It's the gay economy, stupid... :)

Ratmagiclady · 09-19-2012, 01:34 PM

Originally posted by mikemike

I tried to look at the studies linked in the OP article RE pay disparities for gay men and lesbians but they were dead links.

About this stat:

How much does gender reassignment surgery cost? How do they pay for it if they are so damn poor? Could medical costs associated with their elective procedures be related to their resultant economic conditions?

Actually, the associated costs are often things which keep them in very bad situations: especially with the right-wing fearmongering about pre-operative conditions: the 'what bathroom will they use' is one of the *big* reasons trans people have trouble gaining employment, while insurance companies refuse to pay for a recognized condition. on the other end even if they *have* insurance. Only eight states or so even today have any civil rights protections for them even if they *are* working. How do 'they' pay for it? By whatever means possible, if it even *is* possible. Many simply can't. Many resort to prostitution, and not of a sort that exactly affirms their needs *for* said surgery. (And even prostitution, for anyone, doesn't actually result in a sure source of capital for such: pimps take most of the take, usually, and have little interest in losing the 'exoticness' so to speak.) That's about the worst of it, but my years on or barely-off the street really kind of mean my view of the problem tends there: at the time, they didn't even have any access to homeless/abuse shelters to speak of, and if they did, it was even worse than the street. Actually, it was so for many LGBT people at the time: actually it was part of what I call my 'Playing Batgirl' days to be dealing with some of that, including our little Pagan tribe offering shelter and even extractions from abusive situations: the first, maybe second rescue I was involved with them was my *own,* and there were at least two trans people involved in *that* bugout: one got her surgery maybe ten years later: another, as far as I know, died without ever seeing it.

As costs go, especially considering the big deal employers and Religious RIght legislators and Teabaggers make of the idea (Not to mention the costs of a single murder case when someone tries to rape a trans person and then is 'so shocked' to find the 'wrong' genitals there that they commit overkill murder and stage elaboragte 'trans panic' defenses, ) covering trans people for surgery would be a *real bargain.*

Gods' honest truth is, it's a whole lot cheaper to cover them for surgery than to a) Flip out, b) renovate a bathroom cause someone's 'afraid what they might do with parts they don't even want,' (while the Republicans promoting that fear are themselves caught peeping in bathrooms) or c) Bury them.

Never mind pay for the results of the bigotry against them, never mind lose the *positives* about a group of people that it's often been observed could be and often still are, real assets to our society.

But, yes, by the way, this also means that *employed and insurance-paying trans people* are not getting full value out of the health coverage they pay for, thus both paying out of pocket to 'prove the surgery is medically-necessary' *and* paying out of pocket to pay for the actual surgery, even if you can write off your Viagra to the same costs per year, or have a single pregnancy covered to something like four to ten times as much outlay, as a straight dude.

So, it does in fact mean that transwomen with jobs, despite being paid a lot less for the same work and insurance, are also paying out of pocket to have their surgery, instead of maybe buying a car, opening a business, hiring a contractor, or spending that money in a local economy. I mean, their numbers aren't *huge,* but if you're going to have more spent on fearmongering about them than it would *cost* to treat them, or if it's enough money on top of *that* that you're otherwise worried about that coming out of an insurance company's margins, despite them paying as much or more than you do for less coverage.. . And being willing to pay to have criminal investigations and trials every time a trans person is murdered for getting groped by the wrong straight person... Yeah, that's money they could be spending in your town, maybe at your business, maybe our industries domestically instead of maybe taking their chances in Thailand, and all.

And, yeah. For a sense of perspective, it costs more to *sequester a jury for a week when she gets murdered while trying to raise the money* than it'd have cost to put up front for a transwoman's surgery. Never mind incarcerate the murderer for a few months.

Anyway, btw, it's on a somewhat smaller scale, but just as you refuse to accept the social costs of the right-wing anti-LGBT agenda on the scale of LGBT people being suppressed, as at least five percent of the population, even when you single out trans people, your 'concern' about the 'numbers' just doesn't pan out to claim 'bigotry saves money.' It *doesn't.*

You just have no sense of scale. Any *one* LGBT person I helped get up into the real economy back then will have paid in more to just the 'gummint' than I ever got paid out from what ...I paid into in the first place.

