Folks may be right. It may well be that the TGs are the ones unwilling to make even a minor compromise.
I’m not seeing any evidence that they are willing to go along with even making a minor peace offering.
But, there is no reason for us to continue to act like Jennifer Ushers spouting forth the rhetoric of the Christo-Fascists.
Especially since much of it is stupid, our spouting it makes us less credible, and that we are just saying it to be hurtful. We come off as bullies and validate their charges of our being foul mouthed generally more privileged elitists.
In the long run this undermines us more than being civil and pressing our positions in a way that causes us to be seen as sane and reasonable.
For those of us in the US having ad hoc coalitions work on certain matters would increase the chances for legislation that would benefit all.
Some like hate crimes bills and a trans inclusive ENDA are obvious. Especially since no matter how stealth you think you are records are out there.
Others like Same Sex Marriage are less obvious due to the framing of the bills. In essence, they are not gay marriage bills. They make the sex of those getting married irrelevant. Now, I have heard the HBS faction is not anti-lesbian, but on our Woman Born Transsexual mailing list the group led by Diane Penn certainly was. We were expected to defend heterosexual marriage rights since that would validate her marriage but we were not supposed to publicly pursue laws that would give us the same rights.
Government funded health insurance that included treatments necessary for people with transsexualism or transgenderism without discrimination or pre-existing condition clauses.
Ending GID and removing it from the DSM. GID is a cancer that metastasized from the remnants of homosexuality as mental illness. They removed gay in 1973 and seven years later in the new edition the same pseudo-scientific bigots stuck in GID. While we are at it get rid of transvestism too.
All of this garbage is simply the rewriting of religious superstition in pseudo scientific jargon. Out with it all.
I also realize that the TG people I knew and consider friends were probably way too lumpen to fit with the newer Tapestry set but there are a lot of really damaged folks who are more like the sisters I know who got SRS than like the straight CD set. Maybe they got more abuse than I did or maybe I had better tools for handling it. A lot of substance abuse and abuse issues that build those reasons some people never pull it together and get SRS. But then they aren’t very represented among the organized either.
It wouldn’t take much in the way of quid pro quo to get me to agree to work together on some of those things. A little respect would do it.
In the mean time I’m still going to follow a policy of dropping the trash talk. Mostly because it’s a waste of my time.
