Her gender was female, her gender pronoun was female. To call her otherwise is disrespectful. You are damaging to trans people, and thus a bigot. Your description of reality is flawed.

Surgery does nothing to change who a person is or how they identify; even hormone replacement therapy doesn't change that (and it does change their brain chemistry, i've heard lots of conversations about how going on T or E has changed people's feelings and the intensity of their emotions, but it does not change their gender)

How about i call you a woman and deny your gender? I tell you that you are expressing yourself wrong and i know better than you do?

Is that a respectful way of treating you? Or anyone?

The facts, she was assigned male at birth. She knew it was a mistake by age four.

" First, genetically you don't know because we don't have a First, genetically you don't know because we don't have a chromosonal test, she could have been XX, XY, XXY, XYY or many other viable combinations. This usually corresponds with gender BUT in the case of trans people does not."

Genuinely curious... If there is no chromosomal test how is it known trans people's chromosomes do not correspond to gender?

We don't. But the fact is chromosones don't always correspond with sex.

Androgen insensitivity syndrome means cells do not respond to androgen (derived from testosterone) which means XY people develop as women (but with testicles where their ovaries should be. Nine of the testosterone produced by these testicles has any effect on the body during development and thus the body is born with a vagina, utereus, will likely develop breasts at lubertt and undergo all the other normal changes; except not having a period. It is highly likely that these women can give birth and use their utereus as a surrogate incubator for someone else's fertilised eggs.

This is the syndrom i understand the best and thus can explain the best; but there are numerous less well understood itersex conditions. Often a doctor has to decide at birth or have the parents decide which gender to assign (for the birth cert) when the sexual organs are not fully developed of have some inter-sex shape. Not clearly penis or vagina.

At that point some cosmetic surgery can be performed; but it is an assignment. Gender expression and identity are two seperate things.

In texas, when it came to gay marriage they (mistakenly) decided to define men as XY and women as XX; but they don't require chromosonal testing so who knows how many otherwise healthy happy marriages would be invalidated if this law was applied?

Jeff Kuta, i am going to make the assumption that you are male and cis-gendered.

That basically means you were born with a penis and you identify as male. These two thing often corelate but corelation does not imply causation.

If we only had your experience to go on, then sure, we could assume the two are one and the same (and most voices in our culture are cis-gendered) however when we listen to the voices of trans people we find that the two are regularily not the same, you can have penis and girl, or vagina and boy, or intersex and genderqueer, or any other combination of the three.

By ignoring the epxeriences of others or dismissing them you are making mistakes, you are insulting people whose identity you know nothing about and whose life you have not lived. And they don't need to explain, you only need to understand you are being offensive. The normal responce to causing offensve might be to apologise and ask how you can avoid doing it again.'But i don't know what is normal where you're from.

Honestly, how hard is it to call someone the way they want to be identified? Is that the end of the world?

Honestly, how hard is it to accept other people don't agree with your every whim? Is that the end of the world? Oh yes, I suppose it is if you're a bit of an entitled drama queen.

Who asked you to agree? All we ask is respect - which you havenmt shown yourself capable of in my few experiences around you.

Well gee you want to argue semantics? If that's the case you should quit while you're behind.

By asking for 'respect' you seem to want people to 'agree' to addressing you and treating you in a certain way that perhaps might not be considered reasonable by people with their own rights and freedoms!

You'll have to forgive me I get a bit annoyed when people create threads to beat up on grieving families, just to further their own agendas and point of view.

What if I consider "he" and "she" to be designstions of sex, rather than gender? Then gender identity is irrelevant to the pronoun I use in discussing someone. It expresses only medical, biological fact. Nothing ambiguous, nothing subjective, nothing self-determined. And if the person's got a hermaphroditic organ set (I guess "intersex" is the more accurate nomenclature?), sure, in that case I'll call him/her whichever he/she prefers.

"By asking for 'respect' you seem to want people to 'agree' to addressing you
and treating you in a certain way that perhaps might not be considered
reasonable by people with their own rights and freedom"

Your rights and freedoms end when they harm someone else.

Did i mention 41% attempting suicide, it is not just causing offense, it is a massively damaging problem for this group of people. And, oh yeah, you're too pig-headed to care about other human's suffering? Is that it?

I mean, yes, we all want you to agree to treat black people and women as equals; because not doing so hurts them.

I don't give a frak about your beliefs, they just make you a bigot, which you're entitled to be in private.

Where is the "harm"?

@Your humble : you are still disrespecting their wishes. See above.

A gendered pronoun is refering to a person, in place of their name. It is not something we use based on bio-sex. It is personal, refering to the person.

If you meet a person on the street who is a pre-op transgendered man or woman, whose parents out the on hormone blockers before puberty and then at 18 was allowed to go through their chosen puberty. And who is presenting as either male or female, you're not going to ask first to see what is going on between their legs before refering to them by the pronoun they appear to be.

And you should have no right to know what is between their legs (they are called private parts for a reason)

But even if you just misgender a cis-person who has atypical hair and dress. If they correct you, it is rather insulting for you to deny the gender they claim - but you still have not right to ask them to prove it.

Massive suicide rate - might indicate harm. Lower than average income - might indicate harm. Higher than average rate of being victim of homocide - maybe some harm there.

If i tell you that you are not who you think you are and refuse to accept what you say, ABOUT YOURSELF, i am telling you that you have less value than me; that i am more important, and that i know more about you than you could possibly know about yourself. Thousands of times a day, this kind of message builds up; all day everyday, this message leads directly to suicides.

And you are directly responcible for your lack of compassion and empathy.

@Your Hum: medical biological facts have changed many times; once being gay was diagnoised as a mental illness, but medical facts have changed to reflect changes in society - thus you can't claim they are entirely objective.

