The Transgender Borg and Transgender Inc put out a massive quantity of bullshit about identity and identifying as a woman, about how that identity trumps both physical reality and the perceptions of others. Based on the claims of some to be considered a woman all one has to do is claim to identify as such.
Being considered a woman doesn’t require being assigned female at birth. Doesn’t require surgical sex reassignment from an initial birth assignment of male. Doesn’t require the removal of testicles and definitely doesn’t require the surrender of one’s penis. One isn’t required to live 24/7/365 in a socially accepted female sex role. One doesn’t have to have electrolysis or even wear women’s clothing, according to Transgender Borg ideology to be considered a woman based on “identifying as a woman.”
Neither assigned female at birth nor later surgically reassigned as female women are permitted to have a say in this matter, but instead have to swallow the entire reactionary pile of crap regarding gender that we spent years fighting against. Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique was all about how gender (sex) roles were used to trap women and limit their ability to function in the world as whole people with the agency to make their own decisions regarding the course of their lives.
For all of the Transgender Borg/Inc.’s BS about deconstructing gender most of their philosophy seems deeply grounded in the reification of gender stereotypes as defining who is a man or who is a woman.
Indeed their ideology of “Transgender Umbrella” and “Transgender Community” seems intent upon stifling genuine attempts at breaking free from sex role/gender role stereotyping. It is terribly oppressive to have your life colonized and be berated by the Borg/Inc for not embracing “Transgender as Umbrella” once they have decided you are part of a class that they have decided belongs under the “Transgender Umbrella.”
Speaking of “process”. Isn’t there something incredibly phalliocentric happening when one group composed largely of penis people and their sycophants get to decide when some one is part of the “Transgender Community” or not, without the consent of the person or class of people being colonized?
I am well aware of Christan Williams attempts to write a form of revisionist history where “Transgender” is a self chosen collective noun that was embraced as early as the late 1960s/early 1970s by women with transsexualism.
How does it feel, Christan, to be a sycophant toadie for a bunch of people who have advocated violence against feminist women, who had the courage to say no to the demands of phalliocentric transvestites and their demands to share the women’s room based on “identity”? Identity with out actions that actually change your sex is meaningless, nothing more than a con game played by penis people who want to violate women’s privacy.
Don’t think I haven’t noticed the attempts at rehabilitating Angela Keyes Douglas, a psychopathic douche nozzle from the 1970s who hindered the integration of post-transsexual women into the feminist and lesbian communities with his androcentric “transgender superiority” and his calling lesbian feminists “ugly cunts” and “fish”.
BTW that word, “Fish”… That’s the word that set the feminists off when it was used by Saint Sylvia during her drunken Pride Day Parade episode back in 1973. Do you think that really gave post-transsexual women a big boost in the feminist community? Or did it hurt us?
Many of us look upon SRS as ending a chapter in our lives and with the end of that chapter come an end to membership in a shared class that has come to be called “The Transgender Community”. At that point we face a life choice. One road means we continue the process of becoming women, a process that can only happen if we drop the “Trans”. That means dropping the “Transgender Community”. It means embracing the bare unadorned label, “woman” with out the prefix “trans” much less the adjective “transgender”.
In spite of the TG Borg/Inc.’s protestations to the contrary one cannot identify as a woman and as transgender. The two are mutually exclusive. One might identify as a “trans-woman” or as a “transgender woman”, one might even identify as transsexual, although the term transsexual implies actual actions taken to permanently physically change one’s sex. But as long as one either has to stick a prefix or adjective, or voluntarily sticks that prefix or adjective in front of the word woman then one is identifying with the modifying prefix or adjective and not with the noun being modified.
Being woman identified might have all sorts of readings and levels, take all sorts of forms from spiritual to political.
But one thing should seem obvious. Living one’s life in transgender-centric surroundings is not conducive to taking the final step in the process of becoming part of the community of women. It is continuing to live in the transgender ghetto. One does not have to be hostile to genuine transgender people nor wish to deny genuine transgender people their rights. But who is actually transgender? This is a reasonable question. I had a hostile transvestite who goes by the on-line name of Carolyn-Ann come here a while back with his penis waving transvestite BS. He got pissy when he found out I wasn’t about to be bullied by him and has periodically trashed me on his blog ever since. Do I have to consider him a woman, or welcome him into women’s space?
Speaking of women’s space… Many of us have been welcomed into women’s space based upon our work within the feminist and lesbian communities, our personalities. Even the Michigan Women’s Music Festival quietly expanded its policies to permit women identified post-transsexual women into the festival. Yet Camp Trans continues as many will not be satisfied until people with penises can invade any and all gatherings of women.
I have been accused of being a “genital surgery essentialist” by Autumn Sandeen. Monica Roberts, who has advocated violence against Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford, suggesting they should be pimp slapped and condoning a transvestite named Anthony Casebeer suggestion that these women be attacked with a baseball bat. Monica Roberts, who often points out racial injustice is equally often given to hyperbole and regularly engages in phalliocentric dismissals of post-transsexual women, snidely implying that women born transsexual has racist connotations with her oh so cute”WWBT” and her disparaging of our bodies as having man-made vanilla scented neo-coochies.
Nice going Monica. You have insured the heightening of the contradictions.
One can be woman identified or one can be part of the phalliocentric Transgender Borg Collective. One cannot be both.
I consider the attacks upon Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford to be unwarranted, nor do I see any real merit in the arguments coming fron the TG Borg/Inc. The inclusiveness of the “Transgender as Umbrella” paradigm is its weakness not its strength. They use post-transsexual women as a front when so many of them are men in their daily lives. The refusal to limit Transgender to people who live 24/7/365 when writing legislation that grants entry to restrooms and other spaces where women expect a reasonable level of privacy, causes many women to be reasonably wary, to ask just what this means.
When post-transsexual women who have been around the scene and know what is going on because they have seen the reality take sides in this issue one may justifiably ask, “Do you stand with women, or do you stand with transvestites?”
