has thought about it. I doubt there are many gays that have not at some point been with the opposite gender or at the very least thought about it. Give me a break.

Tucker Carlson is gayer than a rainbow and Ann C is a lesbian. We all know it and I wish they would stop lying. I am ready for someone from Ann Coulter's college years to come out and admit to a college lesbian affair with Ann. If Ann Coulter can take pictures with Al Sharpton she can have lesbian sex.

Liars. That Skulls and Bones nonsense that our dear Cheerleading Bush was a member of is nothing more than a closet full of queens sworn to secrecy. A cheerleader, a fraternity full of men.  Come on people!

The only more people more fascinated with gay sex other than gays are heterohomos.

 

 

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by: BlackTeacher @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 13:45:18 PM CDT

I saw it too...

While in the midst of a bout of insomnia last night, I too saw this segment (at a gawd-awful early time this Pacific Daylight Time morning) on MSNBC where Tucker Carlson talked about how he wouldn't support a transwoman transitioning at his workplace.

When I go to college classes to talk about transitioning, I describe to students that most guys shutter at the thought of removing their penis and testicles.  For most transwomen who want genital reassignment surgery, the idea of removing their testicles is a relief.  The same with transmen and breasts -- most women don't want a double mastectomy, but the idea of breast removal to transmen is a relief.

I also talk about how thinking of being a woman who is going to have her breasts removed or being a man who is going to have his testicles removed is actually a backward way of thinking about transgender surgeries.  Instead of trying to imagine yourself having the mind you have now and changing your body to one of the opposite sex, you really need to think in terms of having the same mind you have now, but having been born in the body of the other sex.  For women, it would mean having the same thought processes and female identity you have now, but put inside a male body; for men, it would mean having the same thought processes and male identity being in a female body. 

If tomorrow you woke up with your current thought processes and gender identity in a opposite sexed body than the one you have now, would you want to change your body to match your gender identity, or would you just try to live with breasts that felt out of place, or a penis and testicles that felt out of place?

Gender identity is "between the ears."  Carlson and many others are getting it backward by trying to imagine themselves getting surgery to be a member of the opposite sex when they are comfortable in their current gender identity, when in reality, to get inside the heads of transsexuals they'd need to imagine themselves as being the gender "between the ears" that they are now while having an oppositely sexed body -- in Carlson's case, a middle-aged, female body.

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~~Autumn~~

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
--Henry David Thoreau

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by: Autumn Sandeen @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 15:04:18 PM CDT

Thank you, Autumn, for your educational work

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by: NancyP @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 17:39:49 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

A lot of this topic is based in

the concept that masculitnity is seen as a prize in western cultures, and femininity is pereived as a flaw. Therefore, anyone who would sacrfice the "gift" of masculinity to adopt the "lesser" existence of being a woman MUST be a crazy person, and therefore should be reviled and ridiculed in public.

So some unenlightened soul like Tucker Carlson finds his way on the tele, and of course he feels obliged to re-inforce these stupid archaic customs. It's not new, but it is disgusting. 

I've written numerous rants similar to the one written by the trans woman examined above, and for exactly the same reasons. Only when we learn that most of what we call "gender" is merely a construct that all of us willingly play into, and only when we learn that women are every bit as valuable and precious to humanity as are men, will we ever get away from this twisted form of transphobic, homophobic Tucker behavior. People like Tucker will never get it. It will take GENERATIONS, and Tucker is way down the evolutionary tree of life for it to happen in his time. Sad but true

A society without religion is like a maniac without a chainsaw.

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by: Jen @ Sat Aug 11, 2007 at 00:52:04 AM CDT