Suzan Cooke
A few days ago, before heading off to work, I tossed off a few thoughts that have elicited numerous comments as well as a couple of ad hominem attacks by a couple of other Bloggers.
I stand by my original comments and think they require expanding upon.
I am sick and tired of all the in fighting between people with transsexualism and people with transgenderism. While many of the more reasonable members of both groups have quietly agreed to work together on issues such as hate crimes bill and ENDA, extremists of both factions are doing their best to keep the horizontal hostility going.
Often times the ring leaders who are taking the most radical of the positions are misfits who have been around since the days of Usenet. While many of us moved on and have worked through our issues these people, have not. When they attack our Blogs we try to ignore them as trolls. Or we ban them.
I know about anger. I still haven’t surrendered my anger regarding the hegemonic erasure of transsexualism under the ideology of “Transgender as Umbrella”. It was that anger that led to Tina and me creating the Women Born Transsexual meme. But the meme had other purposes too. Those include pressing the idea of transsexualism as innate and countering the women born women position that placed us in the status of non-legitimate women.
I have rethought my positions, worked through much of my anger. I have been influenced in my rethinking process by the level of brutal murders and gratuitous hate mongering on the part of the religious right.
I am in my ninth year of sobriety. I have had to take stock and admit my own shortcomings. Re-channeled my anger toward real oppressors instead of toward people who may irritate the hell out of me but who are not the people actually creating the laws and policies that oppress me.
Working together with people who are attempting to remove GID from the DSM has had a big influence on me. Taking responsibility for my words since I am both blogging at Women Born Transsexual and being asked to write for other forums including TS-SI has also played a role in my losing the angry rhetoric.
I still think people with transsexualism are inherently different from people with transgenderism. Just as I believe that lesbians are different in many ways from gay men. I know from history that saying both are homosexual (one element of their being) therefore gay should be the umbrella term lead to a nearly 10 year conflict in the 1970s. People ended this conflict with a compromise that led to what had been the “Gay Community” now being called the “Gay and Lesbian Community”. This allowed lesbians and gays to work together on specific issues such as fighting the bigotry that surfaced when Anita Bryant lead the campaign to repeal a Gay and Lesbian anti-discrimination bill in Miami, Florida. Crisis brought unity. In 1978, California gay men and lesbians worked together to defeat Prop. 6, the Briggs Amendment, a pernicious law that would have barred not only gays or lesbians from teaching school but anyone who supported them..
Lesbians were there to keep the community going during the darkest days of the AIDS Crisis. Sometimes it seems more like working in parallel than together for the same basic goals as gay men, nonetheless the in fighting has decreased markedly
For people with transsexualism and people with transgenderism a similar compromise would be Transsexual and Transgender Communities. We could modify the alphabet city of special interest initials to LGBT/T with TS/TG used when referring specifically to transsexual and transgender people. I have already started to notice greater proper usage of the label transsexual to people who identify as TS and not TG. I also occasionally see LGBT/T or GLBTT. It is a start.
Certain events caused me to question some of the positions I went along with even if I no longer felt them to be either ethical or worthy of support from someone with my ideals. Last fall Jennifer Gale, a transgender veteran and gentle soul who lived in Austin died of exposure. Each week in the US seems to bring news of either another murder or violent assault of a transsexual or transgender person, someone generally of the poverty class and often but not always a person of color.
How can I be an ethical, caring human being and not be moved?
I plead guilty to lashing out in anger and using hurtful language like, “men in dresses.” I had forgotten a lesson learned many years ago when the bullies at school offered to stop bullying me and let me join their group. All I had to do was beat up a younger child who even more obviously feminine and an unrepentant sissy than I was.
I read the unemployment statistics. I know that the figure of 9.5% doesn’t take into account those whose unemployment has run out, the chronically unemployed, part timers. I also know that for many TS/TG people coming out and living a life that is true to yourself is a matter of hitting the down arrow on the social mobility elevator.
I am still not willing to allow the erasure of my reality of having been treated for transsexualism by a compulsory “Transgender Umbrella”. Nor are many other WBTs and I will add a few MBTs. Yet we are in crisis.
Forty years of public health and public service cuts have removed even the minimal safety net from those TS/TG folks at the bottom end of the economic scale. Those of us who have time or money, a voice to advocate with and a will to agitate need to create or push for support services to assist these folks who have fallen through the cracks.
When I started, my blog the first thing that happened was that, a few people made snide remarks about Andrea James and Lynn Conway. Later Donna Rose, Monica Helms and others were spoken of as though they were the problem and not part of the numerous people working to advance non-discrimination and anti hate bills.