I have been called a “radical feminist” by some in the TG Borg/Inc. I guess I am, if that means I put the interests of women either assigned female at birth or surgically reassigned as female at a later time ahead of the interest of either transgender people or transvestites.
I put women without a prefix or adjective and their interests first, because that is what being woman identified requires. Being woman identified isn’t an identity or make-up and clothing. It is a commitment to women, both because you are a woman and because you put the interests of women first.
Women Born Transsexual 
August 8, 2011 at 4:37 pm
Meanwhile, away from the TG Alternate Universe, those of us with actual lives live as the women we are, attending to womanly concerns in our homes, neighborhoods and workplaces. I am just Sharon, a female and a woman.
I support everyone’s civil rights, but TGs have no right to interfere with mine.
August 8, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Are lies and deceit today’s cost for freedom? Some “presents” are *never* acceptable, irregardless of where they come from.
August 8, 2011 at 7:08 pm
Thanks for the great article, Suzan.
August 8, 2011 at 7:48 pm
The problem with that letter to the UN in my eyes is not that the transgender community is being questioned — or even grilled; more power to those people, I say — I do it myself all the time. When you dance with them you had better be right on in either your facts or your logic, however. This blog is an excellent example of that.
I do not feel that Brennan and Co. even remotely anticipated the transgender response (of which I suspect we’ll be seeing reverberations of for a while), and they were sloppy in promoting this central idea with a serious lack of evidence. When you take that community on and enable them to get the best of you, it becomes possible that they will look the better for it.
What would have been smarter is to have that letter in one’s pocket and wait for examples of ‘gender identity’ protection abuse to arise first in order to prove that case. I was mentioning months ago to my wife that I suspected these laws were too broad in scope, but thus far I have had to suck up the fact that there have been little to no abuses.
August 8, 2011 at 7:53 pm
One’s sex, male or female, is assigned at birth, purely on the basis of penis or no penis—a simple system in reality. It has nothing to do with behavior, as to whether one behaves in a stereotypical manner for their assigned sex or not. This model of defining one’s sex is so ingrained in the world, not just the US, that newborns found to have indeterminate genitalia often had SRS conducted to force them into one sex or another. I do not intend to focus my comments upon intersex conditions and how I think they should be handled at the time of birth. I am only stating the obvious fact of how sex is assigned in the world. Once again, it is based upon genitalia of the newborn in question and not behavior.
In the case of the transsexual, their brain is wired according to a sex opposite their body. Their assigned sex will be based upon their genitals at birth, which then becomes their legal sex. However, their brains, once again, are wired opposite to their physical sex. Most, in a great part due to pressure from parents, family, society, church, etc. will desperately try to fit into the role assigned to them at birth, based upon their physical anatomy. Plus, one can certainly look at themselves in a mirror and see their own body, and in spite of what their brain is telling them, they will try to convince themselves that what they’re seeing in a mirror must be right.
So, imagine two female-brained young children, one born with female anatomy (child A) and the other male anatomy (child B). Child A will often be pushed towards stereotypical female activities, while Child B will be usually pushed towards male activities. Child A might very much like to pursue masculine activities, but too often will be denied such opportunities in our misogynistic society. This is quite unconscious, I do believe, and stereotypical roles are too often enforced by both men and women, which reminds me too much of the behavior of elves in the Harry Potter book series. Child B often will desire to join into whatever activities girls are doing, as they see themselves as female, and therefore, want to be with other females, accordingly. My point being is that I don’t think for the transsexual child that it has anything to do with being focused upon dresses, dolls, etc., but everything to do with wanting to be with other female-brained children, doing what they’re doing. This is analogous to children in general wanting to wear what their friends wear in order to “fit in.” A significant number of non-transsexual children do things like wear dresses, nail polish, etc.
As child B grows up into adult B, unless they’ve transitioned, they’re still transsexual, meaning in this case, female brain and male body. Such a person is not strictly speaking male or female, but is once again, transsexual, although legally, based upon their genitalia at birth, they are male. Being female brained in of itself doesn’t give adult B the right to use female-only spaces, as they’re not strictly speaking female, and they’re legally male. Once adult B starts to transition, they are under medical WPATH guidelines, requiring them to live 100% of the time according to their brain sex. This creates potential complications for adult B, and different individuals will approach this in-between time differently. During transition, adult B will find them self being accepted more and more socially as a female over time. So, from a practical, social interaction perspective, they are now female, but they will still have that part of their anatomy which defines them legally as male. Upon completion of SRS, adult B will also be legally considered female in nearly every jurisdiction, and can change their birth certificate in 47 states. Considering how sex is originally defined for each person, this makes perfect sense, and adult B, at this point, is no longer transsexual, but simply female.
August 8, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Great article 🙂
August 8, 2011 at 9:09 pm
Suzan, I am new to your blog and want to thank you for such a thought provoking post. I’ve been accused if being too rigid in not considering crossdressers and men who live as men but take hormones without transitioning as legitimate authentic women.
But I think we make a mistake if we shortchange efforts to expand gender protections. Zoe must live in a wonderful paradise to state that abuses and cases of discrimination are “little to none.”
Let me restate what Lee so eloquently explained in my own dumbed-down words: men identifying as women and in the process of making that transition, and women identifying as men and in the process of transitioning to the male gender, need to be welcomed into the world of genetic women and men, respectively, for them to complete that process of transition.
It’s not reasonable to require surgery first; it’s also not reasonable to consider them women, or men. I personally don’t care what label you use, and for myself, I use simply “trans.” After SRS, I plan to call myself a woman, as that is the goal. I never ever wanted to be transsexual, transgender, or a transvestite. I believe I am on my way to becoming the woman I feel I am,
I look forward to that future and endure this trans period of my life.
