How To Respect A Transgender Person

[MaryEllen]

This was on my igoogle home page this morning

If you have recently learned of a transgender person in your life, you might not understand their identity and you may be unsure of how to act around them without offending or hurting their feelings. The term "transgender person" in this article means a person who does not fully identify with the gender they were assigned with at birth, including intersex people[1] who were not born with a clearly identified gender to begin with (such as people with androgen insensitivity syndrome[2]). There are transgender people all over the world (e.g. US, Mexico,[3] India[4]) and in a wide variety of cultures (e.g. Native American,[5] Thai[6]). People who willingly alter, manipulate or change what identifies them as being of a particular gender have been present throughout human history. Here's how to understand and respect someone who challenges your ideas about gender, and who does not easily fall within the category of "male" or "female".

http://www.wikihow.com/Respect-a-Transgender-Person

MaryEllen

[Guest Veronicalynn]

This was on my igoogle home page this morning

If you have recently learned of a transgender person in your life, you might not understand their identity and you may be unsure of how to act around them without offending or hurting their feelings. The term "transgender person" in this article means a person who does not fully identify with the gender they were assigned with at birth, including intersex people[1] who were not born with a clearly identified gender to begin with (such as people with androgen insensitivity syndrome[2]). There are transgender people all over the world (e.g. US, Mexico,[3] India[4]) and in a wide variety of cultures (e.g. Native American,[5] Thai[6]). People who willingly alter, manipulate or change what identifies them as being of a particular gender have been present throughout human history. Here's how to understand and respect someone who challenges your ideas about gender, and who does not easily fall within the category of "male" or "female".

http://www.wikihow.com/Respect-a-Transgender-Person

MaryEllen

MaryEllen, thank you for the link. It should be posted everywhere.

[Guest silverpetals]

i think it's a very useful article and contains a lot of pretty important guidelines, but personally i would never direct someone i knew to that web page, i don't like the feeling that people are trying to step around me

anyway it's a good link, thx maryellen

[Guest Jordan]

Thanks MaryEllen

A lot of good information there. I'd like to see something like this as a work place primer. Maybe I'm misreading it but, one bit that really stands out to me is:

Watch your past tense. When talking of the past don't use phrases like "when you were a previous gender" or "born a man/woman," because to them they have always been the gender they have come out to you as, but had to hide it for whatever reasons.

They seem to be weaseling around here a bit. I doubt it's intentional but I'd still like to see it edited out in the next revision.

Slainte,

J.

[Guest Rika-chama]

This is a nice webpage This would be good to show someone who's not yet too educated on what being TG is. Thanks for sharing

Ni-paa~

[Guest Ryles_D]

They seem to be weaseling around here a bit. I doubt it's intentional but I'd still like to see it edited out in the next revision.

After dealing with a someone who talked about how he "fell for a girl who wanted to be a boy and he still liked her", I think that's for people who are having a hard time thinking that Jack has always been Jill not that they actually think Jill was ever a boy. If you can't get them to understand that "he" has always been a she, try to get them to accept that they 'feel' they've always been a girl and to respect their wishes you need to treat them like that even if you don't think it yourself.