Re: OT: [Let_It_Be_Forever_Islam] THE WORLD OF THE JINN

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 01:01:35PM -0400, Paul Bennett wrote:
> "sex" is biological - humans have 2; "gender" is a social convention -
> humans have from 2 to 7, depending on the culture.
On that subject . . .

Yesterday a mysterious meeting request appeared in my Microsoft Outlook
calendar.  The meeting was this afternoon, on the Human Resources floor.
The subject was "Employee Information," nothing else.

As you might imagine, this was a tad disconcerting.

It turned out to be a preparatory meeting with many employees who
work in the same part of the building to inform them that our coworker
Bill will henceforth be Brenda.  I suppose the idea was to try and
head off any legally inappropriate reactions before being presented
with Brenda in person.

And they had a doctor there who explained all about Gender Dysphoria
and the standards of care for treating it, the difference between
transexualism and transvestitism and all that sort of stuff, most of
which was not news to me.  (On the other hand, the info about Brenda
wasn't much of a surprise to anyone who'd been paying attention to
Bill over the past few years . . .)

Still, interesting timing with respect to the terminology
discussion on conlang. :)

As a side note, Brenda's wife is staying with her through the transition.
So if all goes well, next year there will be two women legally married
to each other.  That little loophole, however impractical it may be in the
general case, must give hissy fits to the folks who are sponsoring this
"Marriage Protection Week" in the US. :)

-Mark

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