People wanted me to take their position in the transsexual vs. transgender war. Instead, I was tired of fighting and I declared the war over. As a former hippie, I can do that and for me the war is over
Over the past couple of years, people have been after me to start using HBS instead of transsexual. Someone came on our Women-Born-Transsexual mailing list a few years ago. If I recall correctly she claimed to be from Spain she wanted us to start using BS or Benjamin’s Syndrome instead of Transsexualism. Without knowing there was already a Benjamin Syndrome: A rare disorder characterized mainly by anemia, bone abnormalities and mental and growth retardation, I objected. I pointed out that in English BS had a scatological interpretation.
Since then it has been modified to HBS or Harry Benjamin Syndrome. I still have no desire to embrace it for the same reason I have never referred to myself as one of “Dr. Laub’s girls”; for the same reason I used to cringe when Officer Elliott Blackstone used to refer to those of us who ran the National Transsexual Counseling unit as “his girls”.
I actually like the term “Transsexual” for the name of what I was born. Not so much as an identity but it gives clarity to the oppression I endured as a transkid and it doesn’t hide the reality of my life journey behind a bunch of jargon aimed at obscuring.
Sometime it seems like some women born transsexual are as eager to erase the history and agency of other women born transsexuals as those transgenders who wish to co-opt us into disappearing under the umbrella.
Some WBTs think their ways of dealing with having been born with transsexualism make them vastly superior to all the others who either came out later in age or who choose to live in a different degree of stealth/openness. I have recently come across the term “classic transsexual”. Looking at one of the sites where I have seen it used it seems to have homophobic connotations and be a slam on sisters who are lesbian in their post-SRS lives.
I have been assured it isn’t and that it means someone defined as transsexual in Dr. Benjamin’s book, The Transsexual Phenomena. Great except I was one of dr. Benjamin’s patients. I went through the process way back when and pretty much the same mix of people transitioned then as transition now. The main difference was that more poor people were able to get SRS than now and there were fewer computer industry people than now.
As for “classic transsexual” I recognize it for what it is, code for heterosexual transsexual. As such, I tend to see it as both homophobic and as a slam against sisters who come out later in life. It goes against my theories that the root cause of transsexualism is the same for almost all transsexuals. As well as believing, the truth can be found in people’s narratives. Reading biography after biography leads me to this conclusion that actual people with TS knew as early as their first conscious memories.
The rest is a matter of existential circumstance. I trust the veracity of our narratives more than the theories of the misogynistic psych establishment.
As for WBT homophobia; many heterosexual sisters have taken a homophobic stance in reaction to having been improperly described as homosexuals by both the public and by professionals like Bailey and Blanchard. Voicing homophobia while embracing some of the most reactionary and bigoted elements of our society can be a way of declaring one’s dissociation from gay and lesbian people. This has an ugly history filled with gay bashing homophobes who were later discovered to be gay themselves.
But there is another form of homophobia among WBTs and that is directed at sisters who are lesbian or bisexual. A pointing of fingers and calling lesbian sisters, “Men who made a mistake.” This can take a more subtle form in the expectation that lesbian sisters will put their energies behind the validation of straight sister’s marriages without the expectation of quid pro quo in the form of straight sisters supporting same sex marriage.
So even within WBTs there is a lot of fighting over who is transsexual in the correct way.
Horizontal Hostility… A better description might be a circular firing squad where the game is not co-operation to gain rights for all but rather spiteful fighting for your own particular factions rights by cutting special deals and agreeing to attack someone who may not be your sister but is your first cousin.
As an avowed lefty I rather prefer a unity in struggle to obtain a result that is of common interest. If you are not willing to be part of the solution then you are part of the problem.
I can not tell you to come to the same conclusions I have and compromise. As for me… I’m tired of fighting. I don’t like how much I have sounded at times like people I abhor.
If people with transgenderism are willing to compromise on TS/TG communities instead of Transgender (as umbrella) Community I am quite willing to extend my hand in peace.
This probably isn’t going to satisfy the straight CDs nor will it satisfy the straight WBTs but they locate their lives outside of the alphabet city of the non-straight minorities. We are the ones who should work on working it out.
There are ideologues on both sides of the equation, on the “Transgender as Umbrella” faction as well as the WBT/HBS side who will be totally unwilling to compromise on this either but the continuing petty fighting among the various oppressed groups only divides us and means we accomplish nothing.
We have worked on anti-discrimination bills and hate crimes bills together. I’m sure that if we stop the feuding we can make things better for all of us.