I do agree with you Suzan about the men who want to be called women, even though their lives are lived as men most of the time; or thise who threaten violence, or see nothing wrong with retaining their male genitalia despite living full-time as women; they probably dont even see how utterly masculine all of those behaviors are! But I can’t remember the last time if ever I waved my now-diminished penis! I only wish that the labelmakers and rabble-rousers would understand that if we do not stand together, we shall indeed all hang separately.
August 9, 2011 at 3:55 am
That’s not what I meant at all, Dawn. I have yet to see any cases of gender identity protection abuse where a cross-dresser (that is, a non-transsexual) has entered the women’s bathroom and attempted to turn it into a case of gender identity discrimination in court. That is the central premise of the UN letter, that gender identity protections are being abused in order to allow men to invade women’s spaces. I am just not seeing it as of yet, though I have personally anticipated such a thing happening. Who knows, perhaps it is best to nip the broadness of those protections in the bud now before they become problematic… the only issue is whether there is a better way of doing it.
August 9, 2011 at 5:42 am
If it wasn’t for “Saint Sylvia’ as you sarcastic call her, you wouldn’t have enough civil rights to be able to make these offensive sepreratist rants. I took Sylvia into my home and lived with her throughout the last years of her lives and was housing homeless trans people while you were playing your ‘feminist’ games.
August 9, 2011 at 10:39 am
The only impact Sylvia Rivera had on my life was negative.
FYI those of us on the West Coast were much more politically advanced than the people in NYC. Transsexuals actually had a fully operational Center before Sylvia ever appeared.
August 9, 2011 at 7:35 am
I don’t claim to know what the hell you’re talking about, as I’m going to assume that being in different countries, the situation you face is different to the one I face.
The world is not a black and white place, it is so many shades of grey.
How do you classify how someone refers to themselves using all the various trans references there are available? The answer is you simply can’t. I’m a woman, I’m transsexual, both are facts that I can’t change. I’m not going to deny that I’m either, but I have to remember that I am both. I think the people who say “oh I’m no longer transsexual” can be big snobs, but that’s a big generalisation on my part, I understand that they probably just want to be done with that part of their life and get on with the next part, and good luck to them. I’ve not encountered the tg or tv’s who’ve wanted to enter women only spaces but still keep their male parts. Most of them that I know, are self depricating and normally say “well I’m just a….”. You can’t insist that people only have rights based on what they have in their pants, especially when surgery in some countries is not covered by insurance, and is so expensive. In the UK, we don’t have that issue due to the fact that if you want surgery, you might have to jump through hoops, but you can get it on the NHS.
I treat people as people. Men are men, and women are women. Someone mtf trans who intends to have surgery, should be considered female from the day they go full time, and should be allowed to integrate within the female community. I understand this would have some limitations, but those are limitations that most would put upon themselves.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but I just get so annoyed when someone tries to put me in neat little boxes of a type, when clearly, there are over 6 billion neat little boxes available on the planet. We are all different, and in some ways, we are all the same. We all deserve respect and dignity, and I think that’s what we need to ensure we all have before anything else.
August 9, 2011 at 8:06 am
I enjoyed this article, as it helped to qualify some of my rather disjointed views on this subject. If you are born with a non-masculinized, or female, brain, then you are a woman. No action required. That said, I have certainly taken action, and I find it hard to comprehend that anyone with a brain like mine could live as anything other than a complete closet case (fingers in ears – I’m not transsexual – nah nah nah) or a full-fledged woman, which they are. That doesn’t mean I’m right and in between experiences do not happen, or are not valid. Just that, in my case, I went from complete denial to living full-time and doing things (electrolysis, therapy, hormones, getting ready for surgery) within 6 months. 6 months that seemed like an eternity at the time.
Full disclosure: I am pre-op (still in my 1-year RLT), and I have only been in transition for about a year and a half, so I do not bring a whole lot of personal lived experience to this discussion.
August 9, 2011 at 8:12 am
So, interesting opinion piece. I say opinion because the unsubstantiated claims are too numerous to count. Also, it is my opinion that when the word “Borg” is used in reference to trans folk, it should be read in the voice of the Swedish Chef. Can’t you hear it now? “Borg, Borg, Borg” LOL!
“Being considered a woman doesn’t require being assigned female at birth. ”
So, your opinion is now that one can only be a woman if one is assigned female at birth?
“I am well aware of Christan Williams attempts to write a form of revisionist history where “Transgender” is a self chosen collective noun that was embraced as early as the late 1960s/early 1970s by women with transsexualism.”
Um… post WHERE I SAID THAT. You are either lying or your ideology has blinded you to the point where you are no longer able to objectively deal with facts concerning this issue. Which is it?
What I have said is that it is now historical fact that Virginia Prince DID NOT coin the term. It is furthermore historical fact that Leslie Feinberg DID NOT invent the ideal of the “transgender community”.
Again, I challenge you to post where I ever – even once – claimed that “‘Transgender’ is a self chosen collective noun that was embraced as early as the late 1960s/early 1970s by women with transsexualism.” *facepalm*
“How does it feel, Christan, to be a sycophant toadie…”
Since you’ve not provided any evidence to support you charge, it feels exactly like I’m going to completely disregard it as being the obtuse burblings of a mind so enslaved by a dogmatic ideology that it can’t even honestly deal with what I’ve said and instead invents demonstrable falsehoods such as “I am well aware of Christan Williams attempts to write a form of revisionist history where “Transgender” is a self chosen collective noun that was embraced as early as the late 1960s/early 1970s by women with transsexualism.” to rail against. That’s how it feels.
“… for a bunch of people who have advocated violence against feminist women, who had the courage to say no to the demands of phalliocentric transvestites and their demands to share the women’s room based on ‘identity’?”
I just want to check before answering… Remember the TV show called, “Just Shoot Me”? Do you believe that the show was about a bunch of people trying to literally shoot David Spade?
“Identity with out actions that actually change your sex is meaningless, nothing more than a con game played by penis people who want to violate women’s privacy.”
