Yesterday, I followed a couple of links that branched out from some “radical feminist” blogs that have said some pretty nasty things about me since I defriended Cathy Brennan. Especially since I’ve started commenting on the sociopathic/psychopathic nature of a number of the self proclaimed “radical feminists”.
I feel I have to put quote marks around “radical feminist” since they seem to have commandeered a term that used to be associated with Socialist and Communist oriented feminism.
I first encountered these vile bigots in the 1970s, when it seemed their main purpose in life was to drive left wing hippie type TS/TG women from feminism, from being considered legitimate members of the lesbian community or even from the left itself.
I always thought them to be a strange sort, more interested in pushing their hatred of TS/TG people, than pushing for rights for women or even for lesbians. Denying a minority group their rights based on the idea that their having equality somehow impinges upon your own rights has always been a right wing thing, not something reflective of the progressive left or even liberal spectrum of politics.
One big advantage of having come out as long ago as I did noticing the mechanics these nasty thugs use. It’s like an updated more techno rerun of the shit they pulled years ago. It’s like deja vu all over again when you find some of the thugs are from the same cast of characters who ran this shit the first time around.
The big difference is that back in the 1970s a few transsexuals wrote their own memoirs. Now many of us do. Back then everything else that was written about us as a people was written by Nons (Non TS/TG). It was like we couldn’t write about or offer an analysis about something that was central to our being. The “Professionals” said we lacked distance, never acknowledging they were clueless s to what we actually felt.
The Nons got to control the discourse back then. Our trying to tell what we were about was dismissed.
Mostly we cried, drank, got stoned, while internalizing the abuse, while trying to purge ourselves of anything the “radical feminists” could accuse us of. We became such good feminists and so fucking pure we denied ourselves the pleasure of wearing filmy Stevie Nicks sort of hippie dresses or skintight Lycra disco jeans because that might be buying into some sort of corporate mandated oppressive fashion.
But it didn’t fucking matter because we could be indistinguishable from the most androgynous anti-fashion militant dyke imaginable and we still were held in contempt.
You see, Jan Raymond decided and her band of bizarre harpies agreed, that our being indistinguishable from the most militant lesbian feminists didn’t make us militant lesbian feminists. Oh no…. It meant we were more evil than our sisters who embraced the media driven sort of femininity. We were trying to infiltrate the sacred sisterhood, to make transsexualism and by extension transgenderism socially acceptable and in sync with feminism.
The odd thing was there were all these decent mainstream feminists who sort of went along with this. Including Ms Magazine and Gloria Steinem at one point. The late Adrienne Rich endorsed Janice Raymond’s anti-transsexual version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I don’t much care what people think of Riki Wilchins or Kate Bornstein or for that matter Leslie Feinberg. I don’t care what you think of their books. Hell I disagree with most of what they wrote, but they showed us a couple of things that are far too important to be forgotten. One of those is we have a right and a duty to speak for ourselves. Some in the Transgender Borg faction get pissy with me when I say it isn’t my role in life to speak for our brothers. They don’t understand that brothers are articulate, educated and speaking for themselves. Which is how it should be.
We are thinking human beings. Why the fuck do we need a Non like Bailey or Blanchard to think for us or interpret our lives and the meaning of our lives.
While I blow off the writings of Kate and Riki now, I remember how important they were in 1994. How powerful and empowering some of Riki’s writings were.
Since then I’ve read the writings of brothers like Jay Prosser and Max Valerio, sisters like Julia Serano, Kelly Winters and Viviane Namaste.
Powerful voices all articulating who we are, what we are about.
I’ve watched some transgender activists as well as post-transsexual activists move beyond just trans-politics to integrating trans-issues with feminism, Occupy and a hundred other causes.
I watched Julia Serano make the connection between misogyny and transphobia. When Drew DeVeaux, Sable and Natalie Reed opened the discussion of the “cotton ceiling” I thought, “About fucking time.”
The reaction of the “radical feminists” was so fucking predictable. I knew their slime machine would go into overdrive churning out filth and hate, lies and smears.
Now there are some TS/TG folks who act like useful idiots to the radical feminists. I realize that on some levels I was a useful idiot for the Lesbian Tide. In my defense, I never attacked my sisters to curry favor.
I actually feel that being slimed along with the following of my Facebook friends: Julia Serano, Drew DeVeaux, Sable, Natalie Reed, Katrina Rose, Joann Prinzivalli and others I haven’t sent electronic hugs and messages of support to is a mark of honor.
It must mean we are saying something important to be slimed by a bunch of hate rhetoric spouting thugs, of the same ilk that slimed people like Beth and Sandy in the 1970s.
I actually look upon this as an honor. Sort of like the song “You ain’t done Nothing if you ain’t been called a Red.”
If you are or were transsexual or if you are transgender and these right wing rhetoric spouting “radical feminists” haven’t slimed you yet you need to try a little harder. Stand up for what you are, who you are or why you did what you did.
This time around there are a lot of mainstream feminists and lesbians who are our allies and who are starting to take a stand against this sort of bullying.
Women Born Transsexual 