First off, I think it's pretty cool we have some university level (or beyond really) insight in the discussion of this issue here. I've said it before, but this may be the weirdest mainline sports board out there and I love it; I wouldn't be able to reconcile many of my ethical commitments with participating in most others. I also thank JazziBlaster for a wonderful post, both forthright and evenhanded on an issue of obvious importance to her.
I thought I might be able to flesh out a bit of the context around some of the points that have been made; CP was correct when he implied that this issue has a large divide between those familiar with it. The thing is, gender identity is a bit weird. And I don't mean transgender stuff, I mean even traditional identity issues. Think about the expression, "Be a man!" or "Man up!" What the fuck does that even mean? I mean, we all know what it means, but it implies that a man could somehow be not a man, or a non-man. At its base, the point is that there is uncertainty about gender issues and the context of such "discourse" is about trying to make that certain--hostility to men or women taking non-traditional roles is a function of this. And it's worth pointing out that there is no comparable version of "Woman up!"
More recently, much of society has become accepting of people just being whoever the fuck they want to be. That's where people are taking issue with some posters--and certainly the author of the article--conflating Dr. V's transgenderedness with being a half-truth. From some point of views, yes, she was not being straight (no pun intended*) about who she was, but many of us find that point of view antiquated and unnecessarily judgmental. From another point of view, she was being authentic to who she really was and understood herself to be--indeed, presenting herself as a man would be for her to misrepresent herself and live a lie. So the conflation of her gender identity and her truthfulness is highly problematic; suggesting the issue of transgenderedness is evidence in any manner way, shape or form of increased or decreased likelihood of a story being true or false is similarly problematic.
To be clear: she was not misrepresenting herself in terms of her gender. To think that she was doing so is to define her based on certain assumptions that are inconsistent with more contemporary ideas about self-determination and letting people be themselves. I mean, really, the point is that we shouldn't give a shit about what someone's gender "really is."
There is some truth to the issue raised, though, that people not exposed to this stuff or not informed, well, how are they to know? That's a hard question, and these things are moving really fast. I guess my gut would be to err on the side of "Who gives a shit?" and I mean that in a constructive way--start with the assumption that who a person "really is" isn't the right thing to be concerned with. But while I get how an individual might be sympathetic to someone not knowing all this or grasping it easily, this totally does not apply to a journalist such as Hannan; asking how a journalist might go about figuring something out is kinda a weird thing. And, I mean, it's his responsibility.
budcrew08 said:
I never said in either post that her transgender-ness was a fraud or anything like that. You are inferring that is what I said.
FWIW, I'm inferring it too, and I'm a pretty good reader. And I believe I'm properly inferring it because you associated the gender issue both with the statement that "nearly her entire story was fabricated
" and "story of a person whose professional life seems to be built on some half-truths.
" As such, I find it to be a valid inference.
If you don't think that the gender issue is relevant to those things, feel free to explain why you brought them up as related. But otherwise, as per what I posted above, it's seeing these things that is precisely related, and Syd did a very good job going over why it's unacceptable to include such as a part of the piece.