Violate women’s privacy? Are you suggesting that crazed crossdressers are going to be kicking in stall doors? Following this same line of reasoning, are you suggesting that all FTM’s should be forced into the women’s restroom? They were assigned female at birth, generally menstruated (some still do), some gave birth, all were socialized as females in a patriarchal society and many still have a vagina… so, according to your logical house of cards, the best thing for women is to have Buck Angel hanging out in the women’s bathroom and a pre-op Isis hanging out in the men’s restroom? Are you suggesting that pre-op transsexuals should be forced to use the men’s restroom until they have vaginoplasty? I get that you’re so irate that you can’t even get your facts straight about what I did and didn’t say, but it would be helpful it you’d deal with the particulars of exactly how this genital-based ideology would work in the real world.
What is it with Separatists and their need to reduce women to walking, talking vaginas?!?
August 9, 2011 at 11:18 am
Actually Virginia Prince did coin the term transgender and its common usage grew out of FFPE, Tri-Ess and other heterosexual organizations. It was pushed forth by heterosexual TVs, who later came out as TS. I.e. the founders of Tapestry and IFGE. In the mid 1970s Renaissance (Jude Patton, Carol Katz, Joanna Clark) started using this Prince coined term for people who elected like Prince to live their lives full time without SRS.
As for F to Ms they are not my concern. I put the interests of women first.
The big problem with the Transgender ideology is that it requires us to ignore the crazies (and anyone who has ever gone to a TS or TG support group has met at least one seriously crazy scary person) that no woman wants to be faced with meeting in the rest room.
I coined the Borg usage due to the Transgender Cult’s practice of colonizing people who do not wish to be members of their cult and attacking anyone who objects to that colonization.
August 9, 2011 at 8:37 am
Let’s look at the opposites to what you claim the “TG Borg” collective is saying.
Being considered a woman DOES require being assigned female at birth.
This is the position of the self-described RadFems, Michfest etc.
DOES require surgical sex reassignment from an initial birth assignment of male.
Especially for Intersex girls whose clitoris must be shortened or removed entirely.
DOES require the removal of testicles and definitely DOES require the surrender of one’s penis.
So women with CAIS have to have internal glands removed – and clitorises too long to match societal expectations must be eradicated surgically.
One IS required to live 24/7/365 in a socially accepted female sex role.
Butch Lesbians are not women then.
One doesn’t have to have electrolysis or even wear women’s clothing, according to Transgender Borg ideology to be considered a woman based on “identifying as a woman.”
Neither are those with severe hirsutism caused by PCOS, and those who don’t wear dresses.
“Zoe must live in a wonderful paradise to state that abuses and cases of discrimination are “little to none.””
A different Zoe – but please name such an abuse. Just one case, please, where such laws were used as a defence against an act that was formerly illegal.
August 9, 2011 at 11:03 am
No Zoe you do not get to claim Butch Lesbians as they are women because they are adult females.
However the Transgender Borg and Transgender Inc base their claims on “gender” therefore it is reasonable to require them to live that gender since they are not basing their claims on their physical being.
I personally do not believe clothes make either the man or the woman, nor does being masculine or feminine.
But I do not have a problem with transgender people adding the trans prefix to man or woman. Just as long as they do not include me in their club.
August 9, 2011 at 10:49 am
We should remember that the world is a big place.
Hundreds of millions (if not billions) of women live with scant legal protections and have no defenses against predatory males. In many parts of the world, including the Western countries, reports of crime against females is either scant or non-existent. Moreover, in many places men can have their way with women and face zero retribution.
I bring this up because the brennan/Hungerford statement was submitted to the United Nations, not just the USA.
August 9, 2011 at 11:23 am
“As for F to Ms they are not my concern. I put the interests of women first.”
You see, that’s what separates me from you, I care about everyone’s rights, and I don’t put one person’s rights above someone else’s
August 9, 2011 at 11:44 am
I actually put the interests of the working class before the interests of the idle rich. The interests of women before the interests of men. I take the political stance of feminism in the struggle against the patriarchy. I hate Nazis, Fascists. I am also a militant atheist who favors the end of privilege for all religions.
I am not one of those nice touchy-feely, high heel loving “do-me” feminists.
I’m a crunchy old second wave lesbian feminist dyke, who was welcome in some womyn born womyn spaces by womyn who knew my history, because my history included much more than my having had an operation.
August 9, 2011 at 11:50 am
Well, my idea of feminism was that all we’re supposed to be equal, apparently not.
August 9, 2011 at 11:57 am
Let’s see. Even though women, the working class, racial minorities are oppressed they should care as much about the interests of their oppressors as about their own.
Sarah you are mouthing a meaningless platitude that has a sort of conservative tinge to it. Ill thought out at best.
Why should women put the concerns of their oppressors who have trumpeted “Men’s Right” as having an equal validity with feminism, when men are the oppressor.
August 9, 2011 at 11:55 am
“Actually Virginia Prince did coin the term transgender and its common usage grew out of FFPE, Tri-Ess and other heterosexual organizations. It was pushed forth by heterosexual TVs, who later came out as TS. I.e. the founders of Tapestry and IFGE.”
No, she coined the term “transgenderist” in 1978. Almost a decade prior to that the term was being used to describe transsexuals in everything from newspapers to studies. We can certainly debate what exactly constitutes “common usage”, but the debate on whether Prince coined the term has been settled. Either the term was in use prior to 1978 by Prince or it wasn’t. Which is it?
I will agree that Prince coined the term “transgendist” and that the pre-existing term, “transgender” and the more contemporary term “transgenderist” seemed to have melded into a hybrid term in the late 70s and very early 80s, but by the early 1980s, the trans community was using the term “transgender community” to refer to a broad and diverse community of constituent groupings. Now, either this is true or it is not true that the sources I cite do not exist. Which is it?
“As for F to Ms they are not my concern. I put the interests of women first.” *facepalm* What a disgusting thing to say. You should be ashamed of yourself. This statement is below your obvious intellect. My god… you are better than this!
