访谈录 Interview 2007-06-29&07-01, 变性人:性VS性别

I was born female and at pretty much my entire life felt male.

I have never been a boy. I am being exactly who I am just as the creator created me to be.

I think God made me exactly what you wanted.

Ian, Lauren, Cydne, three different people with unique personalities¹, vocations², and interests, but they each have at least two things in common. All three describe themselves as transgender and believed that who you see when you look at them is who they were meant to be.

Ian was born a biological female, Lauren and Cydne, biological males.

I came out as a lesbian at age 15 because I liked girls. That worked for me a little bit for a while, but I started to say, you know, I don't really feel like a lesbian either. I don't feel like I belong in this group of people.

According to the American Psychological Association, transgender is an umbrella term used to describe people who sense of themselves as male or female differs from their birth sex. The transgender community in large doesn't believe that being transgender is a psychological issue.

I think, one of the biggest misconceptions that we have is that people who are transgender are confused, even though we are, you know, out of the stage of being a psychological disability. It's still perceived as being someone who was not quite right.

They say another misconception is the transgender persons are gay. Zack and Christina are transgender couple who have been in their relationship for at least seven years. They explain the difference.

So a lot of people confuse being transgender with sexual, sexual orientation⁴.

Gender³ is between the ears. Sexuality is between the legs.

And so there is no confusion.

In our relationship, he is the man, and I am the girl. It's not. These are roles that are never reversed, even in the bedroom.

Members of the transgender community say they wanna be respected as the men and women they are without prejudice or judgment⁵.

We need to take another look at transgenderism for what it is and realize that it's just another segment of people that are discriminated⁶ against.

We are gonna come into this world, you know, whether they like it or not, and I just like to hope that people will learn to challenge the way they think and to try to live peacefully with us and maybe learn something from us.


Vocabulary


umbrella term : an umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of related concepts, also called a hypernym.

1 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

2 vocations   

n.（认为特别适合自己的）职业( vocation的名词复数 )；使命；神召；（认为某种工作或生活方式特别适合自己的）信心

参考例句：

• The term profession originally denoted a limited number of vocations. 专业这个术语起初表示数量有限的职业。 来自辞典例句
• I understood that Love encompassed all vocations, that Love was everything "." 我明白爱含有一切圣召，爱就是一切。 来自互联网

3 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

4 orientation   

n.方向，目标；熟悉，适应，情况介绍

参考例句：

• Children need some orientation when they go to school.小孩子上学时需要适应。
• The traveller found his orientation with the aid of a good map.旅行者借助一幅好地图得知自己的方向。

5 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

6 discriminated   

分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待

参考例句：

• His great size discriminated him from his followers. 他的宽广身材使他不同于他的部下。
• Should be a person that has second liver virus discriminated against? 一个患有乙肝病毒的人是不是就应该被人歧视？