Women Born Transsexual

It’s easy if you try.

Why is it easy?

It is easy because outside of a small circle they are irrelevant.

The secret is they always have been.

They are only important if you let them get inside your head and drive you crazy.

I was fool enough to let them get inside my head.

I thought being accepted by them was somehow important.

When I look around I see a lot of my sisters have felt the same.

We thought that since they claimed to be radical feminists, what they had to say was more important than what most women had to say.

So we let them make us miserable.

We spent all sorts of energy on the Michigan Women’s Hate Fest, even though there are hundreds upon hundreds of other music festivals where they don’t preach anti TS/TG hatred.  Not to mention having much better music.

Instead of wasting energy on protesting the Hate Fest in the woods we could have been going to see our sisters and brothers perform.

I mean we have a shit load of creative people who are sisters and brothers.

Wonderful, amusing talented folks who are often struggling with house concerts and small venues, CDs sold through CD Baby.  Books self-published using CreateSpace and LightningSource.

We need to point out to other people of the queer alphabet soup how much these “Radical Feminists” resemble the members of the Religious Right, how their message is the same  as the one the Christo-Fascists direct at gays and lesbians.

Maybe then the other members of the alphabet soup will get it.

But even if they don’t we shouldn’t let that stop us from imagining and creating a different world where we aren’t treated like sub-humans.

The more I think about it the more I see Jenna’s participation in that Pageant as being a kind of important break through.

I mean why should we give a shit about some bizarre cult of bigots being nice to us when we are starting to break through into main stream culture.

Yes these people need to be confronted but they also need to be treated like the bigoted minority that they are.

I’m going to run some You Tube videos over the next few days of young people talking about being trans and the issues they see as important.

They are the ones who will be the voices of change in a few years and they don’t look upon these tired old “radical feminists” as being relevant in any way.

I was 21 when I started hormones.  That was the age when one could start medical treatment in 1969.  The next year it dropped to 18.  Now kids are transitioning as children, pre-teens and teenagers.

There are new paradigms being created.

Sheila Jeffreys sounds exactly like all the Christo-Fascists and Neo-Nazis who are preaching homophobia, anti-TS/TG bigotry and hatred in the USA.

This person isn’t a feminist at all.  She is nothing but a tired old bigot.

Now she whips out the Tony Perkins/Porno Pete LaBarbra whine about how having TS/TG people protest her bigotry is bullying and worse than her neo-Nazi screeds.

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/29/transgenderism-hate-speech

Let us be free to debate transgenderism without being accused of ‘hate speech’

Researchers and theorists who question the practice of transgenderism are subjected to campaigns of intimidation

Sheila Jeffreys
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 May 2012

Criticism of the practice of transgenderism is being censored as a result of a campaign of vilification by transgender activists of anyone who does not accept the new orthodoxy on this issue. A recent Comment is free piece by the transgender activist Roz Kaveney, headlined “Radical feminists are acting like a cult”, criticises a forthcoming radical feminist conference, at which I was to be a speaker, on the grounds that I and “my supporters” may be guilty of “hate speech” for our political criticism of this practice.

Though Kaveney’s comments about me are comparatively mild in tone, the campaign by transgender activists in general is anything but. This particular campaign persuaded Conway Hall, the conference venue, to ban me from speaking on the grounds that I “foster hatred” and “actively discriminate”. On being asked to account for this, Conway Hall appeared to compare me to “David Irving the holocaust denier”. The proffered evidence consists of quotes from me arguing that transgender surgery should be considered a human rights violation – hardly evidence of hate speech.

For several years there has been a concerted campaign via the internet and on the ground, to ensure that I, and any other persons who have criticised transgenderism, from any academic discipline, are not given opportunities to speak in public. I have not yet spoken in public about transgenderism, but do speak about religion and women’s human rights, about pornography, and about beauty practices.

Whatever the topic of my presentation, and whether in Australia, the UK or the US, transgender activists bombard the organising group and the venue with emails accusing me of transhate, transphobia, hate speech, and seek to have me banned. On blogs, Facebook and Twitter they accuse me of wanting to “eliminate” transgendered persons, and they wish me dead. One activist has created an image of a pesticide can bearing a photo of me and the slogan “kills rad fems instantly”. These activists threaten demonstrations and placards against me at any venue where I speak.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/29/transgenderism-hate-speech

I just love how Nazis get upset when the people they hate turn their violence and abuse back on them.

For over 40 years Transsexual and Transgender people have first been excluded from feminist groups then condemned for not embracing feminist principles and acting like whipping girls for rad-fem hatred and bigotry.

They want us to disappear and we aren’t supposed to fight back.

I was alone when I was first excluded from a feminist group in Berkeley.  Thanks to organizing and the internet we are no longer alone and no longer are one person facing a gang of bigots.

Anyone who has read this blog for more than a week probably realizes that I’m not going to take being called a Socialist as an insult.  Indeed I occasionally run articles from both World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Worker.

But I must admit having some Rand-hole hurl egalitarian at me is a new experience.

I guess the elitist scum who picture themselves as being among the John Galts of the world have a hard time imagining someone taking a founding father like Tom Paine seriously.

But yes I must admit I believe in all those values the neo-Nazis of the right think are bad.

