User talk:Cripdyke
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[edit] Welcome!
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[edit] Transgenderism
Hello Cripdike. Thank you for contributing to the Transgenderism article. However, I was forced to undo your substantial edits because Wikipedia doest not allow original research and you did not cite sources. If you wish, we can work together to overcome these problems in order to make Transgenderism a well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable article. --Loremaster (talk) 19:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Interaction w/ new users
Hello Cripdyke. In response to your comments and questions on my talk page, the reason why I undid your edits (rather than simply waiting) is because the content you added 1) seemed like original research, 3) did not cite sources, and 3) did not seem to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. As for the previously existing content of the article, a source was cited for it but you rightly pointed out that every paragraph and section should cite a source even if it always the same one. I have now corrected that.
Anyway, I am moving here the content you recently added to the Transgenderism article, where you can feel free to work on it:
There is, however, a widespread resistance to the equivalence of transgender and transgenderism with transexual/ity. Transsexual people have been drastically underrepresented in this discussion which happens largely on college campuses in rooms with no transsexual people present. Looking online with search terms such as "transgender history" and "transgender etymology" quickly turn up the fact that transgender was coined specifically to differentiate people who do not wish to modify their bodies from the "sick" transsexual people who do so wish. The evidence, in fact, remains in the term itself: gender is distinct from sex in that gender refers to behaviors and thought processes and social interactions whereas sex refers to bodies, body shapes, and bodily functions. Transsexual people are so-called specifically because they are believed to vary little from the gender norms associated with the sex category to which transsexual people transition. There is now a growing body of evidence that there is an uncomfortable (in political senses) amount of overlap between people who might be called transgender and people who might be called transsexual. Still, however, there are differences in how such people see themselves that derive from whether they see their own essential problem as stemming from the shape/functions of their body or from aspects of gender. Certainly the transgender liberation movement holds benefits for transsexual people, and transsexual liberation would certainly positively affect transgender people. But "smashing the gender binary" would, for example, arguably make it easier for health insurance companies to refuse sex reassignment coverage. And recognition of the medical needs/desires of transsexual people is so far from "smashing the binary" that over and over in transgender liberation literature authors (such as, but far from limited to Judith Halberstam & Elana Dykewomon) assert that transsexual people are in fact more responsible for gender-based oppression than non-transsexual folk. If transsexual people fit naturally into the category of transgender, there would be no need for such horizontal hostility. Thus, despite gender-studies critiques of any attempt to distinguish transsexuality from transgenderism, more and more people are seeing these critiques and similar efforts to mutualize the two terms as an attempt to subsume transsexuality within transgender. With the success of conflating the two terms, transgender people and advocates can speak against the interests of transsexual people while claiming to speak for them - even with their voices. The conflict between these two groups of people and interests will need to be resolved before they can fully integrate in a trans liberation movement that is effective for all.
I strongly recommend you read the Wikipedia guideline pages I linked to above before editing the Transgenderism article again. --Loremaster (talk) 17:26, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
