NEED HELP, Gender warrior friends!

[lunatickle]

Hey folks, if you know what "Harry Benjamin Standards of Care (HBSOC)" means, I need your help. I'm writing a paper that's due wednesday morning (yikes!) about the SOC and and it's discontents. PLEASE PLEASE answer a few questions or give a sentence or two about anything SOC related, I can really use the quotes. It's an academic paper for social

Comments

[moominmuppet]

1) I pretty much loathe the HBSOC. I think it enforces one particular (and out-of-date) concept of "male" and "female" in offensive and inherently sexist ways. I'm pretty much a libertarian in regards to access to medicine and surgery, so my major concerns are that everything is 'labelled' with the risks and benefits, not that an external person gets to decide whether I want to take on those risks and benefits. At most, I think a "waiting period" of a specific set amount of time would be potentially ok, and other forms of therapy and support should be accessible, but not mandatory.

2) N/A

3) My definitions would be: Transsexual -- someone who is transitioning or has transitioned in a physical way (surgeries of various sorts, hormones, etc) Transgender -- someone who doesn't identify as the gender which society identifies them as Genderqueer -- this is how I tend to describe myself. I think of it as a good "catch-all" for all the folks who don't fit into a binary notion of gender, and who claim both, or neither, or some combination.

4) I think of gender as a composite of many, many different personal traits, and their intersection with the culture in which they're expressed (since the same traits may be gendered differently in different cultures). It seems that gender gets assigned by how many "points" you get in either column regarding all those traits cumulatively. A female body may count for a lot of points, for example, but even that can be overridden, perception-wise, by expressive masculinity on a number of other traits. I think gender is both deeply personal, strongly culturally engrained, and highly performative.

[moominmuppet]

thanks so much! I love the points system idea. Thank you thank you thank you for reposting in your journal, you're much appreciated.

[lunatickle]

oh, "anonymous" is me, i forgot to log in.