One thing I noticed through the Trans-wars is how using the perfectly good trans-prefixed word, “transvestite” for men, straight or gay who cross dress on occasion but do not live full time in a cross gender role that is inconsistent with social expectations based on their current genitalia, will get me black listed from any forum that has chugged the Transgender Borg Collective’s Kool-Aid.
As a feminist, who happens to also be post-transsexual I then find myself bombarded with hate mail and slurs from all sorts of transvestite Men’s Rights Advocates.
As a good 1970s era post-transsexual lesbian feminist I spent a serious chunk of time in the Women’s Movement and the Lesbian Movement where I garnered a fairly solid analysis of the oppression of women at the hands of the patriarchy and how the patriarchy functions. Hence my casting a jaundiced eye upon the entire ideology and ideological underpinnings of the Transgender Borg Collective.
I was one of those troublesome children, one of those born with an anarchist streak, who questioned authority by asking, “Why?”
One of those nagging questions has always been why the word “transvestite” is treated like the “n-word” and transvestites get to pick a label of choice from dozens of different euphemisms, while post-transsexual women are condemned for looking for a label that describes the reality of their lives, years after sex reassignment surgery.
I think the answer is obvious enough. Transvestites are men with male privilege and therefore get to make the rules. Saying we have our own ideas on these matters constitutes abuse, according to the transvestite branch of Men’s Rights Advocates Inc.
Reliance upon transvestite ideology of the sort that grew out of Tri-Ess and other transvestite organizations, even when it has evolved through such organizations as IFGE, NTAC and others, is what makes it very difficult for many post-transsexual women and as I am discovering, more than a few post-transsexual men, to support the social and political goals espoused by Transgender Inc. and the Transgender Borg Collective.
For me, and I can’t speak for others; the anger I feel towards the ideology of the “Transgender Umbrella” isn’t coming from a place of hating actual transgender people (who live 24/7/365).
No, the anger is at all the anti-transsexual bullshit and all the misogyny.
The ideology of the Transgender Borg Collective is privileged male transvestite, predominately white and relatively class privileged, although coming out as transgender is stepping onto the mobility elevator and hitting the down button.
When I listen to the whining about ENDA I hear the whine of the privileged straight white male, who suddenly has become part of the under class. But rather than look around, and realize there are all sorts of people of different races, classes, able-bodiedness etc who work for far less than they are worth, instead the newly out and proud “Transgender Warrior” presumes the new discrimination is a unique matter and not something shared by others who are also part of the under class for various reasons. These fellow members of the under class are people who never had the contacts that the newly out as TG or TS person had. Now the newly out and proud TG discovers what it is like to not have phone calls returned, e-mail, voice-mail, or Tweet responded to. The sudden loss of privilege is a shock, but they just joined an entire class of people who never had that privilege.
It is very transvestite to assume that you are entitled to that straight white male level of privilege when you are no longer a straight white male.
Perhaps you should look around and realize lots of people do not have that privilege. It isn’t all about you.
Thinking it is all about you is part of the sense of entitlement that goes with male privilege.
Mostly though, I am nearly as angry as many radical feminists regarding the reduction of women to a social construct of gender, through both the concept of identity trumping physical reality, and through the idea that performing gender makes someone a member of the sex commonly associated with that gender/sex role.
The sheer misogyny of that whole line of thinking leaves me sputtering.
Feminism is about women not having to adhere to some sort of stereotypical sex/gender role if that means limiting their lives. All the focus on gender sounds as though it could be coming straight from Phyllis Schlafly.
I’ve read the literature. I have encountered the patronizing bullshit from too many transvestites and more than a few people who are transgender, enough so that I recognize misogyny when I see it.
Has the “Bathroom Issue” ever really been about transsexual women or even full time transgender folks? I mean even in what were according to some the “bad old days” people in treatment and on hormones could get carry letters or special ID cards. But oh the howls, mainly from the transvestite set about even this minimal act of accommodation.
The unhappiness with transvestite as a term has become extremely annoying. Transvestites make post-transsexual women’s quest for a term that reflects our lives look minor in comparison to the proliferation of terms for transvestite. One needs a daily internet feed to keep up on these new terms.
But post-op women are separatists for even coming up with a few terms, even insisting on transsexual instead of transgender.
I’m sick of transvestite objectification, the claims we are a bunch of elitists for wanting to not be part of the Transgender Borg Collective.
I’m tired of the ever shifting measure of who is really a woman that is imposed by the transvestite set.
The one that was mentioned yesterday about how for a transvestite or transgender person gender identity is enough. Even gender performance is a requirement that one can be exempted from with some really flaky excuses.
But post-SRS women are supposed to have the right chromosomes when chromosomal tests are not used to assign sex at birth or even in the Olympics any more. The ever shifting border as to what constitutes a woman that isn’t applied to penis people but only to post-SRS women with vaginas.
The very idea that transvestites get to be the arbiters of who is or is not a woman is both ludicrous and misogynistic.
The whole ideology according to Prince is oppressive to women.
As hard as it might be for those in the Transgender Borg Collective, who are caught up in that ideology and daisy-chain illogical thinking to understand this I did not get sex reassignment surgery to be a post-op transgender person. Or even a post-op transsexual.
My role models were not transvestite or transgender people. With few exceptions they weren’t other transsexuals. My role models were ordinary men and women, some straight, some gay or lesbian.
Later I saw the sexism of some of the men I looked up to and that lessened my respect for them. Yet…
What I don’t like is the feeling of being conned, that someone is running an abusive game on me.
Too often the relationship, particularly with the transvestite segment that seems to dominate the Transgender Borg Collective comes off as abusive.
Why would I want to be part of a community that uses me either for political gain or as some one they can treat as stupid and verbally/emotionally abuse?
