Transgendered' Honesty - Essay Example

?Nancy Messiha  Paul Hicks  Philosophy 5 Word Count: 1500  Transgender is a term used to refer to people who are not conforming to traditional gender norms through presentation and living genders, which are not assigned to them during their birth (Lev, 32). In fact, they also present livelihood of genders in a way that is not enthusiastically comprehensible in requisites of conventional notions, though this term is not used for including the transsexuals, whereby the transgender entails a political connotation with a stance in the Anglo United States that offers resistance to the medial pathologization. Therefore, the paper establishes a discussion that seeks to determine whether transpeople are oppressed in the society, and the nature of oppression. It will also offer recommendations on how the problem of oppression to the transpeople should be solved, and respond to philosophers such as Talia Bettecher, in relation to the existence of transphobia. On the other hand, the term transsexual is a term referring to the individual using hormonal and surgical expertise to change their body in a way interpreted as chances with sex assignment of birth, and may be readily understandable in conditions of the conventional convictions of sexed bodies. This term has been conventionally related to a psychiatric conviction like gender dysphoria, and it is associated by the nature of being "trapped in the wrong body" though it is redeployed in ways that are amenable to transgender. The term transsexual relates to a deep conviction that gender identifies a match of the appearance or anatomy, which they desire to present to the world in a different gender to the one assigned at during birth. This is a condition that is referred to as dysphoria, whereby people undergoes hormone therapy based on the birth gender and the gender they are willing to acquire, and others undergo surgery in order to conform to their gender identity. Transsexualism has been an ancient part of the human experience, and it is not considered a medical illness or a mental disorder since it is a desire to alter the expression of gender identity (Bettcher, 46). People have the rights of expressing their gender through changes in their physical appearance, which entail hormones and reconstructive surgery. Therefore, there is significant distress experienced by those, who are denied the rights to exercise control over their body in terms of expressing their gender, through accessibility of medical services. In fact, they suffer from reduction of the social economic and sexual function capacity; thus, they health care providers engaged in transsexual services should charge a reasonable fee for these services. Furthermore, there is a form of discrimination associated with provision of sex reassignment services, which are based on sexual orientation, marital status and physical appearance of patients. Transphobia is a term referring to the fear of transpeople, and the negative attitudes, which relates to hatred, loathing, rage, moral indignation that is harbored towards Transpeople because of gender enactment. Nevertheless, these attitudes are attributed to violence against Transpeople, and this is evident through fourteen murders of transpeople reported during 2003 in United States and thirty eights in other places of the world; thus, there is a consistency of high degree in relation to transphobic abuse against transpeople, whereby eighty percent of reported cases, thirty percent is physical assault. Transpeople have been subjected to a form of oppression about their privacy and dignity, in a situation where they are involved as victims of crime in a prosecution. For instance, the reports made indicate that victims of physical transphobic hate crimes avoid exposing themselves as trans through the nature of the crime. Moreover, there is fear associated with living with neighbors, employers, community, when they have permanently gained their gender role, due to the chances of being discovered as trans. In this case, the fear of being discovered is associated by implications of losing their homes, marriage and jobs if they disclose their status to neighbors, spouses or employers. The other form of oppression relates to the feeling of vulnerability in courts as witness or crime victims, whereby they have fear of being harassed and discriminated by other people in the community. Those who appear in court as victims of trans hate crime is in subjected to fear of reprisals from attackers and associates (Witten and Eyler, 469). In this case, they are bound to seek for assistance with fair treatment, whereby the interest of justice and quality evidence, prosecutors use measures that restrict the disclosure of name and personal details of the transpeople in court. Transpeople is also subjected to fear of officers in the criminal justice system and judiciaries, whereby in some situations, they might be unsympathetic to personal circumstances, and in this case consider them as responsible for suffering from transphobic hate crime. Therefore, this establishes the need for seeking ways of building trust among the local trans community through the public authority, like the situation in Great Britain where there is engagement of the local trans community with independent advisory groups. The problem of