“The big problem with the Transgender ideology is that it requires us to ignore the crazies (and anyone who has ever gone to a TS or TG support group has met at least one seriously crazy scary person) that no woman wants to be faced with meeting in the rest room.”
If I wanted to ignore it, I wouldn’t have used Taylor’s propaganda in my public response.
And let me wind up by restating my actual original position… a position that you’ve chosen to ignore:
Her fatuous, contemptible and downright abhorrent rhetoric is appalling. I’ve based these conclusions upon her use of one of the most repugnant – and seemingly favorite – tools of bigots throughout history: the “some sicko can be associated with a population and therefore the entire population should be viewed as being suspect” reasoning. Literally everyone from Hitler to the Klan used this logical fallacy and it is repugnant and more than worthy of scorn and public admonition.
August 9, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Why should I be concerned about the interests of F to Ms? Seriously… http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/a_y_chromosome_is_worth_the_sa.php Becoming male is a move up on the class status ladder. Becoming female is a move down.
Putting women first is what makes me a radical feminist.
Your articles about common usage cited among other things Myra Breckenridge , a film that was more despised by transsexuals in the process of changing sex than Ticked Of Trannies With Knives is today. You might have also found transgender used to describe David Bowie, the Cockettes, and The Rockey Horror Show, which was a play before it was a movie.
But the reality is the term came from Virginia Prince. Further the ideology came straight from Prince’s misogynistic works, How to be a Woman Though Male and The Transvestite and His Wife.
The fact remains I was out in 1969 and co-ran the Reed Erickson foundation funded National Transsexual counseling Center in San Francisco for some 18 months. I was active in the gay and lesbian communities since 1969 and actually met Prince back then
Transgender was not in general usage until Renaissance and the Tapestry/IFGE people put it there and it originally meant people who live as members of the sex not associated with their current genitals.
BTW you should read both Eakins and Docter’s books about the Prince of many names.
Emotional pleas will get you no where with me.
The Transgender Borg Cult only rose to power some 20 years ago, when I was already long post-transsexual.
August 9, 2011 at 12:08 pm
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to call me a Nazi again.
August 9, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Suzan, I will treat everyone equally, I am no way a conservative, and you saying that shows how little you know me.
I do however sense from you that only your definition of equal is equal, an “I’m alright Jack attitude”, or do you just want to be the oppressor?
Oppression of anyone is never good.
August 9, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Oh really… I’m at a point where I think the only solution that would help the working people is a revolution where we treat the rich oppressive pigs the same way the French Revolutionaries treated the freaking royals. Or to paraphrase Denis Diderot “Mankind will only be free when the last rich pig is strangled with the entrails of the last McMegaChurch Televangelist.;”
It’s a good thing I’m in a generally more pleasant mood than I was in the 1970s when I would have quoted Valerie Solanis to you.
August 9, 2011 at 1:00 pm
it is very entertaining to watch someone stand up for those poor, oppressed men. You know, the men who control pretty much everything?
August 9, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Suzan, thanks for calling out the attempted and sinister history revision propagated by Cristan Williams (and many other ‘umbrella or bust’ advocates). After all, the word “transgender” is in the title of the organization that Williams runs, so I’m not surprised she is so militantly invested in protecting the capital and ideology she has invested in the theory of transgender as an enforced reservation title. It’s just a shame she has to defame and misrepresent the transsexual uprising in order to do so! It’s called colonization and intellectually dishonest “logic”, this is what Williams thrives on. Williams needs to accept that we are not be used as political bargaining chips to be co-opted into her agenda.
August 9, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Quote whoever you like, two wrong don’t make a right. The oppressed becoming an oppressor is no fairer, and I’m sure I could take the time and quote you Martin Luther Kind, Ghandi, Emily Pankhurts, Winston Churchill and many more people, but I’d rather get on with my life, and not to grow old and bitter at the people who’ve wronged me.
August 9, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Gandhi wouldn’t have won had the Nazis not destroyed Britain. MLK was only one person who was beaten and murdered. What about all the others who were beaten and lynched? What about the people who burned the ghettos?
Oh, oh here it comes the “old and bitter”. Do you have any idea how often the TG Borg have run that one on me?
I am not a christian, I do not believe in god or in forgiving my oppressors. I do not believe they are oppressed by their acts of oppression. that is the poisonous pap passed down by supporting institutions of oppression to quiet the oppressed often accompanied with promises of an imaginary reward from a magic invisible in some imaginary paradise beyond the grave. sky daddy
August 9, 2011 at 1:51 pm
“Why should I be concerned about the interests of F to Ms? Seriously… http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/a_y_chromosome_is_worth_the_sa.php Becoming male is a move up on the class status ladder. Becoming female is a move down.”
“Emotional pleas will get you no where with me.”
Oh. My. God. You’ve utterly repulsed me. What sort of warped heart cannot respond when transmen are bullied, bashed and murdered? And you dare deride transgender people as being selfish? Selfish you say? In the face of such cold and abhorrent disregard for the 14th amendment rights of transmen you – in an astounding display of moral hypocrisy – claim any authority to speak on that which is just?
“But the reality is the term came from Virginia Prince.” A creationist can claim that the earth is 4k year old, but it doesn’t make it so; likewise, you can claim that she coined the term while knowing full well that the term was used – leaving movies out of it – in studies referring to transsexuals years before 1978 when she coined the term “transgenderist”, but like creationist wish making, it just doesn’t make it so. At some point you will either accept the demonstrable fact the term was in use prior to 1978 by people who were not Prince or you will risk losing whatever little credit you are still due you after your abhorrent display of moral turpitude.
Believe me, I am no fan of Prince; not by a long shot. Prince asserted a great number of things which turns my stomach – to the precise degree that your disregard of the well-being of transmen turns my stomach.