07/24/2009 at 1:46 am
There is another could cause to point out TS and TG seperatly. Because a wider public (at least here in europe) is not aware that there are a lot of people in between of transvestite and transsexual (and that many of them are in legitmate need of medical support, too).
07/24/2009 at 3:35 am
Yes i am with you totally on this one and perhap’s a very lot more it seem’s that in oh so mnay way’s it is getting worse and not better for hatered of nayone and just about al who dare to be different in anyway shape or form.
instead of tolerance and real understanding instead we get more and more hate and indifference.
those who dare try to speak out separetly are often censoered and or far worse.
but i do try from time to time to slpeak for it whenever anwhereeveri can.
so yeah i am with you!
and just about anything i can do let me know at jleslie492@hotmail.com
07/24/2009 at 10:47 pm
Thank you for your article. I am reading this in Finland and English is my second language. So I pardon any misunderstanding.
In human behavior the role of a social context is huge. Within the transgender umbrella there are some groups that feel they are more equal than the others. Like in George Orwell’s book Animal Farm. I think that basically this is internalized transphobia. I am no black and brown person but I have heard that there is a similar ranking within colored people, they have internalized racism.
It is not only internalized transphobia. The weakness of transeverything has made people to accept the values of cisgender majority. If transsexual individuals are expelled from their work because of what is their identity, some groups within transeverything do not understand this and they say that they dress only during their leisure time. Like the whole problem was dressing only!
The real problem is that we in transeverything accept the cisgender norms and we have internalized them. We cannot see the problems some groups face within transeverything. We use the cisgendered values as our baseline. We do not speak of human rights and that it is important to implement the protection into every single individual regardless of her/his sexual orientation, gender identity or race. When we will make that we are plural.
We need more understanding within transeverything and we need to end the transcannibalism based on ignorance.
07/25/2009 at 4:25 am
A couple of points. I’m the primary user of the term “classic transsexual” and I am bisexual, extremely lesbian positive as that was the community that embraced me when I transitioned and the bulk of my non-trans/intersexed women friends are either lesbian or bisexual and I am a fairly “late” transitioner so please reconsider rejection of that term.
I was also one who promoted “transgender and transsexual” for community terms for over a decade. The response then and now was wholesale attacks to utterly destroy my life and leave me homeless……..by transgenders who defended to the death the umbrella use of transgender. One of those you named as someone positive. She is not, she is a disturber of sh*t who may have had a small positive influence but also broke apart one fragile alliance after another over the years. A destruction to positive ratio of about ten to one at this point. One of the couple of endless self-promoters who do much more harm than good.
I have quiet, low key contact with some of those I was in activism with back in the day even though we still disagree on many things but the in the open the warfare is worse than ever. I want no active part in the TG rights battle anymore seeing my rights as a woman as much much more important. Once again I’ll state plainly that the discrimination, hatred and attempts to disrupt my life have overwhelming come from the TG crowd, not the world in general therefore I see them as the problem. In my day to day life I am discriminated against as an outspoke Pagan leader, an active Feminist, a woman in general and almost never because of my medical history.
07/25/2009 at 4:38 am
One more thing………my objections to seeking any civil rights protections via the GLBt community is tied to the frustration of dealing with gay male conserva-queers who consistently ignore lesbian and women’s, all women’s issues. Therefore I am in favour of pursuing rights as part of a unified women’s movement instead for both lesbian women and women of trans and intersexed histories. The ridiculous demands of the most vocal of the TG activists have assured that civil rights via the GLBT route is a hopeless cause. As long as TGs insist on male-bodied access to women’s intimate space as their primary goal, civil rights protections will fail.
07/25/2009 at 2:39 pm
As my granny used to say – “Give an inch and they’ll take a yard.”
And there you about have it! You started the WBS movement because you needed a separate voice, Suzan. Catkisser, whom I’m with 100% on this, started using the term “classical transsexual” as a way of defining out WBS women,and in an effort to claim a separate voice, The HBS movement grew from the same need: because the voices of those who were the original transsexuals had been swamped, drowned and completely colonized by transgenderism.
Personally’ I doubt that TG folk will find it possible to abandon their belief that classical (HBS) transsexualism is anything other than a subset of their own experience. To me this compromise path you have embarked on looks awfully familiar. But that’s not surprising. Its history repeating itself. So, while I wish you well in your endeavor, I shall gird myself against the time when you become absorbed into the TG catchall trans-lump.
In my response to your piece on TS-SI I have used organization-activation to explain why TG and classical or HBS transsexualism are different.
