"That is hardly different. They are both a fundamental part of our identity"

Saying 'i don't believe in your god' and 'you don't believe in your god' are fundamentally different.

One clearly disrespects the person far more. To the point where you are dictating what they think. Or at least claimin you know more about what they think than they do. The other merely makes a claim about one's self, which is likely true (and therefore valid, even if they disagree)

Does that make sense?

Also, i don't have a clue what you mean when you say transgenderism. I guess that gets back to what we call each other.

-ism implies some kind of belief system, right?

I absolutely don't disagree that a trans person thinks they are a man/woman/(other?). By saying that a bio-sex man is a woman, I am *agreeing* with them that it is so. I do not.

Calling someone a Christian/Muslim/Jew/Hindu, etc. merely means that they believe there is a deity. By denying that a deity exists, but that they believe that there is is the same as saying that I don't believe that a person can be different than their born sex, but they do believe it.

This is analogous to saying that a transgender person is transgender. That is fact. That is equivalent to saying that someone is a Christian. Saying that they are a man/woman opposite to their bio-sex is equivalent to saying that a Christian is a Child of God.

So how do you tell someone that you don't believe but you accept that they do?

Unfortunately we're left with he/she. And the choice to respect people or not.

Wha they want to be called, or to say your views of social norms are more important than their comfort and possibly safety.

You can argue over social norms, but if the normal way of greeting someone was to punch them in the stomach, it would be clear that social norms can be wrong and harmful - and those we find to be harmful should be changed.

Saying that they are transgender? Referring to them with gender-neutral pronouns where possible? Avoiding any sort of controversial gender reference? That is the best I can think of.

Ora, in that video on gender in language, it referenced the use of "they" as an acceptable singular pronoun. That is perhaps a better option for both parties.

Saying that they are transgender may risk their security depending on present company.

In that case, it shouldn't be spoken of if at all possible. If I was amid people who were violently anti-transgender, I would lie to say they were the sex that they portrayed themselves as. I would do the same for a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Oh yeah, they is great; especially for gender queer people who reject the male/female binary. But all the trans people i know identify strongly with male/female; the try harder than anyone i know to be seen as their identified gender. In the hopes that others will treat them the way they feel inside, will validate them and their experience.

I have been mistaken on occasion for a woman, because i have/had long hair. That didn't really bother me, but i have the priviledge of not ever being told my gender identity was invalid. That my gender expression wasn't manly enough or that i wasn't a 'real' man. Trans-people do not have these experiences.

They is problematic, it others them, it is like calling them something other than their prefered name - it doesn't matter what you call them, only their prefered name is respectful.

'In that case, it shouldn't be spoken of if at all possible. If I was amid people
who were violently anti-transgender, I would lie to say they were the sex that
they portrayed themselves as. I would do the same for a Jew in Nazi
Germany.'

Most trans-people don't know who they can trust, experience increased hostulity in public, ie walking down the street. The are comfortable in private with friends they know well.

There is a higher than average incidence of murder and mutilation - ie not just killing but also disfiguring. So it is likely that they have reasons to be uncomfortable in certain public situations. But being around someone who refuses to call them by their prefered gender pronoun, say in private, likely makes them uncomfortable. But i guess that comes back to who you choose to keep around as friends.

OK, so can we agree that it is possible to be as respectful as possible, dare I say acceptably respectful, without agreeing with or using terms that I find wrong?

And back to this case, was it the denial of Leelah's preferred gender that was abusive, their other treatment of her, or some combination thereof?

The combination. Seperating a person from their friends (ie social support network) is a pretty big thing - especially if they don't have/feel supported by their family aswell.

Not calling her by her name and prefered gender pronoun is a way to show you don't support her. They may have done other things but that's an example.

But the bigger thing, in my mind, is making this a constant thing, from which there was no escape. I believe that is the point when a person tries to find any escape that is possible, and if suicide is the only option they will take it.

I agree that the separation and ignoring apparent depression was neglectful. I think that not calling Leelah by they're preferred name was just sort of stupid. But I do understand not using Leelah's preferred pronoun. Perhaps they could have attempted to use the gender neutral ones.

Wow. Grammar. *their

It seems they did everything in their power to protect her from negative influences; which resulted in isolating her from anyone who might offer her some support.

I can imagine that being a direct cause of depression; though even without isolation the depression could have been caused by dealing with being trans. But depression is always hard to ckpe with; and social supoort is one of the main pillars of fighting depression - other than medication, and some depression does have a bio-chemical cause and so should probably be medicated as a matter of course... It is very hard to tell the difference; medication and talking therapy both work about the same % of the time. Neither of which is 100%. But you could suggest doing both... Having good friends or family to support you and talk to may not be better than talking therapy, but it can be as good.

So, yeah, ignoring the depression, but i think also aggrovating it.

So, bottom line (I say that a lot). Parents: Bad job. But, it is possible to not use a trans person's preferred pronoun and respect them.

@KC ...

"Now, ought my parents to have agreed with me, or at least say that they did, to stop my depression? Should Leelah's parents have agreed, or at least said that they did?"

I know where you want me to go with this. I'm not sure that I'm going there but I hope this satisfies your questions. Bear with me.

