I know you're (mostly) not doctors, but . . .

DonnaL
Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:22:09 +0000

Atacom, I have reported your post for rudeness. Not to mention overweening arrogance and condescension.

It is completely inappropriate, especially in this thread, for you to come here and try to lecture me on proper terminology on trans issues. And then show yourself unable even to attempt to respond to my pointing out that the term you use makes no sense, either in my case or in most cases, whereas the term I use makes perfect sense. Instead, you rely on an unsupported argument from authority, with the authority apparently consisting of your say-so, and the impression you convey of being some sort of medical professional.

It is equally inappropriate for you to insult me by deliberately using terms (and I don’t mean only the term for the surgery I had) intended to imply that I was still “male” prior to surgery. Never mind that I was, and had been for years, a woman, legally, socially, and medically as well, in every way but one, and, yes, that my genitals were reconstructed to be the normal genitals to match who I already was. (The fact is that I was universally perceived as a woman long before I had surgery, and the surgery had nothing to do with that universal perception of my gender, in 99% of my interactions with people. And that perception was kind of the point of my little PS about my conversation with the doctor, you know.)

Do you really think it’s OK to come here and use language like “stomping my feet”? Implying that I’m just being emotional and irrational and denying reality (because of course that’s what trans people do, amirite)? Using the repulsive and dangerous trope of the trans person as deceiver and “confuser”? Seriously? Me? You don’t know me, lady.

By the way, I don’t have a therapist anymore. Don’t need one. Haven’t for some time now. It’s actually quite healthy for me not to be willing just to tug my forelock and say yes ma’am and acquiesce in whatever insults or inaccuracies some clueless cis person decides to propagate. Perhaps you need to consult your therapist about why you keep saying I was “faulting” the doctor I saw today. When it’s extremely clear that that wasn’t what I was doing.

I’m beginning to think that you really aren’t a medical professional. Most doctors I know, at least ones with any experience at all in this area, have a far more nuanced view of things. They fully realize that the terminology for this kind of surgery is and always has been fluid, that it isn’t a legislative process but an essentially collaborative one in which medical terminology often follows usage in the community (rather than being dictated from the top down), and that there clearly is no one “proper” or “correct” term. You seem to think that the God of medicine came down on Mt. Sinai (Hospital, presumably) and decreed for all time the term “gender reassignment surgery,” so it has always been, so it shall always be. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way, and all you accomplish by insisting that it does is demonstrate a rather remarkable lack of historical knowledge. You do know that it was once called sex change surgery, right? And was, and still often is, referred to as sex reassignment surgery, long before anyone ever thought of calling it gender reassignment surgery, right?

Well, maybe not.

I suggest that before you continue to embarrass yourself, you actually do some research on, say, Google Scholar, and see just how common it is now in the medical, legal, and social science fields to use the term genital reconstruction surgery in the transgender context. Why? Because that’s exactly what it is. Genitals being reconstructed. Regardless of the reason.

Just how many examples of current medical and academic usage do I actually have to give you before you admit that you are simply and completely wrong, and apologize for your unpleasant behavior? 10? 100? 1000? 10,000? I can do it. And I’m not talking about Wikipedia, either.