“The fact remains I was out in 1969 and co-ran the Reed Erickson foundation funded National Transsexual counseling Center in San Francisco for some 18 months. I was active in the gay and lesbian communities since 1969 and actually met Prince back then…”
This is a non sequitur. It is absolutely admirable that you were part of this and I give you due credit. It does not, however, mean that the term “transgender” wasn’t in use by people other than Prince prior to 1978.
August 9, 2011 at 2:24 pm
“the precise degree that your disregard of the well-being of transmen turns my stomach.”
Why should I spend anymore energy on “transmen” than I spend on men in general? They moved into the world of the male privileged, into the world of the patriarchy.
August 9, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Oh I just love the identity politics based appeals using people who have been murdered.
One thing about my blog is that it isn’t all that “Trans-centric”. Unlike many if not most “trans-blogs” I actually notice the concerns of women who do not have a prefix or adjective in front of woman.
I watched in vain for mention of the Green River Murders, or the murders of all the women in Nuevo Laredo.
But mostly you expect me to identify with a “community” that didn’t exist in its present form for the first 20-25 years since I came out, a community that only came into its present form in the 1990s.
Here’s something for you to ponder. My role models weren’t drag queens or even other transsexuals. They were people like Bernadine Dohrn, Jane Fonda, Urike Meinhof, Jill Johnston, Charlotte Bunch, the women of the Furies, WITCH and Red Stockings, Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons.
August 9, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Suzan, going back to my north-east roots, why don’t you stop talking out of your arse!
My point in mentioning those people, was that they preached tolerance, they preached change through non-aggression, they stood up for what was right and some of them suffered and died for what they believed in, but that brought more attention to their cause, now stop talking bollocks.
August 9, 2011 at 3:06 pm
I too am from the North East, from the mining and mill towns of that part of Appalachia-north called the Adirondacks, or the Sticks. My diapers might not have been Party Red but they were Union Pink as in hard core Left.
Non-aggression on the part of the oppressed serves only the oppressor.
If “non-aggression” is so effective why do the rich need war budgets, armies, navies and police forces?
Could it be to protect the rich from the poor? Could it just possibly be the total non-violence message is just another one of the master’s tools for preventing resistance to their oppression?
August 9, 2011 at 3:07 pm
So in other words, even though I have a diagnosis, been on hormones for several years, changed my name, changed my gender markers, etc., I am scum because I don’t have $30K+ for SRS? I agree with everything else on here except that part. There’s many of us who want to be post-transition as you call it but we can’t.. I am the first to say that there should be a separation between gender identity (transsexual/intersex) and gender expression (everyone else) but now I am being put in the borg bus because I got laid off and needed the money set aside for SRS for basic survival? I hope I am reading that part of the blog wrong.
August 9, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Since when did SRS cost 30K?
Did I say you were scum?
Do you consider your self Transgender, ascribe to their ideology and politics? You see Transgender isn’t real it is a social construct a political identity as artificial as the day is long. The members of the TG Borg Cult get angry when people they have decided to colonize resist assimilation into their cult.
And this is a political site not a counseling site. Transition was so long ago for me and I am so disconnected from it as to refuse to dispense advice. But I was disowned, lived in abject poverty and worked 60 hours per week for two dollars an hour as well as turned tricks and borrowed money to get my SRS back in 1972.
I realize times are hard. Have you considered Thailand?
August 9, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Different North East Suzan, I live in Britain, you know, in Englandshire, and you really do talk a load of shit, and I’m not going to bother replying to you again.
August 9, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Promise?
August 9, 2011 at 11:25 pm
I have always wondered why all the “Transgender Advocates” speak of some sort of “equality” for the folks they define as “transgender” while never mentioning a thing about the WOMEN they claim to be, to “identify” as?
It seems THEY can BE women by waving some sort of “magic wand”, wearing the correct clothes, and acting a certain way. At the very same time they claim to be “breaking down barriers”, “deconstructing gender”, and bringing about “equality” and an end to discrimination.
Sounds good — right?
Unfortunately most of their actions only serve to further harden gender lines. They make “gender” a REAL THING, bringing it from the social construct it is, to something concrete, something to be used to define “men” and “women”. They reify gender — putting females back into a box constructed by MEN. THEY define woman, a job that rightly belongs to WOMEN.
The concept of a woman being any damn thing she wants to be goes out the window, just so some guy who decides he wants to be a woman Fri., Sat., and Sun., can use any ladies room HE wants to.
How is that in any way “progressive”? How does that “further human rights”, especially when no one even bothered to ASK THE WOMEN!
Yes to equal rights for all (including WOMEN). Yes to civil rights for TG folks. Yes for those who say “I am not a part of the transgender community” to have THEIR wishes respected.
Another YES for getting beyond identity politics. While TG folks attack LGB/TS/WBT/etc. folks for not dropping EVERYTHING for their (the TG folks) issues, I’ve never seen any of the self identified TG folks fighting for LGBT or WOMEN’S rights. They are late to the party — but want YOU to drop everything for THEM.
Does anyone else see that as odd?
August 10, 2011 at 5:28 am
I have to say that, although I completely disagree with the author’s ideology and assertions, I totally respect the fact that she invites dissenting opinions into the discussion and includes those comments among the responses to the article. I have encountered other bloggers, authors, etc. that elected to censor, via administrative rights, any opinions that did not align with the writer’s philosophy.
August 10, 2011 at 7:56 am
>I’ve never seen any of the self identified TG folks fighting for LGBT or WOMEN’S rights. They are late to the party
> — but want YOU to drop everything for THEM.
Most TGs spend the first 30-40 years of their life outside of politics, not thinking about issues or policy, many of them have not even formed their own philosophy on individual freedom.
Then POW!, transgenderism kicks in, they get swept up into a desire for activism without a core ideology to build upon and use a narrow political approach that lacks leverage or influence. That’s why TGs would be well served to broaden their involvement beyond the usual TG issues.
The keeper of this blog is an exception to the above.
August 10, 2011 at 10:42 am
I grew up working class in a union supporting liberal family. My politics have always tended to the red and black of left wing anarcho-syndicalism.
