I’m sure you all are by now annoyed and familiar with the story of Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student who has been attacked over the last week by Rush Limbaugh and the rest of Wingnuttia for daring to speak out in support of contraception, which up to approximately twelve seconds ago, was one of the least controversial subjects in the United States. If not, she has a Wikipedia entry now! I hadn’t written about it much, because meh, but Thers picked up on the latest annoying, predictable development in this story, and it’s subject matter dear to my heart, namely the fact that the fights for reproductive rights and LGBT rights [and hell, most other things which make life better for people who aren't rich white Christian dudes] are the same fight. So this will be one of my “I told you so” posts.
You see, apparently Sandra Fluke wrote a paper [a woman! with a vagina! writing a paper! that wingnuts don't like!] a while back which stated her support for private insurance not only covering contraception, but also treatment for transgender people, all the way up to gender reassignment surgery. In a sane world, this would not be controversial, as transgender people are real and recognized by the medical community, and they’re pretty much in agreement on the proper ways to go about treating them.
Not for wingnuts. First off, just click on this Memeorandum link to all the wingnuts now gnashing their chompers saying “How dare she?!”
And here is, um, some wingnut, losing his mind on the issue:
Sandra Fluke is being sold by the left as something she’s not. Namely a random co-ed from Georgetown law who found herself mixed up in the latest front of the culture war who was simply looking to make sure needy women had access to birth control. That, of course, is not the case.
As many have already uncovered Sandra Fluke she is, in reality, a 30 year old long time liberal activist who enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control. She has been pushing for mandated coverage of contraceptives at Georgetown for at least three years according to the Washington Post.
However, as I discovered today, birth control is not all that Ms. Fluke believes private health insurance must cover. She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if “gender reassignment” surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.
As Thers said, OMIGOD. Woman have opinion on two things and write them down!
Here’s another ‘un:
[I]magine Fluke trying to defend this language about “heterosexist” policies in a public hearing, with Republican members of the committee questioning her about whether religious institutions (or private businesses, or taxpayers) should also be required to foot the bill for “gender reassignment.”
Congratulations, America: You’ve been scammed!UPDATE: Dan Collins at The Conservatory points out that the Obama administration is already providing illegal immigrants with “hormone treatments for transgendered people.”
Of course, this only makes sense. We wouldn’t want these foreign transpeople to go back to wherever they (illegally) came from and say that they’d been the victims of American “heterosexism,” would we? Then President Obama would have to issue another apology to the foreigners we had victimized.
Haw haw haw, wingnut attempt to make joke!
If you are truly bored with your existence, click around all the other Memeorandum articles featuring wingnuts screeching basically the same thing over and over, but if you have things to do, the takeaway is, again, simple: it’s all the same fight.
Here’s what Thers says at the end of his post, along the same lines, but funnier than I have the energy to do right now:
Are they deliberately trying to prove feminists and queer theorists right about everything? If so, well played. I guess.
Wait’ll they find out she dislikes racism. Then she’ll be totes exposed as an Anti-American Faith-Hating Fraud.
Totes.
In a sane world there would not be a contingent of people that goes around saying they’re not so-and-so gender when they clearly have the parts. And the fact that the medical community and parts of society endorse this is also insane. That’s like telling schizophrenics that the voices in their head are “totes” for real.
I can understand in the case of hermaphrodites, which there’s obviously no personal fault. (I guess ‘hermaphrodite’ is probably a bigoted term by now? What is it, ‘intersex’ these days?)Anything else other than that shouldn’t be paid for by tax payers though.
Do ALL wingnuts still use the word “coed”? Because NOBODY uses that word to identify female college students anymore.
So, Richard, I take it you define which gender people are by their genitalia. What if their perfectly normal genitalia doesn’t match their DNA (sex chromosomes)?
1) You know better than the medical community how to address Transgendered people…may I ask what medical school you attended, where you did your residency, and what your specialty is?
2) I assume you know yourself better than anyone else…why do you assume transgendered people do not do the same? Most other Doctors in the medical commuity (again, see question 1 about your medical credentials) make the assumption that they do, and work with them to fulfill their recognized medical needs accordingly.