What I didn’t mention is that I ran that model past Mickey Diamond before I went public with it. You can read his response on my blog.
Hopefully it may lead to the realization that this entire debate needs to be re-focused.
07/25/2009 at 5:31 pm
I recently went to Queer Collaborations in Canberra – the annual queer student conference here in Australia. On Tuesday they had a caucus for different minorities at the conference – a way of bringing up issues that might escape the majority. The caucuses were: women’s; disability; trans & genderqueer; and other language/culture. I went to three of these but the one I found a little disturbing was the trans & genderqueer one.
I wasn’t familiar with the genderqueer concept and wasn’t exactly sure if trans should be lumped in with them (as it was obvious that there were a lot more genderqueer there than trans). It’s one thing to hear people who actively want pronouns used for them such as “they” and “it”, another to sit through a motion to abolish gendered toilets. I agreed with it, on the proviso that there still be some gendered toilets available for people who wanted them. After all, I fought for the right to use the women’s, and I wasn’t going to give it up just like that.
Anyway, the point I guess I’m making is that for a lot of people their, they couldn’t see what the difference was between genderqueer and transgender, let alone transgender and transsexual.
07/25/2009 at 6:26 pm
I tend to agree with most of the points made by “catkisser”.
At the very same time, it’s criminal to allow a gentle soul like Jennifer Gale to die of exposure on the streets of Austin, Texas. There has to be a middle way. There has to be a way to protect all “different” Americans. That does not mean all homophobic, privileged, TG’s get their way.
Civil rights for all people does NOT have to allow male bodied TG’s acceptance to women’s space — but, is a Pharmacy “womens space”? Does the denial of WBT’s / post-ops to those same spaces make any sense?
As I’ve said time after time, WBT is NOT transgender. At the same time I support civil rights for TG identified people – both MtF and FtM (if those are appropriate terms to describe TG folks). Civil rights for TG’s does not allow men to run roughshod over women’s rights. Nor does it mean men have the right to define woman.
Again, there has to be a middle way — even though it does not seem to be an alternative anyone really wants.
07/26/2009 at 4:57 am
The “middle way” I use is simple. I take people as I find them. What that means is you just act and react to people according to who they are and what they do as individuals. This simplifies things considerably. Someone who IDs as TG and treats me with respect and acts like a decent human being is treated as such. Someone goes out of their way to be nasty and vicious, you get them out of your life.
It’s often a trap to deal with individuals as if they reflected all the stereotypes of any given group. And for what it’s worth, I find many other women deal with the global “trans” stuff the exact same way thus often even those who represent hardcore positions frequently have zero problem with me personally.
07/26/2009 at 5:35 am
As one of those who use “the umbrella” terminology because there are similarities among those covered by “the umbrella” while at the same time clearly recognizing that there are very significant differences among the people covered by “the umbrella,” I really don’t see anything wrong with Suzan’s analysis.
I do think that the HBS term is extremely useful – in essence and stripped of the sometimes “anti-TG” sentiments of at least some of its adherents, HBS is a useful “medical model” for explaining transsexualism.
I think the concept of WBT is wonderful, even if I define it somewhat differently from the way Suzan defines it – because it recognizes that someone born transsexual never really belonged as a member of the initially-assigned sex. WBT is more accurate than MTF, because the individual was never really M in the first place (And MBT is more accurate than FTM for the same reason).
In addition to the classic divide between post-op on one side and those who either haven’t had their op, can’t have their op, or don’t want an op on the other, I tend to think there is more of a divide between those who are “who they are” all the time, and those who only occasionally “express their inner grrl/boi.” There is also more of a divide between those who see their sexual identity (gender identity) as “fixed” or “unchangeable” and those who see it as “fluid.”
At the same time, I see a single uniting similarity – that whatever our op status is, whether we are full-time “us” or only part time “us” and whether we are “fixed” or “fluid,” we all share one single characteristic – and that is that we are *different* from that large majority of people who identify themselves in accordance with the expectations of their birth-genitals.
(Sure, I know that there are some “part-time” trans folks who *mostly* identify in accordance with birth-genital expectations, and there are the “fluid” types who sometimes identify with birth-genital expectations, but all “the umbrella” requires is that they be “different” from those expectations when taken on an overall basis.)
Even *with* “the umbrella,” it is vital that we recognize that there are times when our differences mean that the reasonable accommodations that we should reasonably expect from a strict-fixed-in-accordance-with-birth-genital-shape-binary world are different – post-ops should have the easiest path to full legal recognition for all purposes. Anyone “full time” should also have a path to near-full legal recognitionm(reasonable exceptions should include only time-slicing in a group-shower or locker room). Part-timers should be protected from job loss based on “off-the-job” crossdressing.
