Khun Maytee,
Thank you very much for raising the issue of gender identification. It is very clear what you stated, that some cultures tend to find transgender issues a traditional taboo. However, I support what you noted, that it is utterly irrelevant for a ‘Stamford student activity’ news story to be so insensitive and entirely focus on the gender title of an invited guest. If they had simply used “Kru Lilly” throughout the whole article, it would have simply avoided such an insult to the individual person – and would clearly have not raised such a sensitive issue for you to respond to.
In my own personal experience, I once had an undergraduate student in one of my classes in a previous semester, who was clearly a bright young woman to all who had mixed with and had spoken with her. In taking the class attendance one day, I had noticed that her title was Mr.(name). Having known her at that stage for some time, I politely approached her and tried to help: “Your title here is 'Mr.'. Shall I simply inform the Registration desk that it is a spelling mistake and they should change it to Ms. or Miss?”
She immediately replied: “There is no need. In this country (Thailand), if you are born a male here, then all the official documents will remain with the title of “Mr.” – no matter if you change your name, change your dress code, change your overall appearance, change your lifestyle relationships – and even if you have a transgender operation, changing your genitals.”
Maybe the news writer was aware of the legal title status here – or they were simply unaware of creative thinking of how to offer respect to those who promote education, which is totally irrelevant of whether they were born a man, born a woman – or born a fekkin’ mermaid! Education is the very reason why we all work here!
Clearly, the news writing team needs to ‘move-on’ and acknowledge people for who they want to be and how they wish to be represented within the society they live within. This society.
I am Irish. In my native Irish Gaelic language there is an appropriate expression to use which declares: Tiocfaidh ár lá (pronounced as: chuck-hee awr law). In translation into English, it means: “Our day will come!”
Added to that: “There will be no surrender!” The war will never end until people get their fekkin’ sad, shallow, socially constructed issues together.
Stand out and be counted. If one wants to learn – then please come forward and suck my PhD thesis, absorb all the information, swallow the details and improve your level of understanding humanity.
There is only one world. If we are educators, then we initially need to educate our own community before reaching out any further!..............................
Take care,
Déaglán Ó Súilleabháin (original spelling in Irish)
Declan O’Sullivan (the English version!)
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