3) hermaphrodite is not a bigoted term. It is a state some persons are born with, and which often results in difficult and painful decisions for the childs parents, and the hermaphroditic person in question as said person grows older. Such persons often are assigned a gender at birth, and find it does NOT correspond to the person they know, deeply and personally, that they are, and must go through reassignment surgery/hormone treatment, etc. This is not that different, to a thinking person, from someone who is born with the genetalia of one gender, but knows the same thing; that the genetalia and sense of identity do not match. IF modern medicine can help ONE such person be who they feel called to be, that is a wonderful thing.
4) What medical prodecures that your doctor and yourself believe are necessary for you do WE get to decide will not be paid for by your medical insurance?
Bill S, most still do, because the idea of women getting an education (with…MEN! G A S P!) seems novel and new to them. I mean, if women get all educated and start thinking for themselvs and demanding equality, how can they be good Dugger like breeding mares who submit to their Husbands like nice obedient pets if they have been at university getting an advanced degree (and earning power).
If my post seems extreme, remember folks, there ARE people who TRULY feel this way…and yeah, lots of them still use the term “co-ed”
Your right Richard in a perfectly sane world there wouldn’t be cross gendered people who feel out of place in their bodies due to their genitalia sometimes feeling so disturbed by their own bodies they’ll go so far as genital mutilation. In a perfectly sane world there would be no churches since no one would hear god “talking” to them to.
BTW hermaphrodite isn’t a bigoted term as far as I’m concerned. Of course if you say hermaphrodite in a bigoted tone you might just be a bigot regardless.
Richard, you’re a moron, not a doctor. We’ll leave that question to the grown-ups with medical degrees, thanks so much for playing.
Richard (I don’t like calling you ‘the wing-nut’ but you said it about yourself.)
You don’t like yourself very much, do you? You are spouting all kinds of bile about what is right and wrong yet you aren’t settled in your own heart.
For what it’s worth, I’ve met transsexuals and been honoured to call them friends, and heard their stories, and they do truly know they are born in the wrong body.
Just imagine, living in the wrong body. They aren’t saying it to annoy people or fit in or whatever reason. They truly know they are.
It isn’t like legitimising the voices of a schizophrenic as the ‘cure’ comes from the gender reassignment operation.
I’m sure you’re not a bad chap, and you wouldn’t deny the right of someone to have an operation to cure what ails them, would you? Even if it’s on your tax money?
I certainly wouldn’t.
The idea that 99.9% of the population should pay into insurance to cover expensive elective surgeries that though it can be argued would improve the quality of life for people who either believe or factually have been dealt the wrong gender in life is pretty stupid. These people could live out thier entire lives as is, and the surgeries are vastly offensive to an overwhelming majority of the people who would be essentially paying for them. I believe that there should be a LGBT insurance company created by and for that community, if they believe that it should be covered. There is no assurances that life is ever going to be completely fair, and if believing that people who feel they have been assigned the wrong gender at birth are on thier own with the associated costs is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Charlie Gordon,
So. You are not happy with the idea of paying into insurance cover to pay for operations to make transsexuals feel normal, which is something you (and 99.9% of the (I’m assuming American) population apparently) find wrong.
Fair enough.
I’m assuming you have no problems with paying into a scheme that provides plastic surgery for people with facial injuries or have had mastectomies? After all, these people could live out their entire lives as is.
I was born with ambiguous genitals (could be mistaken for male outside). I had everything cut and cleaned up on the NHS before I was weaned. Would you have any problem with paying out for something like that?
I’ve got to get ready for my night shift in a minute, but I’ll read your response tomorrow.
PS, being transgender-ed is a psycho-biological issue and should totally be covered!
As to PhillipJ, I covered that.
As to Gene, all this stuff about the inner self and gender identity is, well in the most polite manner I can say it, bull. Not to mention my taxpayer money shouldn’t fund peoples’ inner selves, which aren’t anchored in something called physical reality.