We’re really not so far apart at all.
07/26/2009 at 6:46 am
The more active I am–and I have been on a bit of a hiatus in recent months–the more I believe my advocacy must not only be for “transgender and transsexual people,” but as the terrain in Canada shifts explicitly leaving all those who transition–whose identities are fixed–out, I must concentrate on transsexual people, WBT.
This is not to say those whose identities are fluid/part time should be left out, it is just that those whose identities are fixed/full time are being explicitly left out and the urge to “unify” seems, in reality, to exclude.
I have written at some length about the need for coalition–alliance as Prosser puts–and not a single policed identity, regardless of footnote explanations that there really are differences.
This is why I believe less and less in working within the GLBt “umbrella”–having tried for a few years–because despite the “a single uniting similarity” (as Joann puts it for trans people, and some put it for all GLBt people) this forced unity does, as all forced unities do, damage to the minorities.
I simply do not understand, and have argued this, that self-identification is required and respected for majority identities but repudiated and erased for minority ones. I respect any person’s self-identification; I simply expect mine to be similarly respected.
And my advocacy is to open a space for others to similarly self-identify.
07/26/2009 at 2:48 pm
So many of us have had problems working within the “LGBT Umbrella” that it’s more the rule than the exception.
As I said years ago, “There’s no future being the ‘T’ in LGBT.”.
For that reason I propose alliances on specific issues, alliances that help all parties involved.
There is no such thing as a “Transgender Umbrella”, nor do every one of our issues lie within the “LGBT Umbrella”..
Please remember WBT was one of the first declarations of our independence from the “TG Umbrella”. To say we are “TG in every way but name” is a base lie, totally untrue, and more than divisive.
07/26/2009 at 3:05 pm
My work–such as its was/is–has been based on what I believed to be explicit promises that, now that equal marriage–i.e. same-sex marriage–and virtually all of the formal goals of the, so-called, gay agenda, have been achieved, the focus of the LGBt movement would have been formal recognition of the human rights of transsexual and transgender people, explicit access to medical services for transsexual/transitioning people, and raising the profile of transsexual people, separate from transgender (defined as part of “all things associated” with homosexuality).
But, with significant declarations that all this has been accomplished, it is worse than silence–which would, at least, have allowed speaking truth to power without competition.
As best I can understand, in Canada, “coalitions” can only be formed if the distinctiveness of transsexual/transitioning/transitioned people are repudiated and erased.
07/26/2009 at 5:49 pm
I respond to the posts of Joann and Jessica. Let me say that I don’t doubt that both of you hold your beliefs sincerely and that, in your own way, you are both attempting a peace-making role. The problem is that you come at WBT-Classical-HBS transsexualism as if it were an identity issue.
Having this condition is like being pregnant. You either are pregnant, or you’re not. Once a woman finds she’s pregnant she may identify as a pregnant woman, but identifying as a pregnant woman is not what makes her pregnant. Ergo the identification doesn’t cause the pregnancy: the pregnancy helps create the sense of identification.
Trying to comprehend WBT-Classical-HBS transsexualism as an identity problem is what causes the misunderstandings, both between us and TG affected individuals, and with the way our condition is understood by psychologist, psychotherapists and all the other so-called experts.
We are simply not being listened to and that is what creates our frustration!
Please accept that this post is not a personal criticism. Its the beliefs that are wrong. And those beliefs a precisely why WBT-Classical-HBS transsexuals need a distinct voice of our own.
Let me return to the pregnancy analogy to explain why. Joann introduced the transsexual who doesn’t want to change sex into the discussion. Yet changing anatomical sex is precisely what Classical- WBT – HBS transsexualism
is all about. It isn’t an add-on, designed to complete a change of gender role behavior and expression.
The argument that some individuals, who don’t want to change sex, must be accepted as WBT-HBS-Classical transsexuals is one of the many claims that conflates our experience with transgenderism, and frustrates our attempts to obtain an independent voice.
The issue isn’t one of elitism or a belief that the one is more legitimate that the other. It is that they are different. They almost certainly result from very different developmental factors during the organization-activation process of brain formation, and they need to be accepted and heard as such.
Finally I hope this post is read in the spirit that is written, a genuine attempt to explain the Classical-HBS-WBT need for our own voice, and not as a personal attack on anybody.
07/26/2009 at 7:00 pm
No, Joann, I don’t take your post as an attack.
On the contrary, I find it helps resolve something that has troubled me for some time.