oppression can be solved by adhering to the section 22 of Gender Recognition Act of 2004, whereby the transpeople are offered privacy rights. In this case, the policy required that people with knowledge concerning a Transperson due to their professional capacity, should not transmit the information to a third party without the consent of the transperson they are bound to be prosecuted and fined up to five thousand dollars or six months in jail. There should be no obligation for the Transpeople to disclose their gender status through a Gender Recognition Certificate since the law is aimed at offering them privacy. However, this is not considered secrecy, and it does not imply that it is common sense to make assumptions about the Transpeople possessing a Gender Recognition Certificate. Ensuring the people are conforming to the laws, it can eliminate the need for a Transperson having a Gender Recognition Certificate, thus making it courteous to maintain confidentiality of the transpeople. The other solution involved the effort to be made by physicians in relation to the provision of hormonal sex reassignment therapies for publishing and annual number of the hormonal prescriptions. There is a need to issue a number of general nature of complications and complaints involvement, whereby the requirements of publication is to be satisfied through provision and collection of statistics. These statistics and information should focus on potential risk and complications of sex hormone therapy to prospective transpeople needing a therapy service (Kenagy, 26). There should be participation of surgeons in transsexual health care in order to offer a reassignment surgery to Transpeople seeking an alteration of their sexual look. This is subjected to a rational conviction of the surgeons, due to an assertion concerning aggravated pre-existence of health condition, determining that a person has been under hormonal sex reassignment therapy for a period of one year, and there is a signature of the patient as informed consent and a waiver of liability form. In situations, where transperson is married, surgeon requires a break up, and a requirement of the partner to sign a waiver legal responsibility form. In response to the ideas discussed by Talia Bettecher, whereby her concern is on the ways the victim of transphobic violence are subjected to blame of shifting allegations related to deception and the way to foster an understanding of the transphobic violence (Lombardi, Wilchins, Priesing and Malouf, 102). In this case, she suggests that it relates to the exposure, discovery, appearance and reality; hence transphobia led to murder of Gwen Araujo. Her article commences with significant definitions of terms such as transsexual, transgender, transpeople and transphobia, in order to provide a substantial background of understanding the issues discussed in her work. There is a clear involvement of violence through implications of Araujo’s killer concerning her sexual desire towards her. Therefore, Bettecher uses her essay to describe the form of oppression towards transpeople through the case of the killings because of transphobic hate crime. She establishes the existence of transphobia and its relationship with homophobia, which is considered highly complicated since the perception of the Araujo’s murder was based on homophobia, thus making the sense on the conditions viewing Araujo as a boy. Nevertheless, the success in explanation of the attitude of Araujo’s killer can fail to explain the wrongful charge of transphobic, through sexual deception that constitutes transphobic denial of the victim due to sexual identity. Therefore, through the case of Araujo’s death, Bettecher has managed to depict the ways through which transpeople are subjected to transphobic hate crime to the extent of losing their life. She also makes a substantial contribution through her ideas on ways to solve this problem, in order to facilitate inclusion of the Transpeople in the society in a way that eliminates fear due to discrimination. In conclusion, has discussed the oppression of transpeople in the society and development of oppression, and it has elaborated ways to solve the problem associated with oppression, and offered a response to the philosophers such as Taia Bettecher in relation to the existence of transphobia. Therefore, all these objectives have been achieved through a review of various academic sources in order to gather relevant information to complete the paper and make a substantial contribution to the body of knowledge. Works Cited Bettcher Mae Talia. "Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion". Hypatia: Indiana University press. 2002, Available online at: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Deceivers.pdf [Accessed on November 14 2012]  Lombardi, Emilia, Wilchins, Anne, Priesing, Dana and Malouf, David. Gender violence: Transgender experiences with violence and discrimination. Journal of Homosexuality, 42(1), 2001: 89-102. Lev, Arlene. Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families. New York: Haworth, 2004 Kenagy, Gretchen. "Transgender health findings from two needs assessment studies in Philadelphia.” Health and Social Work, 30(1), 2005: 19-26 Witten, Tom, and Eyler, Anna. "Hate crimes and violence against the transgender.” Peace Review, 11(3), 1999: 461 – 469. Read More