Transgender Q&A

[Maddie]

22 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

But as long as people are having babies some of them will be trans and some gay. 

 

And with a 40% suicide rate for trans kids that is detrimental. 

[Maddie]

 

starts soon

[Nungali]

12 hours ago, Apech said:

Nungas have I ever told you how I feel about you …. ?

 

Well, yes  ... but didnt you get a 3 day  ban for that  ? 

[Nungali]

9 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

I think it's more than that because the other individual's identity is not being being challenged. 

 

It isnt ?

 

 

Being confronted with a trans-person has no bearing on how the individual views themself. 

 

" Confronted "    ???    if it had no bearing on 'how the individual views themself' , why would they feel 'confronted' then ?

 

 

Nothing has changed about their cis-gendered identity after the interaction.

 

Except they felt 'confronted' .

 

( I'm excluding trans-folk who have not come to terms with their own identity yet ).

 

[Nungali]

... .  .. .. . .. . . . ....    . .. .. ..

Edited Friday at 08:40 PM by Nungali

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

" Confronted "    ???    if it had no bearing on 'how the individual views themself' , why would they feel 'confronted' then ?

 

They are being confronted with a new reality which includes trans people.

 

11 hours ago, Daniel said:

Processing a new reality produces turbulence in the psyche. 

 

[Maddie]

9 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

They are being confronted with a new reality which includes trans people.

 

 

 

There's nothing new about trans people, we've been here all along.

 

What is new however is the level of reactivity about us.

 

https://youtu.be/8FYZ6m06bDU?si=G34XaB41QREnunX_

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 12:55 AM by Maddie

[forestofclarity]

 

Mod Note: Let's keep the politics in Current Events. I'm giving a little leeway for this thread, but full on political discussion should be in Current Events. 

 

 

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

There's nothing new about trans people, we've been here all along.

 

Agreed.  I was not intending otherwise.

 

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

What is new however is the level of reactivity about us.

 

yes

 

 

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, Daniel said:

They are being confronted with a new reality which includes trans people.

 

... a new reality for them.

 

... which includes trans people who are accepted for who they are.

 

... which includes trans people who are being traumatized thru no fault of their own simply by being born and socializing. 

[Nungali]

3 hours ago, Daniel said:

5 hours ago, Daniel said:

They are being confronted with a new reality which includes trans people.

 

... a new reality for them.

...

 

yet previously ; 

 

" Being confronted with a trans-person has no bearing on how the individual views themself.  "

 

I must have misunderstood you .    You must have  meant   ' if one is confronted by * a trans person's  self confrontation  about their own new reality  should have no bearing on how they view themselves .

 

 

* or maybe they 'catch ' the confrontation, or get infected by it ?     

 

 

 

(  ie .   bad 'repair job'  )

 

 

 

[Nungali]

5 hours ago, Maddie said:

 

There's nothing new about trans people, we've been here all along.

 

What is new however is the level of reactivity about us.

 

https://youtu.be/8FYZ6m06bDU?si=G34XaB41QREnunX_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You are very .....   'charitable ' . 

[Daniel]

4 hours ago, Nungali said:

I must have misunderstood you

 

yes

 

4 hours ago, Nungali said:

You must have  meant   ' if one is confronted by * a trans person's  self confrontation  about their own new reality  should have no bearing on how they view themselves .

 

no, you're still misunderstanding

 

4 hours ago, Nungali said:

* or maybe they 'catch ' the confrontation, or get infected by it ?     

 

no, not that either

 

4 hours ago, Nungali said:

(  ie .   bad 'repair job'  )

 

no, not that either

[Master Logray]

15 hours ago, Maddie said:

There's nothing new about trans people, we've been here all along.

 

What is new however is the level of reactivity about us.

 

https://youtu.be/8FYZ6m06bDU?si=G34XaB41QREnunX_

 

 

 

 

There is a famous Chinese saying that has Taoist connotation, "A Big Tree attracts the Wind" - a famous person draws criticism.  If you are small and insignificant, sometimes you may be bullied, but most of time, you are being insignificant and always ignored.    Once you grow in size and power and fame, it would attract all sorts of attentions, from love to hatred, but no longer being forgotten. 