Suicide is rarely sudden. The change between when I began contemplating suicide and when I halfheartedly attempted suicide was pretty easy to see. A few people did, but they didn't speak up until after the fact. Had I killed myself, I imagine that they would have felt immense guilt for the rest of their lives knowing that they could have done something about it but didn't because they were afraid to speak up about something so severe and be wrong.

It's understandable, too. Had someone said something, I would have been put on a watch list or entered into a psychiatric evaluation program or something of that nature. It would have made my life a living hell - the key word, of course, being "living."

I disagree with that line of thinking, though. My life was already a living hell, so much so that I attempted to end it. It wouldn't have been possible to do any more significant damage than had already been done had someone spoken up and pushed my family or those close to me to get me help.

As such, I'm going to answer the first half of your question - no. It is not necessary to agree. What is necessary is respect, love, and care. That's the reason I'm still here - my condition and how I felt about my life, privileged as I've been and overreacting to a number of minor disturbances in my daily life as I was, I was respected, loved, and cared for, be it by the doctors that talked me through everything, my parents who stood by me and never once blamed me, and my friends, who, when I saw them again after a week away, hugged me and consoled me and made me feel like I was surrounded by people who care. And I was.

You have no idea how many times I have cried myself to sleep out of pure happiness that I'm still alive.

When my friend Maggie committed suicide a couple of years ago, I cried for her too, and I still do, because I wish I had been around her enough to see it. At her funeral, her parents apologized for not recognizing how dire her situation was, and, while they acknowledged that they didn't agree with her solution, they wish they had simply found it within themselves to do what any parent should do - offer unconditional love through thick and thin and make sure everything turns out okay. I feel for them because it's not their fault, but it's something that they will take to their own graves someday.

In Leelah's instance, I see it as something very simple - her parents locked her up and abused her. You acknowledged that, given the full factual case, she was abused, and this is not hard to acknowledge. When you imprison someone in their own home, a home which they hate, and do not allow them help for their depression, you are abusing them. What is more terrifying to me about this case is that her parents used the fact that they did not agree with her life choices to justify the abuse. They used it as a reason to continue - by showing her how wrong she was, they thought, she would be the kind of person that they wanted her to be. As a result, she's dead.

As before, no, her parents were under no obligation to agree with her. I know a number of parents who do not agree with their child's decision to come out as something different, be it sexuality, gender, or something so simple as going to the rival school that the entire family has rooted against every Saturday for 30 years. Yet, through all of this, I have never met a parent that went anywhere near the lengths that Leelah's parents went in order to wreck her life, nor have I ever met anyone who would go so far as to attempt to destroy everything someone else believes in by torturing them. Leelah didn't receive the respect, love, or care that she needed to pull through, and Leelah will never know that it truly does get better and that someday she would have found a home and found herself, just as we all do. That's her parents' fault.

"But, it is possible to not use a trans person's preferred pronoun and respect them."

My only response to this - why? What's the purpose? Does it somehow benefit you? All it does is hurt them. You wouldn't go up to an 80-year-old man who served a 10 year sentence in the 1970s for assault and then cleaned up his act a criminal. That's not what he is today. Why would you call someone who is trying to change the thing they don't want to be anymore?

^I'll absolutely agree to that.

^ This was at bo's long post.

Bo, for the same reason that you do not call me a prophet or magician or wizard. You don't believe that I am.

Using a transgender person's preferred pronoun *is* showing tacit approval.

If you told me that you were a prophet or magician or wizard, I would laugh. If, when I laughed, you said, "No, I'm serious," I would stop laughing, say okay, and call you a prophet, magician, or wizard, whichever you may be.

That's typically how the conversation tends to go when someone comes out to you, in case you've never really had it. That's the respectful conversation at least. I've seen a couple where it just turned into more laughing on one side and either yelling, sulking, or crying on the other. I just don't know why you would want to do that to someone whether you agree with them or not.

I might question whether her parents acted alone, or on advise from others. It is possible that their plan was to break Leelah down and rebuilfld her as a new person; presumably this isn't something they would have confidence in unless someone told them it was a good way of 'fixing' her.

I'm making a lot of assumptions here. But i suspect it is likely there are website and/or churches which would offer this kind of advice - if you looked hard enough. Possibly with some claim that Gods love will be enough to keep them going.

And that might even be right, but Leelah was told many times 'God doesn't make mistakes' - (religous trans people seems to have a different take on this phrase - they say: 'of course God doesn't make mistakes. God meant to make me trans!') i don't particularily have a problem with religion here, i have a problem with how her parents mis-used their religious beliefs to justify their treatment of their child.

I believe that treating other as you would like them to treat you is fundamental to Christianity. And that her parents failed in this.

"But, it is possible to not use a trans person's preferred pronoun and respect
them."

You can respect and support them in other ways... That doesn't take away from the fact that you are disrespecting them on some level.

Bo, I would not want something like that to happen. But if my friend seriously believed he was a wizard, I would be slightly concerned.

Ora, I absolutely agree with that.

No, I suppose it doesn't. But even so, disagreeing with anyone on anything, especially something that is dear to them, is the same.