One big difference is that I came out young. I was really obvious as a teenager and my mother had me read the Feminine Mystique as a was of discouraging me.
I came out in 1960s, early 1970s Berkeley, was in SDS/Weatherman. I grew into feminism because feminism offered an analysis of the sexism I found myself facing.
the ideology of the TG Borg means never having to look at the sexism that is at the core of all the “Gender this and Gender that” bullshit. Dismissing the sexism all women face by acting though it is something peculiar to TS/TG people, i.e. “transphobia” is navel gazing of the highest order. It is also the last bastion of male privilege and one transgender people do not want to surrender.
August 10, 2011 at 10:45 am
The “keeper of this blog” is not a TG I can only imagine that she will find this as insulting to her as I would if it was directed at me. Calling a woman long since corrected a TG is the same as misgendering her out of her womanhood into some weird ass third gender category. This is one of the biggie issues. People born transsexed do not trans their gender, I’m not sure anyone can trans gender when gender is the hardwired neurological sense of being either male or female. This is so damn basic to understanding what drives women of history to push back against the insanity of gender deconstruction I am shocked it has to be said here.
August 10, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Such is the poison of the Transgender Borg Collective. Women with Transsexualism were much better off in the 1970s and even 1980s before the emergence of the Transgender as Umbrella Cult.
Gender is a euphemism for sex roles. I didn’t much adhere to any particular sex roles as a kid, which is what made me so obvious and I don’t now as a woman which is why I am a dyke.
It’s hard to explain it to the Kool Aid chugging Borg, most of whom seem to be transvestites.
Honesty about themselves and how they want to live their lives would be all the justification they would or should need to garner support for their basic civil rights, but honesty is anathema to them.
Hence the howls and screams of bigotry when those of us who have seen behind their facades side with women on issues of privacy.
One has to willfully suspend disbelief and all the reports about attacks on women by men in restrooms, pretend one hasn’t seen any of the CD, Forced Feminization, Pink Essence, type websites. Pretend one never read Prince nor any of the books that detailed his poisonous influence. Pretend we have never attended the “gender” support groups with the strange man who has some make up smeared on his bearded face and a couple of items of women’s clothes who spend the entire meeting pissing and moaning about how no one sees him as the woman he really is.
I’d be a lot more supportive of actual transgender people if they were to become more like those of us who are labeled separatist and draw a sharper distinction between who is transgender and who is not. Hormones and 24/7/365 with out actively pursuing SRS might be a start.
August 10, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Way back, in the early days of my transition period, yes it was very quick hehehe, I used to go to this support group that also included transvestites. Now they would show up in men’s wear, with their unshaven faces and bitch about not being seen as women or that they were misunderstood by everyone, really?
One of these so-called transgender women, or did he call himself a transwoman, anyhow, he friended me and invited me to the restaurant when i needed friendship, someone who maybe understood what it was i was going through, big mistake. She who was very much a he, after dinner and a bottle of red, convinced me to go with him to a local club where apparently other women like us frequented. We got there and all i could see where men in dresses, many who were sex workers. Anyhow, i stayed for a drink, thinking of how to leave as soon as i could. Problem was, without my noticing, he slipped a little something in my drink, got me to tell him where i lived and drove me home …. next morning, well i woke up on the floor, in my apartment ……….. . I had to be followed for months by my doctor to ensure i hadn’t contracted anything.
Of course, not all of these people are like the one i describe but they exist. I am a lesbian woman, never been with a man and have always been rather careful, and what this man did to me, this violence, he did while in the guise of an ally who i thought was living something similar.
Today, i see how that man was fetishizing and role playing and that he was, a rapist.
August 10, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Sorry, what i really wanted to state is this; I am on the side of women, always, first and foremost. I can and do support many friends and allies in their needs and fights for their rights but i am a woman, my gender is and has always been female in nature and i’ve never been confused about it or seen myself as in-between or other than a female, and today, a woman.
August 10, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Circé, that is HORRIFIC! I am so sorry that happened to you.
August 10, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Yeah me too, guess what i was trying to express in that post is much of what Susan and other women have been saying all along, we are not the same or even close to transgenders. I do not make use of T terms when describing myself as i am a woman who is now female bodied for many years, i have no need to do so.
The times when i make mention of my origins, of that condition is when describing for the benefit of others, how i came to where i am now as an artist, what my path has been and where i’m at now.
August 10, 2011 at 2:02 pm
The problem with the current usage of the term “transgender” is that it has no clear definition. I had no real problem with it when it described people who took hormones and lived 24/7/365 but just didn’t have SRS. But now it includes anyone and every one including presumably the late Richard Speck, who murdered the student nurses and then got hormones and women’s clothes while he was in prison.
Speck was the best argument I ever saw for speedy capital punishment of those murderers I call “skull muncher” the ones that commit grotesque crimes like the Manson family.
August 10, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Reason why i dislike it also, it can be made to mean way too much and is so fluid that it invades pretty much most identities, it’s a pretty empty term.
Yeah, I’m all good with someone using transgender for themselves, or gender queer, or genderless and so on; but they cannot include me just because i happen to have gone through a transition at some point earlier in my life. My whole life is female-centered. My Art is imbued with my feminist views and though i do create queer Art it too, is greatly influenced by feminism.
August 10, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Suzan said: “The problem with the current usage of the term “transgender” is that it has no clear definition.”
Not even the transgenders can do that — and it is in their own self-interest to do so.
Over the years I found that one sure way to get a hostile reaction from a cross-dresser and/or TV who goes on about transgender rights is to ask: what do you mean by transgender?
Next thing you know, we are haters and bigots — all for asking the question.
August 11, 2011 at 1:53 am
Spot on, Sharon. They don’t want to talk about it. They are using transsexual and post transsexual women to further their agenda. They use us as a smoke screen. I have asked numerous TG leaders, point blank, are you advocating for male-identified crossdressers and/or transvestites to use women’s private spaces? Not one has ever answered that.