It also means that any *one* job a trans person could have had if they were post-operative would pay more back in in a *year* than either surgery *or* another year on 'welfare' would have cost. And the thing about trans people in particular and LGBT people in *general:* There usually isn't actually anything *wrong* with any of us when it comes to job performance, until you start heaping on the effects of privation, damage, social scorn, lack of health care... and all that tends to follow from *that.* As public investments go, not being a bigot is a *bargain* there. I'd probably be counted functional today, despite uncalled for 'Family Chrsitian Values-based' infliction of violence and trauma if I'd had so much as a proper athsma inhaler and/or a couple bucks worth of antibiotics.

Cause, harsh circumstances aside, the difference between me and my straight sisters is *they* didn't have to spend a year or so at age 22 or so struggling for breath and sucking on over-the-counter ephinephrine inhalers just to keep breathing and walk another block. Even when those were legal, they cost fourteen bucks, in early 90's dollars.... And that was a lot of food, not to mention damaging if you have lupus-type adrenal disorders. (Not to mention post-traumatic stress and some other stuff. Yes, I was freakishly-fast all along, and used my 'mutant powers' for good, while I could. (Foolishly, I still try sometimes,) but your' 'free market notions' can't *put back* physical reserves that were already spent when I should have been finishing up college.

I *did* work hard, played by the rules: even when the rules involved trashpicking and rebuilding anything I could call my own: by the time I was even *offered* a real job to take me away from a collective effort, apart from conflicted loyalties, I was just too exhausted.

Now you whine about 'entitlements.' And defend your defense of and support for *bigotry.*

Then cast aspersions on the very people *you* give the rawest deal in this nation to, trans people: 'How do they afford it, if they're so badly off?'

They *don't.* All too often.

And they aren't so different from any of us you want to single out. Blame for what you demand. Even when you can't employ all the 'normals.'

Last edited by Ratmagiclady; 09-19-2012 at 02:57 PM.

Ratmagiclady · 09-19-2012, 05:31 PM

Or, let's put it this way, Mikemike, and others: How much time and money have you *personally* spent supporting candidates who've made it *policy* to *keep* people like me paying more taxes, enjoying fewer rights, suffering more hardships......... just so *you* can feel 'sanctified?'

If you want to disavow that, you could always have stood up, but you don't. You instead defend the 'righteousness' of what your own people claim is 'good for the economy' to do the opposite of for everyone else.

Then try to claim all I and so many like me, never mind trans people, go through is both 'justified' and 'not happening.' Like any other bully says about anything they do.

But do you think it saves you money?

Add it up.

kenafein · 09-19-2012, 05:42 PM

Recognize their rights because it's the right thing to do. Once they are legitimized, slowly, the bigotry will subside. Unfortunately, not hiring someone because you think they are gay is hard to prove. It may take another generation or two for society to grow up.

Ratmagiclady · 09-19-2012, 06:18 PM

Originally posted by kenafein

Recognize their rights because it's the right thing to do. Once they are legitimized, slowly, the bigotry will subside. Unfortunately, not hiring someone because you think they are gay is hard to prove. It may take another generation or two for society to grow up.

The simple fact is that it's easy as lying is to a liar to discriminate even if there *are* legal protections: I just get tired of the cons spending billions a year to *directly hurt people* and then act ripped off if they succeed at the very same thing.

If you can't afford it, what do you think *I* feel like, sport? You're the ones spending your billions to hurt me and my family, and, yes, my little girl. Who'll be probably your age by now, some of you.

kenafein · 09-19-2012, 06:38 PM

Originally posted by Ratmagiclady

The simple fact is that it's easy as lying is to a liar to discriminate even if there *are* legal protections: I just get tired of the cons spending billions a year to *directly hurt people* and then act ripped off if they succeed at the very same thing.

If you can't afford it, what do you think *I* feel like, sport? You're the ones spending your billions to hurt me and my family, and, yes, my little girl. Who'll be probably your age by now, some of you.

People get discriminated against all the time. Tall and pretty people will always have an advantage over others, for example, but it's simply too difficult to prove on a case by case basis. We have to work on destroying the social biases, enacting useful laws and the rest will fall into place. Unfortunately, it will take a long time.

mikemike · 09-20-2012, 06:20 AM

My question was whether the socioeconomic consequences of being a transgendered person were a chicken and egg problem. Gender reassignement is a pretty radical, expensive, cosmetic procedure that adversely affects a persons ability to be taken seriously as a member of mainstream society. It is probably akin to something like getting your face tattooed, you should know full well before getting it done that it is permanent, it is going to affect the way people see you, and you are going to have trouble getting certain jobs as a result of it. Knowing that, a certain number of people in society still go out and do it anyway and I don't weep for them if they regret the consequences of their body modification decisions.