I think values like fairness and compassion are good things.

I think that equality is a good thing not only for people just like me but for people different from me.  I think it is only right and just to help and care for those knocked down by circumstances.  Worst of all I don’t need some magic invisible sky being who lives in a huge church to tell me to remember that there but for fortune.

I also remember that the people the right wing called communists stood up against Jim Crow long before it was fashionable.  They organized the farm workers.

All I had to do was look at the people who were called communists, Americans like Pete Seeger, institutions like the Highlander Folk Institute.

I’d reather be known as an egalitarian than as a bigot.

So one of my commentors demanded to know if I thought that TS/TG people had a minority culture.

I sort of think there is more of a queer minority class and the individual branches of the queer alphabet soup are somewhat intertwined, but it is sort of academic whether TS/TG people are a collective of sub-cultures or a minority culture.

This person also whipped out the “cultural imperialism” argument regarding Thailand “Transgender Beauty Pageants”.  Which is kind of bullshit in the era of globalized electronic communications.

What I find sort of amazing is how once you get past the  imposed majority social  cultures of many societies  is how many things the TS/TG people universally have in common.

But let’s leave international culture aside and look for a moment at a more limited field: Rock and Roll.  there have been a lot of TS/TG musicians and a whole lot more who have in engaged in messing with drag and gender fucking.

Now I get to post links to several articles I’ve had sitting around while I tried to figure out a cohesive way to put them together.  Most of these are centered on the singer in “Against Me”, Laura Jane Grace’s recent coming out.

Against Me!’s Tom Gabel Makes Live Debut as Laura Jane Grace in San Diego

Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace: How “Rolling Stone” Got Her Story (Almost) Right

And for a little history with an invocation of Jayne County’s punk song “Man enough to be a Woman”

Man enough to be a woman and still rock’n’rolling

Bear in mind other sisters have had a less public transition than Laura Grace and have been in area of music with less of an association with a macho ethic.

Some like Namoli Brennet and Veronica Klaus are closer to my present musical likes and have been featured on my Friday Night Fun and Culture.

We tend to make our cultural contributions in a manner in which the TS/TG element is a subtext rather than the  main focus of the work, how can it be otherwise as being part of a sub-culture or minority culture means you still live within the context of a dominant culture.

From Grist:  http://grist.org/living/stuff-it-test-your-mettle-by-giving-up-shopping/

By Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan
17 May 2012

Nothing like deprivation to muddy up your understanding of “want” vs. “need.”

For instance, here’s a sampling of items I’ve considered “needs” over the past two weeks: new sports bras, shower curtain, new couch pillows, lime-squeezer kitchen gadget, iPad case, duchess satin bridesmaid dress, cat scratching post, and a handmade silver ring shaped like a poppy. This is doubly remarkable, as I’m not really the shopping type. But I’m also in the middle of a self-imposed No New Stuff May, and we all know what happens when you start branding the fruit forbidden.

My No New Stuff month is a challenge not to buy anything brand-new for the 31 days of May (food and certain toiletries obviously excepted, you sickos). Why? I already have everything I need to stay hale and hearty, and my small apartment wouldn’t fit much more stuff, anyway. But really, it’s a small stand against a “Bigger, Better, More!” culture that tosses perfectly good items into landfills and gobbles up new resources to build still more stuff — much of which we don’t even need.

That’s not to say I’m going native, eschewing capitalism, and weaving a new wardrobe out of grass clippings. Under my challenge, buying used stuff from resale shops or Craigslist is street legal, as is repairing broken items and just plain doing without. I began without any pressing needs on the shopping front, curious to discover what desires might pop up as the month went on and how well I’d be able to satisfy them. And just as I used to hide forbidden copies of Sweet Valley High books under my bed as a kid, now that new purchases are taboo I’ve been deluged with strange wants masquerading as needs.

Continue reading at:  http://grist.org/living/stuff-it-test-your-mettle-by-giving-up-shopping/

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/27/kidney-trade-illegal-operations-who

World Health Organisation estimates 10,000 black market operations involving human organs take place each year

Denis Campbell and Nicola Davison in Shanghai
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 27 May 2012

The illegal trade in kidneys has risen to such a level that an estimated 10,000 black market operations involving purchased human organs now take place annually, or more than one an hour, World Health Organisation experts have revealed.

Evidence collected by a worldwide network of doctors shows that traffickers are defying laws intended to curtail their activities and are cashing in on rising international demand for replacement kidneys driven by the increase in diabetes and other diseases.

Patients, many of whom will go to China, India or Pakistan for surgery, can pay up to $200,000 (nearly £128,000) for a kidney to gangs who harvest organs from vulnerable, desperate people, sometimes for as little as $5,000.

The vast sums to be made by both traffickers and surgeons have been underlined by the arrest by Israeli police last week of 10 people, including a doctor, suspected of belonging to an international organ trafficking ring and of committing extortion, tax fraud and grievous bodily harm. Other illicit organ trafficking rings have been uncovered in India and Pakistan.

The Guardian contacted an organ broker in China who advertised his services under the slogan, “Donate a kidney, buy the new iPad!” He offered £2,500 for a kidney and said the operation could be performed within 10 days.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/27/kidney-trade-illegal-operations-who