My passport recently survived a trip through the washing machine (and dryer). I wonder if that's enough to damage the stupid thing.

I will probably confirm breakage via a hammer tonight. Thank you for posting this, it seems ridiculously obvious but I'd never considered that they could be so easily disabled.

#14-
How do you raise a kid to be open and honest, except for one thing that if you let slip might result in your parents going to jail?

That's the crisis of teaching children to be ethical in a morally ambiguous world, isn't it?

We teach children to be "open and honest" - but we also want them to watch what they say (or where they go) online lest it bite them in the ass in 10 years. We don't want them to be untrusting and fearful of those they don't know, but neither do we want them talking to strangers.

We want them to have some faith in government (and its representatives), but at the same time don't want them to be uncritical of it or unaware that these forces are not always acting in our best interests.

When dealing with children, you can't lay the whole situation on them at once. They wouldn't understand or be able to cope with it. So you use simplified explanations of complex situations. And you want to teach them to be open and honest, but you also have to teach them discretion. It's not just about pot. That's life.

**note - the "want to help - go to your governments" was directed at Craig, and any others around who are posting from outside the US. Our country desperately needs to be called on its actions, and the governments of Europe are the closest things to friends that we still have have. People might bitch and moan, but we aren't *actually* going to bomb France.

#50 is right - inflamatory language in general probably won't help anything, and I desperately hope the those outside the US are at least vaguely aware that many Americans are aware of what our country has been responsible for around the world and have been trying (however unsuccessfully) to stop or even mitigate it. But given the severity of our country's actions, the rest of the world has every logical reason and right to be incredibly frightened and angry.

Want to help? Go to *your* governments. Go to the UN. America doesn't seem to be capable of stopping itself at this point. We are a rogue state, we're out of control, and our locally-grown agents of sanity are trying to reign us in, and it's not working. We need help. I doubt it could actually happen here and now, but for our own sakes and those of everyone else I wish the UN was actually powerful enough to step in here.

#19 - I don't suppose you have any specific suggestions about what "DO SOMETHING" would actually involve, do you? Because people *have* been trying. Maybe not as many as I wish, but still a hell of a lot of people, and nothing we're doing appears to be working. We want to stop it, we want to "do something," *we just don't have a damned idea what to do that could actually accomplish anything at all.*

Conventional protests are apparently completely useless - they happen frequently, and mean nothing. Voting drives and similar efforts are omni-present, and maybe that will result in positive change following next November, and maybe it won't. Armed revolution and the like just ain't gonna happen, and any attempt would be a disaster on par with 9-11 that would make our current national state of sociopathic, xenophobic paranoia look like a minor nervous twitch.

So please, for god's sake, if you have any ideas, please share them with us.

#102 - Depending on where and how the obtained the sperm, the donor may (and probably has) relinquished rights to the child.

Legal "parenthood" in any situation involving donors is a bit questionable, but just because they opted for home insemination, doesn't mean they didn't go through established medical routs to find a donor.

And being pregnant while taking testosterone *isn't* normal - in fact, it isn't even possible. Read the article again; he had to stop testosterone replacement therapy months before being able to get pregnant, and will have to remain off them until giving birth.

And there is no "biologically necessity" of referring to him as "mother." We have no idea how he identifies. "Mother" is a very distinct and weighted social term - he may identify with it based on the unique experience of pregnancy, he may consider his role in the process to have simply been that of a father with an incubator. It's not our right to impose such social distinctions.

#106 - there is no "empirical gender." There is only description of biological sex. This is a matter of appearance - not identity, just a description of what they look like.

And trust me, all trans people are perfectly aware of the "physical fact" that our anatomy at birth is in contradiction to our psyche. That anatomy however is not the sole or even most important factor in determining who and what we are.

This is not an identification with "social norms of the opposite gender" - this isn't "I am more masculine than the average woman, therefor I should be a man." Not all trans men are even conventionally "masculine," nor all trans women "feminine." This isn't about adherance to social norms - it is simply that one's psyche/soul/mind is designed to know one's self as a woman or a man, even when one simultaneously recognizes that one's outer form appears in contradiction to this.