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09-19-2012, 01:34 PM	#16
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563 Original Poster	Originally posted by mikemike I tried to look at the studies linked in the OP article RE pay disparities for gay men and lesbians but they were dead links. About this stat: How much does gender reassignment surgery cost? How do they pay for it if they are so damn poor? Could medical costs associated with their elective procedures be related to their resultant economic conditions? Actually, the associated costs are often things which keep them in very bad situations: especially with the right-wing fearmongering about pre-operative conditions: the 'what bathroom will they use' is one of the big reasons trans people have trouble gaining employment, while insurance companies refuse to pay for a recognized condition. on the other end even if they have insurance. Only eight states or so even today have any civil rights protections for them even if they are working. How do 'they' pay for it? By whatever means possible, if it even is possible. Many simply can't. Many resort to prostitution, and not of a sort that exactly affirms their needs for said surgery. (And even prostitution, for anyone, doesn't actually result in a sure source of capital for such: pimps take most of the take, usually, and have little interest in losing the 'exoticness' so to speak.) That's about the worst of it, but my years on or barely-off the street really kind of mean my view of the problem tends there: at the time, they didn't even have any access to homeless/abuse shelters to speak of, and if they did, it was even worse than the street. Actually, it was so for many LGBT people at the time: actually it was part of what I call my 'Playing Batgirl' days to be dealing with some of that, including our little Pagan tribe offering shelter and even extractions from abusive situations: the first, maybe second rescue I was involved with them was my own, and there were at least two trans people involved in that bugout: one got her surgery maybe ten years later: another, as far as I know, died without ever seeing it. As costs go, especially considering the big deal employers and Religious RIght legislators and Teabaggers make of the idea (Not to mention the costs of a single murder case when someone tries to rape a trans person and then is 'so shocked' to find the 'wrong' genitals there that they commit overkill murder and stage elaboragte 'trans panic' defenses, ) covering trans people for surgery would be a real bargain. Gods' honest truth is, it's a whole lot cheaper to cover them for surgery than to a) Flip out, b) renovate a bathroom cause someone's 'afraid what they might do with parts they don't even want,' (while the Republicans promoting that fear are themselves caught peeping in bathrooms) or c) Bury them. Never mind pay for the results of the bigotry against them, never mind lose the positives about a group of people that it's often been observed could be and often still are, real assets to our society. But, yes, by the way, this also means that employed and insurance-paying trans people are not getting full value out of the health coverage they pay for, thus both paying out of pocket to 'prove the surgery is medically-necessary' and paying out of pocket to pay for the actual surgery, even if you can write off your Viagra to the same costs per year, or have a single pregnancy covered to something like four to ten times as much outlay, as a straight dude. So, it does in fact mean that transwomen with jobs, despite being paid a lot less for the same work and insurance, are also paying out of pocket to have their surgery, instead of maybe buying a car, opening a business, hiring a contractor, or spending that money in a local economy. I mean, their numbers aren't huge, but if you're going to have more spent on fearmongering about them than it would cost to treat them, or if it's enough money on top of that that you're otherwise worried about that coming out of an insurance company's margins, despite them paying as much or more than you do for less coverage.. . And being willing to pay to have criminal investigations and trials every time a trans person is murdered for getting groped by the wrong straight person... Yeah, that's money they could be spending in your town, maybe at your business, maybe our industries domestically instead of maybe taking their chances in Thailand, and all. And, yeah. For a sense of perspective, it costs more to sequester a jury for a week when she gets murdered while trying to raise the money than it'd have cost to put up front for a transwoman's surgery. Never mind incarcerate the murderer for a few months. Anyway, btw, it's on a somewhat smaller scale, but just as you refuse to accept the social costs of the right-wing anti-LGBT agenda on the scale of LGBT people being suppressed, as at least five percent of the population, even when you single out trans people, your 'concern' about the 'numbers' just doesn't pan out to claim 'bigotry saves money.' It doesn't. You just have no sense of scale. Any one LGBT person I helped get up into the real economy back then will have paid in more to just the 'gummint' than I ever got paid out from what ...I paid into in the first place. It also means that any one job a trans person could have had if they were post-operative would pay more back in in a year than either surgery or another year on 'welfare' would have cost. And the thing about trans people in particular and LGBT people in general: There usually isn't actually anything wrong with any of us when it comes to job performance, until you start heaping on the effects of privation, damage, social scorn, lack of health care... and all that tends to follow from that. As public investments go, not being a bigot is a bargain there. I'd probably be counted functional today, despite uncalled for 'Family Chrsitian Values-based' infliction of violence and trauma if I'd had so much as a proper athsma inhaler and/or a couple bucks worth of antibiotics. Cause, harsh circumstances aside, the difference between me and my straight sisters is they didn't have to spend a year or so at age 22 or so struggling for breath and sucking on over-the-counter ephinephrine inhalers just to keep breathing and walk another block. Even when those were legal, they cost fourteen bucks, in early 90's dollars.... And that was a lot of food, not to mention damaging if you have lupus-type adrenal disorders. (Not to mention post-traumatic stress and some other stuff. Yes, I was freakishly-fast all along, and used my 'mutant powers' for good, while I could. (Foolishly, I still try sometimes,) but your' 'free market notions' can't put back physical reserves that were already spent when I should have been finishing up college. I did work hard, played by the rules: even when the rules involved trashpicking and rebuilding anything I could call my own: by the time I was even offered a real job to take me away from a collective effort, apart from conflicted loyalties, I was just too exhausted. Now you whine about 'entitlements.' And defend your defense of and support for bigotry. Then cast aspersions on the very people you give the rawest deal in this nation to, trans people: 'How do they afford it, if they're so badly off?' They don't. All too often. And they aren't so different from any of us you want to single out. Blame for what you demand. Even when you can't employ all the 'normals.' Last edited by Ratmagiclady; 09-19-2012 at 02:57 PM.

