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.
07/26/2009 at 7:43 am
Circumstances as well as political terrain in Canada and the United States may well be different in some respects, but, as unasked for as it usually is, there may yet be some guidance us up north can provide.
Regarding same-sex marriage, “equal marriage” as the PR geniuses–and I use this to point out the architects of this campaign understood the motivation Suzan speaks of–put it, I for one, tried to emphasize that the Canadian law–the Civil Marriage Law–did not say “a man and a woman, two men, or two women” but simply “two people.”
The radicalness of this, not simply making sex irrelevant but also gender, remains invisible to the gay and lesbian people who ran this campaign and most who benefit.
The beliefs of those few who do not primarily identify in terms of sexual orientation who contributed to this campaign do not appear, then OR now. Nor were our concerns that this great achievement be used as a foundation for future, and as yet unrealized commitments, even given a hearing.
After passage it was declared “all lesbian, gay, bi and trans people are first class members of society, without caveats or exception.” This on the website of Canadian for Equal Marriage.
Maybe it will be different where you live.
In recent national political action, “gender non-conformity,” which I had always assumed to be a synonym for “transgender” has been claimed as part of “all things associated” with homosexuality.
A human rights complaint against Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada on behalf of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, and two spirit people (arbitrarily defined as aboriginal gay, lesbian and bisexual people) uses this definition of “gender non-conformity” as simply an aspect of being gay, lesbian or bisexual.
The executive director of the Canadian Rainbow Health Coalition leads this complaint not as an official of the Coalition–which would require him to include those with “gender identities not assigned at birth,” his organization’s mandate, presumably including those who transition to fixed identities–but as a private citizen with five other private citizens. One wonders how many Coalition resources were used for this complaint.
I often feel like one of those cartoon characters who has been painted into a corner and cannot leave without stepping on someone else’s brilliant paint job.
Compromise is certainly the way for somewhat disparate, minority–compared to mainstream–populations to work together for common goals, even for some goals which are not common but for each separate population–what some have called alliance or coalition. But it doesn’t work if dominant populations refuse to recognize how minority populations differ and EXPLICITLY open space.
For myself, I simply cannot identify with the majority population, whether it is gay/lesbian, whether it is transgender–regardless of how some, in their nearsightedness see no or no significant difference between these populations.
Even if, in some/many respects it would make my life easier.
The more I endure the more clear it becomes that the very principles espoused for equality, for working together are simply suspended when it comes to transsexual people, particularly transsexual women/WBT.
07/26/2009 at 9:20 pm
Does anybody really take what Jennifer Usher says seriously after all these years?
- Karen
07/26/2009 at 9:56 pm
She morphed through a few variations on name and hit new venues. Sort of like Bo Laurent aka Cheryl Chase and Denise Tree aka Kiira Tirea. Then there are creepy flakes like Sue Ann Robins and Lisanne Anderson aka Lori Anjou who crop up everywhere to spew their crap.
Fortunately enough of us have their number to know not to fall for their crap.