You write as if being pregnant and this isn’t an identity but, well, a state of being. That a pregnant woman can assume the identity of “a pregnant woman.”
My understanding of this state of being goes something like this:
To use Serano’s term, subconscious sex–not gender identity–is something that exists. Simply.
However, as soon as one thinks about it, it becomes an identity.
As soon as one talks about it, it becomes an identity.
One can leave it unthought, unspoken, undone–unlike a pregnancy it won’t just happen. Hormones, transition, surgery don’t just happen.
And how will “our own voice” happen?
How will the space for those who are like us be openned?
This pregnancy must be acted upon, whether suicide or realized.
07/26/2009 at 7:35 pm
A little like being human is more than being a collection of identities, but acquiring a collection of identities is part of being human?
Perhaps: but no matter how much an not-pregnant woman identifies herself as being pregnant, that identification will not cause her to be pregnant. A pregnant woman who identifies herself thus is therefor substantively different from an not-pregnant woman who identifies herself as being pregnant.
You ask: “How will the space for those who are like us be opened?”
If you’re referring to classical WBT HBS transsexualism then I think you have already recognized at least part of the answer.
By reclaiming our own voices and the essentialisms in our own experiences. By standing up an and rejecting the authority of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and a raft of other minorities to subsume us into their own experiences where, except as peripheral issues, we hardly belong. By rejecting the outdated and inane belief that our issues are the product of a mistaken identification with the wrong gender role.
These are my thoughts. Others may have different suggestions.
07/27/2009 at 1:49 am
Hello Joanne,
Defining what makes a WBT or HBS person is not elititst, but the elitism starts the moment, you define the other conditions.
Espicially people that take the HBS label like to define two sides: The “real” TS and than they come back to BBL and define every other condition as autogynephilic. Giving BBL the least bit of credibility and then arguing by being scientific is an oxymoron that only can stand on the grounds of prejudice.
07/27/2009 at 2:53 am
Its nice of you to say so, Sarah. Can you show me where I did that? I suggest your operating a stereotype here. Fact is some people who identify as HBS do what you say – others, like myself simply demand scientific evidence to validate the identity paradigm. So far none has been adduced and we’re still waiting.
That said there are some pretty rabid TG’s out there too. Heigh-Ho!
Secondly, a whole lot of individuals self identify as autogynephilic. I accept their right to do so, I do not accept they have a right to apply their issues to everyone else. That’s not surprising, surely? After all I don’t accept that TG affected people have a right to dump their labels and experiences onto WBT-Classical-HBS transsexuals, regardless of how the latter feel about it, nor do I prostelytize in an attempt to recruit people to the HBS cause.
For that matter I don’t patrol the internet identity policing in an attempt to undermine other people’s experiences either.
That said, a ‘transsexual that doesn’t want to change sex’ is an oxymoron that doesn’t stand under any circumstances, with or without prejudice! But then a ‘transgender that didn’t want to change gender’ wouldn’t stand up either, and for exactly the same reason.
So it isn’t I that give BBL & Zucko credibility. Anne Lawrence and all the other AG’s out there do that. I simply accept that those people know more about their own experience and personal situation than I do.
If you want to call all of that prejudice your welcome to do so. You’ll be in interesting company. Hontas Farmer thinks it is too.
Cheers.
07/27/2009 at 3:28 am
Hello Joanne.
No, I didn’t read that on your page or blog. But you present te HBS side scientifically and for example favor no brainsex explanation to people, that are transgendered – which is not very likely.
Transgendered in itself is a wide spectrum, so clearly there is no “one size fits all” in opossition to the narrow defined transsexuality. But is it really the operation itself that makes the difference, or the need for it?
I never said, that there aren’t TGs that call TS weird – and I’ve seen people commenting on Zoes blog that think, bodymap issues are a lie and the operation is just “gender confirmation” like it is for them. Wich again raises the question of the accurancy of the operation as the main criteria.
07/27/2009 at 2:22 pm
Sarah – you wrote:
“But you present the HBS side scientifically and for example favor no brainsex explanation to people, that are transgendered – which is not very likely.”
Actually – if you read my most recent blog post you will see that I argue a weak-moderate-strong (WMS) model of brain organization/activation.
If you read the email at the bottom of the post you will find that a WMS model has the support of Doctor Milton Diamond, full professor of biology at the John A. Burns School of medicine and internationally recognized expert in this field.
Against that I have a statement from an individual who signs themself “Sarahbadhairdays” and who has declared the model as being “…not very likely.”
