Not long ago up in the white Mountains they did catch a heterosexual male in the public outhouse. He was down in the pit looking up as the women did their .. Well you know .. absolutely disgusting ..

Fact~ Most issues to womens safety are caused by predatory heterosexual males…get off the bathroom issue, it is weak.

Think of it this way.. How are you going to feel when a TG women walks into the mens room? Probably very unhappy …

Which marker do you have?

Unless your’s have changed, you are a male doing a fairly convincing masquerade of being a female. Is this legal? (apparently) Practical? (depends) Honest? (not in the women’s locker room shower at the gym) Sad?

You have not convinced me you are a woman, sir. You have convinced me of this, however.

…You are seriously confused.

Ted Thomas [real name]

P.S. A brief scan of this site reveals very few comments which aren’t along the lines of “you go girl…”. Although you might not be into flaming and defacing the websites of others, many in the gay/lesbian community are. Therefore, the e-mail above is fake, and the URI blank. I will check back in 3 days. If this comment is gone, your thoughts will be clear. If you ask, I will post a real e-mail. If you couldn’t care less, so be it.

Megan>> Free speech zone… posted, unedited.

I had not heard about the amelogenin sex marker, but researching here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome
and
http://www.cstl.nist.gov/biotech/strbase/sextype.htm

It seems to be a marker on the Y chromosome. Yes, I have a Y chromosome, so therefore I have this marker. And? Are you asserting that chromosomal gender is the only gender? What about androgen insensitivity? I’d assert that your statement that its used for “sexual identity” is not totally accurate. It’s possible to use it to determine genetic sex – which isn’t == identity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_Feminization

Are they not women?

As for flaming others, I do not. I don’t believe it in.

As for trying to convince you – I wouldn’t even try to do such a thing – I’m only posting my own thoughts.

I’m not really sure why you think I’m confused…. do you think that all trans-folk are confused, or just me?

As for the email – only I see that, the name and the URI get posted. your call if you want to be anonymous or not.

On the topic of comments you are right, they are mostly positive. Thats what’s gotten submitted. I have only ever not posted *one* comment, because it was totally inappropriate. There are at least three comments that were strongly negative. Search for “Dave” and “Dave too”, and you will find them along with my response.

I realize that you are probably inundated with messages since the TV broadcast, but if you would be interested in an email or a phone conversation, please send me an email.

Thanks and best wishes,

jj

As a former editor on the WinClient SDK team and as a person who has had someone fairly close to me go through the transgender process (my old boxing coach Cappy, whom I respect more than I can express here) I’d just like to offer my congratulations to you for having the courage to make this incredible change in your life. Too many people live out their lives without ever having the courage to make the changes that they know would make them better, happier, more complete human beings and 99% of those changes pale in comparison to the changes you’ve made.

I am also proud to work for a company such as Microsoft that *truly* values diversity and supports its employees’ positive lifestlye changes, however alien they may appear to others.

All the best.

ToddR

Best of luck for you in the New Year, Megan. Higher-Power-of-Choice grant us all the courage to live our truths as you do.

Megan>> The culture issue is a really interesting one. As for Microsoft, I think it less about gender and more about style, the number of women in tech in general, and also tenure (when it comes to the number of senior women v. men).

As for style, the culture has definately changed in a lot of ways, but not completely. It used to be VERY common that the “loudest voice wins” (or most stubborn), but there’s been a lot of cultural change (by not rewarding this behavior, and also rewarding behaviors like “Making others great”). I won’t say thats not the case any more, but its less frequent, and its something that senior management and HR takes very seriously. The problem (and I have to generalize here – and this is VERY general), is that more men were comfortable with the old school style, and more women were uncomfortable with it.

Microsoft hires a ton of people from college, and if you look at general stats for men v. women graduating in CS or related fields, its low, and not getting better. I believe (I don’t have the stats in front of me), that Microsoft in general has about (if not better) analogous percentages of women as are in the field overall. This does vary from group to group, but on whole, its not outrageously different.

As for the number of senior (partners and VPs) – there’s two two issues – the first one is that in general, most of the senior positions are filled with long-tenured employees. The balance between men and women was worse ten years ago, so it stands to reason that because of that, there would be fewer senior women.

As it relates to me in particular, I’m not sure if I’m going to get a real true read here. Its very important to note that I have NEVER noticed overt discrimination based on race or gender. I have noticed folks not being as open to different styles – but thats has gotten better. As I’ve talked a lot about in this blog, I’ve intentionally tried (still trying) to change my style to be more open and transparent, and being better at listening… However, I have the ability, like it or not to “put on” the old school style when working with folks who are expecting that.

We’ll see how that changes over time!

- Megan

http://www.nodumbquestions.com/

Do us all a favor and cleanse them.

Megan >> Frodo, this is fair warning. I will be nice and not delete, but no more flowery graffiti, huh? I love comments, love to hear what people have to say, but when they are unparseable, its not a value add…..