 

Another point is about your friends and allies.   With the "T" included in the LGB..., your people will receive all the supports and love the others are having.  But the downside is all the negativity against the others will be affecting you too.

 

So it is not exist all along.  Situation has changed.   

 

 

 

 

[Maddie]

.

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Maddie

[Mark Foote]

On 11/14/2024 at 2:44 AM, Maddie said:

 

I think the short answer to the question as to why people get bent out of shape over gender is due to attachment to Identity. It's one of the three types of attachment that the Buddha spoke about.
 

 

 

Sometimes when I walk out of a movie, I feel myself to be whoever was the hero or heroine of that movie.  A kind of transference, I guess.

 

I think that transference is easier to find when someone looks like me and has a body like mine.  That is to say, that I relate not only to the story in the film, but also to the way the star carries themselves, the fact that their bones hang together and move in a manner similar to mine.

There are many people of African, Asian, and indigenous descent whose bones don't exactly hang together and move in the same way mine do, me being of European descent.  

My belief is that a lot of racial prejudice begins there, and that the only way to really act without such prejudice is to realize action by the inconceivable, as it were:
 

There’s a third line about actualization in Dogen's “Genjo Koan”:

 

Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.

 

(“Genjo Koan [Actualizing the Fundamental Point]”, tr. Tanahashi)

 

 

Kobun Chino Otogawa gave a practical example of that third line, even though he wasn’t talking about “Genjo Koan” at the time:

 

 You know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around.

 

(Lecture at S. F. Zen Center, 1980’s)

 

 

Activity of the body solely by virtue of the free location of consciousness can sometimes get up and walk around, without any thought to do so.

 

Action like that resembles action that takes place through hypnotic suggestion, but unlike action by hypnotic suggestion, action by virtue of the free location of consciousness can turn out to be timely after the fact.  When action turns out to accord with future events in an uncanny way, the source of that action may well be described as “the inconceivable”.

 

I have found that zazen is more likely to “get up and walk around” when the free location of consciousness is accompanied by an extension of friendliness and compassion, an extension beyond the boundaries of the senses. Gautama the Buddha described such an extension:

 

[One] dwells, having suffused the first quarter [of the world] with friendliness, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; just so above, below, across; [one] dwells having suffused the whole world everywhere, in every way, with a mind of friendliness that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence. [One] dwells having suffused the first quarter with a mind of compassion… with a mind of sympathetic joy… with a mind of equanimity that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence.

 

(MN 7, Pali Text Society Vol I p 48)

 

 

Gautama said that “the excellence of the heart’s release” through the extension of the mind of compassion was the first of the further concentrations, a concentration he called “the infinity of ether” (Pali Text Society SN Vol V p 100-102).

 

The Oxford English Dictionary offers some quotes about “ether”:

 

They [sc. the Brahmins] thought the stars moved, and the planets they called fishes, because they moved in the ether, as fishes do in water.

 

Vince, Complete System. Astronomy vol. II. 253 (1799)

 

 

Plato considered that the stars, chiefly formed of fire, move through the ether, a particularly pure form of air.

Popular Astronomy vol. 24 364 (1916)

 

(https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ether_n, as of 6/19/2024)

 

 

When the free location of consciousness is accompanied by an extension of the mind of compassion, there can be a feeling that the necessity of breath is connected to things that lie outside the boundaries of the senses.  That, to me, is an experience of “the infinity of ether”.

 

Dogen didn’t offer an explanation of his third line, but he did provide a case study from the literature of Zen:

 

Mayu, Zen Master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?”

“Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent,” Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”

“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk again. Mayu just kept fanning himself…

 

(“Genjo Koan [Actualizing the Fundamental Point]”, tr. Tanahashi)

 

 

The wind that reaches everywhere was actualized immediately in Mayu’s fanning.

 

(The Inconceivable Nature of the Wind)

 

 

The failure to easily identify with persons of other races whose bodies move differently than mine can likewise be a failure on my part to identify readily with gay men who carry themselves as women, who have learned/adopted a posture and carriage more readily associated (by most of us) with women than with men.   

I bring all this up, because I think it speaks to the reason that prejudice still persists in the modern world. Compassion is key, yet the compassion required is the compassion extended beyond the boundaries of sense, that results in action out of the free location of consciousness by the inconceivable.

 

 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by Mark Foote