You need to offer up something a little more convincing than your usual open-ended polemic to get around that one sarahbadhairdays
)
Secondly, you have questioned the validity of SRS as a “main criteria” for validating the existence of WBT-Classical-HBS transsexualism on the grounds (as I read your your post) that other people are accessing the surgery for other reasons.
Again I have done nothing of the sort. I have pointed out that there is no such beast as an WBT-classical-HBS transsexual that doesn’t want to change sex. I used the analogy of a transgender that didn’t want to change gender to drive home the oxymoronic nature of the claim.
There is no doubt that all sorts of people are accessing “bottom surgery” for all sorts of reasons these days. If you don’t believe me check this out: http://www.themanginaman.com/index.html
The advent of these people, autogynephilia and transgenders accessing SRS do not disprove the existence of Classical-HBS-WBT transsexuals. They prove the existence of ‘diagnosis creep’.
07/27/2009 at 2:33 pm
Its Suzan who likes to call the operation the defining point. Sorry I do not make my comments all about you.
So in your last blogpost you finally admint that there might be something to it, and I’m such a bad person that I only know your older posts. Yes I know Milton Diamond. Have you read his “biased interaction theorie” or only linked it?
I once commented but you never published it. The exact answer to your retoric question lies in an answer to the very same direct at Ronny Drantz:
http://drdrantz-sciencesexuality.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-hit-me-with-your-slides-was.html
07/27/2009 at 3:57 pm
You wrote:
“Its Suzan who likes to call the operation the defining point. Sorry I do not make my comments all about you.”
Suzan is quite correct. She is using the word “transsexual” in its original context – pretty much as defined by Benjamin. These days the word has become ‘polluted’ by other connotations. Hence the need for specific definers such as WBT, Classical transsexual and/or HBS.
You wrote:
“So in your last blogpost you finally admint that there might be something to it, and I’m such a bad person that I only know your older posts.”
Now, Sarah – I make allowances for the fact that English is you second language and that you may not always intend the consequences of some of the things you say.
Of late I have been unwell and will undergo open heart surgery In August. This is partly due to a heart attack last February and also to replace a faulty heart valve.
Right now now I am perpetually tired and my well known lack of patience is even shorter than normal. I say all this because I resent your allegation that I have “finally admitted” to something.
What I have consistently done is to argue that HBS-WBT-Classical transsexualism is not a gender issue and has no place under the TG rubric. I have also argued that there is a stronger behavioral/environmental influence in the TG experience than with HBS-WBT-Classical transsexualism. So do many others.
I have offered you (and every one else) a working model that explains why the the differences exist and taken the time to have that model validated by Mickey Diamond. It should help everyone understand and respect each others differences instead of trying to occupy and contest the same ground.
Yes, I know Mickey’s biased interaction theory. It probably works very well for individuals with a weak organization/activation.
It doesn’t work for individuals with a strong sex-reversed organization/activation because theirs is first and foremost an embodiment issue, not a gender issue.
I hope this clears everything up for you.
07/27/2009 at 9:51 pm
Using my version of Cybele’s Knife. If you don’t get SRS then you didn’t have transsexualism. Or you may have been so abused growing up that getting it together was impossible. But I’ve knon some pretty mess up people who still managed.
07/28/2009 at 1:47 am
Hello Joanne.
> I hope this clears everything up for you.
Yes, it does, thank you.
And I wish you all the best for your upcoming operation.
Sarah
07/28/2009 at 4:26 am
“Using my version of Cybele’s Knife. If you don’t get SRS then you didn’t have transsexualism.”
Of course, in ancient Rome, the Galli used sharpened broken pottery to do their own castrations…
09/10/2009 at 12:23 pm
About the question of classic transsexualism, I have a few comments. Classic transsexualism has nothing to do with sexual preference. For instance both genetic women and classic transsexuals can be straight, lesbian or bisexual, and their sexual preference has nothing to do with whether they are genetic women or classic transsexuals.
Here is the defining statement of what a classic transsexual is:
“True transsexuals feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such. For them, their sex organs, the primary (testes) as well as the secondary (penis and others) are disgusting deformities that must be changed by the surgeon’s knife…”
Harry Benjamin, ‘The Transsexual Phenomenon’ (1966) (Ch. 2)
There it is, the statement “disgusting deformities that must be changed by the surgeon’s knife”.
Now I understand there are extenuating circumstances for why a transsexual can’t get surgery, such as medical or financial reasons but the desire to have the surgery is still there. They are pre-op transsexuals for however long they have to wait for surgery.
