Hi Alex,

Since no one else replied to your very valid question, I will do so.

Let us first keep in mind the guiding principle of what is offensive and what is transsexual-phobic cannot be decided by those that are not. I am sure I will get a lot of replies to my comment that assure of the innocuous intent of the video, and I want to reassure them right back that the intention of those who created it has nothing to do with whether I am or whether I should be offended by the video clip.

First of all, the whole thrust of this satire had nothing to do with transsexuals, its about gays. As such it again (and again, and again) conflates our gender with gay sexuality. My transition and my surgery had NOTHING to do with either who I have slept with in the past or intend to sleep with in the future. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my sexuality in either intention or effect.

Secondly, it trivializes my whole intention for surgery through its flip assertion that anyone could run off and get genital surgery simply based on the desire to have the surgery because they are gay and want to beat the system. It accounts neither for the staggering cost of these surgeries, the years of real life test of living in gender, often giving up our jobs and careers, giving up our families, giving up all our friends, and often even giving up every material possession we have ever owned all for the right to be who we are based on a medical condition we were born with. People having this surgery have died on the table trying to be who they have known their whole life that they were. Its not common, but it is not trivial either. For those of us who have had the surgery, it is virtually always the most momentous decision we have made in our whole lives, often even overshadowing the decision to transition.

Finally, it again (and again, and again) reinforces that stereotype that we transition and that we have surgery in order to deceive the good God-fearing, straight cisgendered public. Whether it is to prey on children in bathrooms, trick straight men in bars, or now to thwart DOMA laws, I frankly am sick and tired of being told my whole life that the most honest thing(i.e. genital surgery) that I have ever done in that life was duplicitous and done with an intent to deceive.

THAT is why I find it derogatory and offensive.

All that being said, I have no intention of going after The Onion, nor have a replied on any other comment section devoted to this video. I said this to answer Alex's valid question. As to the makers of the video, I can only say idiots will be with us always. To spend your life at answering all of them is a waste of a lifetime.