Oh, yeah, and those people in Largo made a big mistake, in my humble opinion. It seems pretty clear that someone who shoudn’t have had access to the information decided to out the city manager, before she could out herself, which it sounds like she was planning on doing, but on her own schedule.

It’s very likely also that no one violated any real confidence, although Stanton did make that accusation.

Staton had been on female hormones for two years and had been undergoing electrolysis as well. There’s a point where all of that work starts to change ones appearance from very typically male and masculine to more typical of females and feminine. While this kind of thing is often imperceptible to someone who sees a person day in and day out, someone who’s not seen a person in six months to a year will notice some heavy duty changes. Two years is a VERY long time to be taking contrasexual hormones and not expect people to notice, even at Staton’s age (41).

I’m very torn about this situation. On the one hand, it has all the classic signs of discrimination against people on the basis of being transgendered. On the other hand, once the cat was out of the bag (I herd cats — I could have gotten the cat back in the bag, honest), Stanton should have put the plans in motion as quickly as possible to minimize disruption. That didn’t happen, and there was no sign it was going to happen, and therefore the situation would have been a slow simmering mess for the next 4 months while Stanton waited for the summer to arrive. That doesn’t strike me as being concerned about workplace impact, which for an executive is a bad thing.

As for Mary Black, it is a mystery how she got elected, and has kept her seat, if those stories about her are true.

Sorry, Amp, I don’t really like the drawing. I feel sorry for Mary Black (even if she is instrumental in this mis-begotten firing).

I’m left-leaning. Probably more liberal than radical. I’m a woman, and sexual orientation-wise I’m bisexual, heavily balanced on the heterosexual end. I was attracted to a M2F transsexual, but didn’t know she was a transsexual initially. Although a relationship did not develop, we are still friendly. Meanwhile, as a result of the attraction I educated myself a bit on transsexual/cisgendered issues and I’m glad I had the opportunity to do so.

So I know this isn’t statistical information, this is anecdotal information. All I can say is some of us here on the left aren’t interested in pathologizing (not self accepting) or demonizing (gender stereotyping) transsexuals.

Commissioner Mary Gray Black
(727) 587-6702
Fax (727) 587-6797
Commission@largo.com

BE NICE - and if they hang up call back ONCE - say “oh I’m sorry we got disconnected.” They will try to block your call - just ask for Mary.

ACTION needs to be taken on these things - notification - I just found out about it.

Women didn’t get the right to vote until they marched on Washington. Blacks didn’t get equal rights until they marched on Washington, in the millions.

Gay and transgender people will not get equal rights until MILLIONS OF US MARCH ON WASHINGTON - and stop tolerating the bigotry of the religious right.

Just my opinion…

Second, you know if you read the whole book that people with high RWA scores tend to ‘remove topics from the table’ in a fundamentally different way when it comes to government action (the original topic).

And last, I still don’t know what you mean by calling these tolerant people middle-of-the-road. In my experience most American voters would call your friends’ attitude screamingly liberal.

I did read the paper.

My comment is that having the sort of politics or personality that might predict a high (or low) RWA score is simply irrelevant to the subject of transsexuality, in large part because the reasons that transsexuality is “wrong” differ between the ends of the political spectrum.

Here’s an example — if you take “authoritarianism” solely as some kind of strong and unquestioned belief, there’s no difference between believing “Gays are evil” and “Bigots are evil”. And yet, if you look at RWA scores for people who believe “Gays are evil” and “Bigots are evil”, you’d see that “Gays are evil” believers likely score significantly higher in terms of RWA. Right?

My observation of people’s attitudes towards transsexuality is that on the political right, religion provides the rationale for opposing transsexuality, much as it provides the rationale for opposing homosexuality. On the left, the rationale isn’t religion, precisely for the same reason that those on the left tend to view homosexuality more favorably. But on the left, the rationale is that it’s part of the Medical Industrial Establishment, it’s proof of lack of self-acceptance, it’s reinforcing gender stereotypes, and so on down the line. Taken as general concepts, there’s nothing wrong, in my mind, with opposing, say, the plastic surgery industry, or the any number of other instances of medicalizing things that aren’t in need of being medicalized. So in this sense, being opposed to transsexuality is seems more like being opposed to Bad Stuff in their minds.

What I think happens with transsexuality — recalling that I said the middle was less of a problem than either extreme — is that they get to know the person moreso than the dogma. These days most people seem to know, or have known, someone who changed sex. It’s not that they don’t know, or haven’t met, a transsexual, it’s how their experience was filtered by their politics.