09-19-2012, 05:31 PM	#17
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563 Original Poster	Or, let's put it this way, Mikemike, and others: How much time and money have you personally spent supporting candidates who've made it policy to keep people like me paying more taxes, enjoying fewer rights, suffering more hardships......... just so you can feel 'sanctified?' If you want to disavow that, you could always have stood up, but you don't. You instead defend the 'righteousness' of what your own people claim is 'good for the economy' to do the opposite of for everyone else. Then try to claim all I and so many like me, never mind trans people, go through is both 'justified' and 'not happening.' Like any other bully says about anything they do. But do you think it saves you money? Add it up.

09-19-2012, 05:42 PM	#18
kenafein Veteran Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Southern California Photos: Albums Posts: 4,082	Recognize their rights because it's the right thing to do. Once they are legitimized, slowly, the bigotry will subside. Unfortunately, not hiring someone because you think they are gay is hard to prove. It may take another generation or two for society to grow up.

09-19-2012, 06:18 PM	#19
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563 Original Poster	Originally posted by kenafein Recognize their rights because it's the right thing to do. Once they are legitimized, slowly, the bigotry will subside. Unfortunately, not hiring someone because you think they are gay is hard to prove. It may take another generation or two for society to grow up. The simple fact is that it's easy as lying is to a liar to discriminate even if there are legal protections: I just get tired of the cons spending billions a year to directly hurt people and then act ripped off if they succeed at the very same thing. If you can't afford it, what do you think I feel like, sport? You're the ones spending your billions to hurt me and my family, and, yes, my little girl. Who'll be probably your age by now, some of you.

09-19-2012, 06:38 PM	#20
kenafein Veteran Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Southern California Photos: Albums Posts: 4,082	Originally posted by Ratmagiclady The simple fact is that it's easy as lying is to a liar to discriminate even if there are legal protections: I just get tired of the cons spending billions a year to directly hurt people and then act ripped off if they succeed at the very same thing. If you can't afford it, what do you think I feel like, sport? You're the ones spending your billions to hurt me and my family, and, yes, my little girl. Who'll be probably your age by now, some of you. People get discriminated against all the time. Tall and pretty people will always have an advantage over others, for example, but it's simply too difficult to prove on a case by case basis. We have to work on destroying the social biases, enacting useful laws and the rest will fall into place. Unfortunately, it will take a long time.

09-20-2012, 06:20 AM	#21
mikemike Inactive Account Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Orleans Photos: Gallery Posts: 3,053	My question was whether the socioeconomic consequences of being a transgendered person were a chicken and egg problem. Gender reassignement is a pretty radical, expensive, cosmetic procedure that adversely affects a persons ability to be taken seriously as a member of mainstream society. It is probably akin to something like getting your face tattooed, you should know full well before getting it done that it is permanent, it is going to affect the way people see you, and you are going to have trouble getting certain jobs as a result of it. Knowing that, a certain number of people in society still go out and do it anyway and I don't weep for them if they regret the consequences of their body modification decisions.