I can think of literally no examples where yiu use bio-sex as the deciding factor in determining which pronouns you use. It is usually gender expression (ie how they present themselves, sometimes people make mistakes when someone presents contrary to how society expects from their gender, but the decision is never based on bio-sex) It seems you are coming up with new rules to justify your bigotry.

And as far as i'm aware they are very few example of true hermaphorditism, ie both vagina AND penis, and even rarer examples of both genitals being functional. There are many more case of intersex conditions, where there is one set of genitals but the have only partially formed or had some development abnormality (if we can assume we know what normal is)

"Your rights and freedoms end when they harm someone else."

Actually, free speech is fairly absolute. There are a few clear exceptions (slander, e.g.), but nothing so broad as "whenever it harms someone else."

" Massive suicide rate - might indicate harm. Lower than average income - might indicate harm. Higher than average rate of being victim of homocide - maybe some harm there. "

You may find this article illuminating:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

"I can think of literally no examples where you use bio-sex as the deciding factor in determining which pronouns you use."

Go ask anyone on a sports team with separate teams for males and females. Go ask Princess Anne, or any other Olympic athlete. Go ask anyone who has a government issued identification card with the letter M or F on it.

Sorry orthaic, you're the one coming up with the new rules to justify your sense of social justice for the genderqueer.

I can call you him or her if that is what you feel comfortable with. In my gymnasium there was F-M trans human who later went on and found love with a girl in the same class. I can deal with that. And I feel like everyone should be able to feel the same way. Are they? No. What will I do about it? Nothing, because we are on the internet and there will always be assholes, trolls, or people who genuenly believe that the person is not male (which he technically isn't, but you wouldn't put tomatoes to a fruit salad would you?). And they have a right to their opinion and express them. And I am OK with that even if hey are wrong in my opinion (unless they are asshikes about it, then fuck them). But I will not call you "demisexual polygendered angel-tri-pyrofox-kin who's headmates are fictionkin and moonkin". Then I will pray for you to either get help for your mental issues or that your parents show you more love.

Sorry for major spelling mistakes, like asshikes? Fuck you autocorrect, it is a-s-s-h-o-l-e-s, get it now?

@fiedler: you said "You'll have to forgive me I get a bit annoyed when people create threads to
beat up on grieving families, just to further their own agendas and point of
view."

No, this is to bea on abusive parent who drove their child to suicide. Did you see some of the stuff they did? Kept her from seeing any friends for months, took away her phone+internet, took her out of school to isolate her.

They destroyed their own child. Read the reddit post she made asking 'is this abuse' And it is not just to drive home some unrelated adgenda. It is to stop this from happening to anyone else.

"Actually, free speech is fairly absolute. There are a few clear exceptions
(slander, e.g.), but nothing so broad as "whenever it harms someone else.""

The clear exceptions are where harm may be caused the classic 'don't cry fire is a crowded theatre' is EXACTLY based on that harm principle.

Jeff Kuta, pronoun use is not beurocratic form filling, it is not olympic committee regulations, (and they do allow some trans-athletes compete in their identified gender, so bad example) And the rest of your examples are nothing to do with how you personally identify a person you have just met.

How you identify them can either validate their identiy or invalidate it and harm them. If they correct you, the empathic thing to do is to accept that correction.

I can't see why you think any other consideration is more important than this. The very Christian 'treat others the way you would like them to treat you'. Thus do not undermine their identity. Pretty Simple.

"Then I will pray for you to either get
help for your mental issues or that your parents show you more love." - then you may shorten that to something functional - i know of few people who object if you shortening their identifier (ie name), Samantha becomes Sam, Robert becomes Rob, Samuel also becomes Sam... And obviously "demisexual polygendered angel-tri-pyrofox-kin who's
headmates are fictionkin and moonkin" just becomes Tri-Pyro! (cause that is the coolest)

"that the person is not male (which he technically isn't, but you wouldn't put tomatoes to a fruit salad would you?)" - and technically his gender is male. You need to specific, in some cases it is important, like medical conditions which only affect bio-sex males.

If somebody looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, I'll call him/her/xher a duck. If a 200-pound football player insists that she's a girl, I'll go along with it but you'd damned better not criticize me for finding the whole thing kind of ridiculous, because it is damned ridiculous. The fact that the football player is enduring a living hell because she thinks she's a female who looks like a man doesn't make it any less absurd, any more than an "ugly" person insisting she's beautiful is less ridiculous just because she's suffering.

"The clear exceptions are where harm may be caused the classic 'don't cry fire is a crowded theatre' is EXACTLY based on that harm principle. "

No, that's wrong. That exception is far narrower. If the speech is likely to foment immediate panic and violence on a large scale, then it might be banned. Speech that just causes "harm" is protected -- even if it causes death, so long as the death is not immediate and abrupt, or causally certain from the speech (for example, hiring a hit man is not protected speech).

" The fact that
the football player is enduring a living hell because she thinks she's a female
who looks like a man doesn't make it any less absurd" - if you're happy to avoid adding to that living hell, we're at least on some common ground.

Here's a fairly good article for you.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/208044/First-Amendment/296554/Permissible-restrictions-on-expression

Smeck, your constitution proctects harmful laws when it comes to guns; no wonder it can do the same for other things.

This is not the free speech we have in europe. We have laws on abuse which includes verbal abuse. In the UK there are hate speech laws which forbid speech likely to incite violence. In Ireland we have blasphemy, which protect against offending people's religious sensibilities... Though honestly, i'd love to see that one overturned, no-one has ever been tried on a blasphemy charge.

Charges of abuse would still apply in the US. If you are advocating the causing of suffering and bullying, and trying to justify it under freedom of speech; then you've got some serious issues of your own.