Even amongst question-authority lefties, the doctrine that transsexuality is wrong (just as bigotry is wrong — remember my earlier comment) has, in their minds, a sound and rationale basis. They’ve often examined and critically explored transsexuality, but using a set of tools which are, in the minds of transsexuals, ill-suited to the task. No better disconnect illustrates that better than when a “Self-acceptance is wonderful!” person meets a stealth transsexual –

“You should have more self-acceptance and be out.”
“I am out — I’m out as a woman.”

The problem comes down the this paragraph –

It’s easy to see why authoritarian followers would be dogmatic, isn’t it? When you haven’t figured out your beliefs, but instead absorbed them from other people, you’re really in no position to defend them from attack. Simply put, you don’t know why the things you believe are true. Somebody else decided they were, and you’re taking their word for it. So what do you do when challenged?

How do you know men and women are equal? Did you work it out for yourself? Are you willing to change your mind? Are the races equal? Are you willing to change your mind about that?

There are things that people hold as true and inviolable — bigotry is wrong, men and women should be treated as equals, racism is evil, patriarchy is evil, etc. We hold many of these things no less true than high RWAs hold their own specific believes. We’ll question other things, but there are topics we have removed from the table. And the more the political left one moves, the more certain things become more important.

The pdfs here contain more information. Now, when they gave members of the U.S. House and Senate the RWA test, Democrats scored all over the map but with fewer, mostly Southern politicians at the high end of the RWA spectrum. Republican politician scores all clustered near that end except for the ones from Connecticut.

I’m sure that’s true and all that, but when it comes to trans, it’s just plain irrelevant.

There are people here whom I’m certain would score very low on the RWA scale who none the less love telling transsexuals what to do, where to do it, and why they are all very confused people who just need to be self-accepting and put down the bottle of pills.

The difference between left and right on the subject of “Why is the tranz evil?” is one of WHY is the tranz evil. On the right the tranz is evil because their religion says so. On the left the tranz is evil because the tranz lacks self-acceptance or wants to rape women’s bodies.

Many of the longest, most heated threads on feminist boards — where I’m sure the RWA scores for many participants would be well-below average — have revolved around just how tragic, misguided, duped, fooled, evil, patriarchal, wrong, etc. the tranz are. If someone were to graph right / left political orientation against transsexual and transgender acceptance, my guess is that the greatest degree of trans acceptance lies in the middle. On the right, it’s a religious and morality issue. On the left, it’s a self-acceptance and cultural appropriation issue.

I’ve never seen a poll of this sort (hey, Amp — can you do polls?!?), but I’d wager than if a poll were conducted and the question was “Is it acceptable for the following groups to embrace the cultural signifiers of group to which they feel most strongly attracted?” and you listed race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and gender, that this board would score fairly high for all but gender, and if you then asked people “Why do you feel this way about gender?” that trans would come up. At which point the thread would become one of countless thousands of trainwreck threads about tranz.

Social scientists have found exactly two tests that can predict general prejudice: the Right Wing Authoritarian scale (sample: “There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action.”) and the Social Dominance Orientation scale even more. “Double Highs” win the gold medal in prejudice. The pdfs here contain more information. Now, when they gave members of the U.S. House and Senate the RWA test, Democrats scored all over the map but with fewer, mostly Southern politicians at the high end of the RWA spectrum. Republican politician scores all clustered near that end except for the ones from Connecticut. Ten of their caucuses outscored all Democratic respondents except the Senators from Mississippi. The author (see previous link) did not test their Social Dominance Orientation because the test didn’t exist yet, but gives reasons for thinking that right-wing politicians would get high scores there as well. He also describes the relationship between RWA scores and positions on various issues, as well as the precise meaning of correlations in the social sciences. He does not mention trans issues, and technically I suspect that even Democratic politicians would support equality less than you or I at the present time.

Thanks for the links.

Wow. Pretty embarrassing stuff.

Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy — http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2007/03/03/liberal-dudewatch-07-commentary-on-commentary/ — links to a comment thread where descriptions such as “tranny + skank = trank?” “That Coulter guy sure is an ugly dude.” and “I ‘ read’ her as a tranny the very first time I saw a photo of her. It is that obvious. And trannies ARE faggots, they’re gayer than gay. So who’s the faggot now?” appear in an ostensibly liberal context.

Oh, okay. I was wondering how she came into the picture.

Do you have links to people calling her an ugly tranny? The irony of nons calling another non an “ugly tranny” because a non-queer called another non-queer a “faggot” is simply too much.

There’s just a series of debates going on right now that’s about whether or not it’s okay for liberals to call Ann Coulter an “ugly tranny” and such, which rang similarly to me to what you were saying. It’s the same repellent idea that trans-rights are only okay so long as they are convenient.

Anyway, didn’t mean to cause drift, just to comment on a resonance and add support.