By way of imperfect example, on a sheer physical level the situation might be comparable to that of a person who has lost a limb, or was born without one. The mind is wired to know how the body should be - from a vague knowledge through full-blown phantom limb syndrome, a person rationally know that physical reality says they have no arm, while simultaneously knowing that *they should.* Beyond even the practical and social ramifications of a body that looks and works differently from other people's, one knows on a fundamental level that one's outer form is not the way it should be.

Gender identity is part of this fundamental knowledge of self.

But this whole mix-n-match, one from column A one from column B salad bar approach IS WEIRD.

Genetically male humans don't give birth.

Not actually true. Some rare forms of chromosomal intersex conditions can result in a person who is mostly or entirely XY (some conditions resulting in different chromosomal patterns in different parts of the body), but who are able to conceive and bear healthy children. It's extremely rare, and fertility is reduced, but it happens.

I wonder how full of a gender experience any transgender person can every truly get. Can a transgender man without a penis ever experience life exactly as a genetic male? Can a transgender woman ever experience life exactly as a genetic female without even having the capability to bear a child?

A large portion of general male psychology is about the penis, and for most women their reproductive ability and the experience of childbirth is a significant aspect of their understanding and experience of womanhood.

But there are many people, including but very certainly not limited to trans people, who are exceptions to this general rule. Trans men are not the only people who have to figure out a way to assert an identity *as* men despite a lack of a penis. Trans women are not the only women who could never bear a child.

Injury and disease rob many men of male genital anatomy. There are men born intersex, neither physically male nor female. Penile cancer is rare, but exists. And the phalloplasty procedure has actually experienced a sudden surge of demand - thanks to the Iraq war. When a man's leg is blown off, there's no magic shield protecting the slightly higher extremities. All men in such circumstances have to consider either the imperfect and mind-bogglingly expensive surgical options available (if they can even possibly afford them), or have to learn to live with a reality in which they do not have a penis, and yet are men anyway.

And with regards to the ability to bear children - most of the women in my immediate family will never be able to bear children. We have a very high rate of infertility, and as a result, all of my cousins are adopted. While my aunts would greatly love to have the capability to bear a child, they can't, and barring medical advances they never will. This is not a particularly unusual situation.
Our experiences aren't the same as those of cisgender (ie, not trans) people. But everyone's experiences of their gender is different. A straight woman is not going to have the same experience of being a woman as a lesbian. My aunts will not experience womanhood or motherhood exactly the same way my mother did. A man who has to undergo castration and estrogen treatment (a common last resort to combat aggressive prostate cancer) is not going to have the same experience of being a man as the average guy.

But these differences do not invalidate a given individual's status *as* a man or woman. Just different kinds of men and women.

Roger - uniqueness on our part, does not justify a total lack of tact on your part. We are perfectly aware that most people will be curious about us, but curiosity does not give anyone legitimate license to neglect the rules of basic human decency and good manners.

Questions about a person's sex life, their anatomy, medical history, family relations - these are not topics typically considered open for casual conversation. Unless you are a person's doctor, lover or therapist, you do not ask them the details of their genital structure, or whether their father beat them, or what medications they're on.

Unless you are talking to your super-best-friend with whom you already share such intimate details, these are *not appropriate questions to ask.* Just because we're trans, doesn't make us exempt from such basic a consideration of polite human interaction. Basically, if I don't already know what the last STD you got was, you don't get to ask about my bits.

You're curious? Tough. I'm sure many people are curious how someone paralyzed from the waist down has sex, but I certainly hope you would never casually ask a disabled aquaintance for the gritty details of their love lives.

And of course, when someone asks a trans person "what's your REAL name", it's probably a safe bet they're not thinking "what is the etymology of Calpernia?" If they were, they would ask something more like "That's an interesting name - what does it mean?"

Concerning surgery - this is always an idiotic question. We're talking about major abdominal surgery. Of course it hurts. If you wake up mid-way, it's going to hurt a whole lot. With competent medical care and a bit of luck, appropriate medication keeps the pain manageable. Anyone not dumber than a sack of hammers can figure out that an appendectomy will hurt unless properly medicated - this is no different.