Now it seems my voice matters. After I used to try and have a civil dialogue with them where I was “pimp slapped” and told to shut the fuck up. And they are surprised, now?
August 13, 2011 at 2:45 am
“I have to say that, although I completely disagree with the author’s ideology and assertions, I totally respect the fact that she invites dissenting opinions into the discussion and includes those comments among the responses to the article.”
Likewise. Brava.
“I have asked numerous TG leaders, point blank, are you advocating for male-identified crossdressers and/or transvestites to use women’s private spaces? Not one has ever answered that.”
Keep on with that difficult question, Dana. It really summarises your strongest point, and your opponents’ weakest ones. OK, I’m still opposed, but yes, it’s a difficult one. The other side of the question is how do you prevent that without also preventing butch lesbians, intersex people who don’t identify as male, non-op trans women, post-op trans women from being caught in the same net?
Please read http://www.erinyes.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ERINYESonHumanRights2010.pdf
As a Radical Feminist – whose side are *you* on?
You’re not a woman (according to them). You are a male-to-constructed-female. As you are to Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford, whose letter to the UN was written with that as an axiom.
That letter to the UN has already had effects here in Australia. Jefferies and Gottschalk amongst others are already allying with the Australian Christian Lobby in an attempt to ban genital reconstruction, except on Intersex infants in the first few months of life, where it is to be mandatory.
Actions have consequences, not necessarily ones that were intended.
August 13, 2011 at 9:28 am
Are you sure that is from Jefferies? The Male to constructed female part sound straight from the Borg. Because as any of the Borg will tell you real women can have dicks.
The funny thing isI am friends with both of the authors of the presently being discussed paper and one of those radical feminist women you assert feels that way is standing up to someone of the other faction.
But you know something? Being woman identified instead of transgender identified means putting women first even if it is my personal loss,
I am tired of TG BS.
August 13, 2011 at 10:43 am
The paragraph quoted below is just one example of the many troublesome dimensions in the document. How can I take their argument seriously when it is infused with such lightweight pseudointellectualism and scientific ignorance?
“Male-to-Constructed-Female and Female-to-Constructed-Male – using the word ‘constructed’ clearly differentiates between women who were born female and have biologically female bodies and transgendered people who have received hormone treatment or who have been surgically changed to have an apparently female body.”
August 13, 2011 at 10:48 am
I gave the URL. It’s from the Erinyes Autonomous Activist Lesbians collective.
I’ll quote some stats from Australia:
Received verbal abuse:
* 69 per cent of lesbians
* 92 per cent transgender male to female
Physical assault without a weapon:
* 15 per cent of lesbians
* 46 per cent transgender male to female
Physical attack with a weapon, knife, bottle or stone:
* 6 per cent of lesbians
* 38 per cent transgender male to female
Despite this, they genuinely believe that lesbians are subject to more harassment than males-to-constructed-females like yourself. Facts to the contrary are ignored in favour of ideological purity.
Thank you for this! That explains it! It all makes sense now. I’ve known that you were idealistic, and selfless, and honourable. This didn’t mesh with my (mis)perceptions of your views, there was some cognitive dissonance, two sets of facts that didn’t match up. Now they do.
Maybe in return I can explain my own contrary view. I identify as female primarily too, but that’s of no importance. I don’t identify as TG or whatever, but again, who or what I identify as is inconsequential to me in this context. Had I been born a standard factory model woman, I’d feel the same – that my identification as cis- or whatever would be inconsequential.
I see what I perceive as an injustice. One of many, the world’s full of them. I don’t see how adding “gender identity” harms women. I don’t see how butch lesbians can be protected without adding “gender expression” either, and as a bonus, it also protects both Intersex and Trans women – and some standard factory models too – whose physical appearance, rather than clothing, behaviour and mannerisms, differs from the stereotypical appearance expected of women in society.
I also think, based on evidence such as that above, that as there is no “balance of injustice”, only a balance between an oppressed majority’s false perceptions with an even more oppressed minority’s true needs, that there is no case to answer. Except it’s not that simple.
“Transgender” as it includes male-identified cross-dressers who are definitely in a very privileged position (just enquire of the shade of J.Edgar Hoover) complicates the matter. As does the existence of gender-fluid people, especially if they’re Intersex so have the biology to back up their claims to being neither wholly male nor wholly female, and who are possibly the least privileged of any of us.
I don’t identify as Black, or Jewish, or “TG” as you call it. I’m against racism though. I’m against anti-semitism, and just because having a direct matrilineal descent to a Jewish great-great-grandmother means that I’m technically Jewish the way I’m technically Intersex rather than WBT that has nothing to do with it. And I’m against Transphobia too.
In all cases, not by saying “We should repeal the Civil Rights Act 1964 as it infringes on the right to freedom of association of Whites – but of course Blacks don’t deserve to be persecuted or refused employment.”. For that is the kind of thing Ms Brennan and Hungerford are advocating.
By the way, the Civil Right Act 1964 does infringe on the constitutional right to freedom of association – I just think it’s not so much the lesser of two evils, but a necessity, as is legislation that covers both “gender identity” and “gender expression”.
In summary – you believe so passionately in Justice that you support the wants of an oppressed group you identify with, even if it means you personally suffer. I believe in Justice so passionately that I’ll even support the human rights and needs of people I don’t identify with at all, if I see that as necessary.
You’ll no doubt be called a “Capo”, a “self-hating transsexual” and all sorts of other names, all monstrously unjust. But not by me, and even if it means straining friendships with people I love and admire for all the selfless work that they’ve done, I’ll call them out on it.
Does that help you understand where I’m coming from? Have I interpreted your own views correctly?
Me too. And IS BS and RadFem BS and HBS BS and Fundie BS and Gay Inc BS and, well, BS in general. I’m equal-opportunity in that regard too.
August 13, 2011 at 11:09 am
I still support women first. I do not support the Transgender Borg.