That does not mean that others who are not transsexual may want the surgery too, as indicated by Joanne’s example above. Just wanting the surgery for whatever reason does not make one a transsexual.
The term non-op transsexual, which is someone who wants to keep the sex organs they were born with, is an oxymoron, and those people can call themselves transgender, or make up another name for themselves if they don’t like the term transgender. People who don’t want SRS, and who call themselves transsexual are not correct, and are being detrimental to transsexuals. They are implying that sex reassignment surgery is elective surgery and not necessary, and that transsexuals can live without it, and that puts in danger the access to SRS for transsexuals. Many doctors will not do a surgery that is elective and which society considers controversial, and health care plans will not pay for elective surgery.
09/10/2009 at 5:21 pm
I don’t see a need for “classic” to modify transsexual since in my world Cybele’s Knife and Sex Reassignment Surgery are the proof one is transsexual.
And as far as I am concerned if you get SRS when you are an adult and have agencey you are transsexual, I don’t care to hear a litany of why you are better than others getting the same surgery.
09/10/2009 at 5:42 pm
Susan – are you are of people who do not consider themselves trans and still have the surgery?
I thought that was an urban myth until I met one at a Mardi Gras after party several years ago in Sydney. I forget how they got their surgery (actually, I don’t think they ever told me, but I saw proof of it) but they’d had it, and were still fronting as a man. Wish I’d got their name.
I guess there are all sorts out there, and we should be content that our own actions bring up happiness.
09/10/2009 at 5:43 pm
Oops – first sentence in the previous post should read “Susan – are you aware of people who do not consider themselves trans and still have the surgery? “
09/10/2009 at 6:08 pm
I suppose there are a few and there is already a special phrase or more accurately acronym GIDAANT for those sort. Then factor in the body modification crazies.
I’ve know some over the years who claimed getting SRs was a mistake and most of those should be kidnapped and deprogramed of the BS shoved into them by the religious cults they have fallen prey to.
But by and large I’m not particularly in favor of special terms for post-ops. I don’t give a damn when you did it or sexual orientation or special arguing. If you used your agency to SRS upon age of reason etc then that means you have a history of transsexualism.
“Classic transsexual” carries more bad associations than primary and secondary which I discarded neary 5 years or so ago. Stoller used it, Bailey/Blanchard use it. From them the meaning is dick crazed homosexual who got SRS to have sex with straight men.
We can do better than that.
09/10/2009 at 6:11 pm
Uh Susan, I don’t remember anyone mentioning being better than anyone else. Different, yes but not better. I am not implying a hierarchy. I am talking about people with a real medical problem in dire need of corrective surgery that could be denied. There wouldn’t be a need for “classic” to modify transsexual if non-transsexuals would stop trying to colonize transsexual’s space.
Can I claim to be a diabetic? No, because I don’t have a problem with my blood sugar. By the same token, one who doesn’t want SRS can’t claim to be a transsexual.
As for the idea that SRS makes one a transsexual, see this site:
http://www.themanginaman.com/index.html
What do you have to say about that?
09/10/2009 at 6:24 pm
I don’t much care since I am post-SRS. I’m not transsexual, classic or otherwise since transsexualism was something I was treated for not who I was. At any rate WBT is short hand for women born with transsexualism or women treated for trranssexualism. Sort of like breast cancer survivors or something like that.
Either way something that has a history of being used by Stoller, Bailey and Blanchard to describe extremely effeminate gay men who get SRS for the purpose of having sex with straight men isn’t something I particularly care to embrace if for no other reason than its historical associations with extremely misogynistic and objectifying asshole doctors.
It is sort of akin to choosing terms from Virginia Prince who may well have had a hand in coining it.
09/10/2009 at 6:25 pm
Mangainaman Like misogynistic dickwads have opinions that count?
09/10/2009 at 6:23 pm
I guess I was composing my reply above when you made your last post Susan, so you can disregard the last paragraph.
I have some terms for post-op transsexuals: Women and men. I consider that when SRS is done that the transsexualism is over. They are survivors of transsexualism, but no longer transsexual.
09/10/2009 at 6:40 pm
Please pardon me Suzan I will eventually get your name right.
09/10/2009 at 6:46 pm
I wasn’t aware that the term “classic” transsexual had been co-opted by the likes of Stoller, Bailey and Blanchard or how they used it. It seems I have a history of using terms I think are benign only to discover they have been laden with bad connotations by others.
09/10/2009 at 7:58 pm
Stoller took a lot of his ideas from Virginia Prince.
He was a useless Freudian. I did shed a lot of tears over his getting squashed like a bug while he was jay walking in Westwood