Andvétr, can’t speak for those folks, but as an atheist, I analyze God through the paradigm of mathematics/science.
And thanks Evan, I’ll be sure to return after the break for Double Jeopardy.
I don’t have to grok the transgender thing to understand that the humane and compassionate thing to do is to support trans people on their journeys in any way I can.
Proof, please.
Otherwise it’s just someone’s sheltered and sad opinion.
Ok, Richard, how about people with AIS – Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (their body cannot process androgen at all)? They have male DNA, external female genitalia, and NO internal female organs at all(except a short vagina). In many cases, AIS is not diagnosed until the person reaches puberty and does not menstruate (or marries and is unable to conceive). All their life this person has known, has an innate sense of femaleness (in the same way that you know you are male, Richard.) Is this person male or female? Who should this person marry? Depending on how you define this person’s gender, if “she” married either sex it could be construed as a same-sex marriage. If this person is already married to a male, should the marriage be annulled? How would you go about “fixing” this person medically or psychologically, Richard?
Here’s the kicker…most AIS people KNOW that they are female, but a few realize growing up, have this same sense, that they are male.
So we have two scenarios here:
1) Male DNA, female brain/identity, female body
2) Male DNA, male brain/identity, female body
Which sex is person 1, Richard, and which sex is person 2?
Without DNA testing, one would never know these are your “hermaphrodites”, Richard, because externally they look EXACTLY like females – and yes, they do grow breasts.
And there are other genetic/hormonal anomalies like this which are even more complicated…so gender is not necessarily black and white, male and female.
er, that should be “black or white, male or female” :-)
Hermaphrodite is an outdated term because it’s medically inaccurate. It means having both sets of genitals, which is not a condition which exists in humans.
Richard fair enough if you view things through science and mathematics then shouldn’t you read through the medical and psychological studies on transgender people before actually saying these things as you do? There are many who recognize this as a real problem without being loons and quacks. Perhaps you believe your following science when your only doing so when it is convenient and serves the confirmation bias. Remember science doesn’t give a single damn about what you think is right or wrong and quite often it says we are all wrong for one reason or another.
I’m not sure I understand this as I do not have medical insurance, but isn’t it PRIVATE medical insurance, where the policy is covered by payments made by the policy holder or their employer?
Why are people objecting to this? Are these policies subsidised by the gov’t or something? Otherwise, what does it have to do with anyone but the Insurance company and the policy holder?
And Richard (the Wing-nut)
So your tax dollars are going on something you object to? So what’s new?
I vehemently object to war, but still millions, nay, Billions in tax-payer money was wasted on the Middle-Eastern follies, which did nothing to protect our well-being and may have even exacerbated the situation.
Whereas what you are talking about (gender reassignment) will have a positive affect on at least one person’s life, and no innocent women and children will be blown to smithereens in the process.
If I may, I believe that Richard is missing the central point that (I think) Evan and I are making.
The attacks on Fluke had nothing to do with her testimony, but focused on her presumed sexual identity as a single woman having sex. Now we see that these attacks have expanded to her support for transgender rights (in an entirely different forum than her House testimony).
Both sets of attacks are intended to create disgust at her (supposed) attitudes towards sexuality, because they do not fit into a particular ideological model of “normal” sexual identity.
Fluke is not being attacked because of her arguments about insurance policy, but because of her (imagined) sexuality. She hasn’t spoken about her own sex life — and why should she, she was talking about insurance policy! But still, we hear that she is “loose,” and now, maybe she’s a little too friendly with “queers”….
The entire episode is instructive. Evan is quite right. There is a powerful ideological push to keep everyone locked in one specific (straight, married) kind of sexuality box, as it were. And why? Because it privileges certain existing power structures (ahem, the Catholic hierarchy).
This normative ideological model of sexuality is as ridiculous as it is obnoxious to liberty. Straight, married, never-divorced, child-producing, contraceptive-eschewing, religious, sex for procreation only, he-man she-woman couples barely exist, statistically.
So why are we all supposed to be “ashamed” that we’re not something that pretty much nobody is? The question ought to answer itself.