Women Born Transsexual

From Shakesville

This is a really good post on the nature of misogyny and how people try to suck women into taking misogynistic positions themselves.

I’ve been thinking about this one a lot lately particularly in terms of relating to certain people in the TG Activist camp. Why should I allow the fact that certain TG activists piss me off move me into a place where I condemn all TGs when there are other TG activists I find I am often in agreement with.

This has meant exploring the nature of prejudice. I wish I still had a copy of Gordon Alport’s book that I read way back in college.

| posted by Melissa McEwan | Friday, August 14, 2009

Despite feminists’ reputation, and contra my own individual reputation cultivated over five years of public opinion-making, I am not a man-hater.

If I played by misogynists’ rules, specifically the one that dictates it only takes one woman doing one Mean or Duplicitous or Disrespectful or Unlawful or otherwise Bad Thing to justify hatred of all women, I would have plenty of justification for hating men, if I were inclined to do that sort of thing.

Most of my threatening hate mail comes from men. The most unrelentingly trouble-making trolls have always been men. I’ve been cat-called and cow-called from moving vehicles countless times, and subjected to other forms of street harassment, and sexually harassed at work, always by men. I have been sexually assaulted—if one includes rape, attempted rape, unsolicited touching of breasts, buttocks, and/or genitals, nonconsensual frottage on public transportation, and flashing—by dozens of people during my lifetime, some known to me, some strangers, all men.

But I don’t hate men, because I play by different rules. In fact, there are men in this world whom I love quite a lot.

There are also individual men in this world I would say I probably hate, or something close, men who I hold in unfathomable contempt, but it is not because they are men.

Continue reading at:

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/08/terrible-bargain-we-have-regretfully.html

In the mid 1990s I was engaged in drinking myself to death. I was committing slow suicide out of loneliness and having experienced far too much abuse through out my life.

I had people that cared about me enough to help save me tell me that I was a worth while person. Jacob Hale introduced me to Susan Stryker. She collected an oral history from me and now my name is found in the index of a couple of books. I appear in Susan and Victor Silverman’s movie “Screaming Queens” a film about the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in 1966.

I am working on a book. Our history is important. Our culture is too as it shows how we lived at a time when so many people claim it was impossible for us to live.

I first received this appeal via Facebook

From Andrea James

We are working to raise the final funds needed to restore Queens at Heart, the 1965 color documentary about pre-Stonewall trans women and their lives. This remarkable footage was almost lost forever – no negative exists. Through the Outfest Legacy Project and UCLA, this film is being restored for a screening on September 30.

We need your help! Philanthropist Joanne Herman has given a matching grant to encourage the trans community and our allies to pull together to save this piece of our history.

We hope to raise $2000 in August and the remainder in September. Join me, Lynn Conway, Douglas Ousterhout, Felicity Huffman and other trans people and allies in this important goal!

I also encourage all of you to join me in Los Angeles on September 30 for the premiere screening of the restored print. Details soon, but in the meantime, any size donation will help. Let’s show the world that our community has pride in our history! Please donate whatever you can – every donation gets us closer to our goal!

[Video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-VjR6AcfYk> Future
Restoration Projects]

Donate via PayPal
http://www.outfest.org/legacy/queens_at_heart.html

Donate via Facebook:
https://www.causes.com/fb/donations/new?cause_id=38355&fundraiser_id=9033579&m=38d81d22

Please help spread the word about this important goal!

This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.

Calpernia Addams <http://www.calpernia.com/> notes in a thoughtful essay full of advice for young people considering a gender transition:

Transition is never perfect, never easy and never finished. But it does get better, it does easier and it does recede into the background as time goes by.

[…] Focus on your dream, visualize yourself as a beautiful, happy woman living in her own place, with her own car and a good job where she is so valued and essential due to her skills that they would have no problem accepting her past if it should ever come to light.

Much more excellent advice at the link below.

Continue reading at:
http://www.calpernia.com/what-i-wish-i-had-known-about-transition-when-i-was-younger/