By Radha Smith
April 18, 2014
Reposted with permission
I’ve been reading the latest “eviscerate a trans woman if you are a trans woman” battles. Mostly at advocate . com, but also through boing boing and Huffpo and a person called Zinnia’s petition.
It’s so hilarious in a rather sad and demented way. It puts me in mind of the battles in the 90s at Usenet and the bulletin boards of the early Aughts where a couple of the participants ran one, or contributed regularly to one.
Seems like about every ten years the same ole, same ole breaks out and through magazines, alternative newspapers or on the webz folks rise up and condemn and make fun of the views and experiences of the generation before them.
Trans female generations seem to be about ten years as those who come on appear to have almost no relation to those who went before. A lot of that prolly has to do with the historical fact that once you did your bidniz and sucked all the knowledge, sympathy and advice you could and saved up and had surgery/ies you moved on, thanking the universe that you no longer needed to deal with that anymore. I understand that.
But, along about the mid 90s that started to change. A few women wanted to maintain connection with something they started calling “the Community.” By the early Aughts there were lots of women who saw no need to be in stealth, or hidden as ever having been trans at all, anymore. They would have fights on those bulletin boards with those who were hidden about how “all transwomen” should act on that matter.
Now an even younger group has started pushing their elders. Thus, we have this developing battle that appears to demand to some degree that once more we all divide into a side, pull out huge machetes and begin hacking at one another in a rather gruesome and bloody fashion.
What fun! But, no thanks. I haven’t any desire to demean other people, question their way of making a living, or demand that people say nice things about me and not use words I say are slurs, while I am writing tone-deaf libels and generally nasty slurs about others. Seems like a free-for-all that I’d rather not enter.
Ya know, I think there may be a reason, Monica Roberts, why trans women of color are beginning to be the most visible and admirable trans women on the block. Ain’t seen a one of them carrying and using a machete on anyone. Least of all on one another.
This bs don’t win no one nuthin. But, in Murica it seems to take a lot of time to make history. Goddess knows, we like to slog through the same crap time and time again. Maybe we should honor Cristan Williams, by studying what she has to write rather than just naming her to a hundred person list. Especially if I’ve been named on that list at some point myself.
Or, I suppose we could just eviscerate each other while we wait for the haters to come and eviscerate us all, with real steel.
Women Born Transsexual 
April 18, 2014 at 10:29 pm
Well, Cristan’s name appears on the signatories to “that petition” at…
67. Cristan Williams, Senior Editor for the TransAdvocate
I have a substantial range of knowledge of fringe politics – having been (just for starters) a capital-L Libertarian capital-P Party activist before the Brothers Koch and fawning “Libertarian” acolytes of the Reagan Administration brought the entire concept of “libertarianism” into disrepute by equating it with “moar G$ for me… and a police state 4 U!,” rather than “individual liberty and freedom to express one’s individuality as an essential value in the political realm”…
AND SO “BUT OF COURSE” the intricacies of trans* nomenclature and questions of appropriate casting of “insult art” truly suited to the times! on the WorldWideWeb must take precedence in the national consciousness over the upcoming expiration of the window of opportunity to actually prosecute the banksters who ripped off our country for a few trillion bucks, before the statue of limitations closes it?
YAH, RIGHT
And wow, all I see here is an implosion fueled by interpersonal rancor, jealousy, and intergenerational despite… and alas, as an older person who is basically a “Gender In-Law,” I tend to identify (mostly?) with the older folks here, to the extent that I shared this sentiment with a fellow who complimented me via FB on “sticking up for Andrea”…
“I was being an asshole on the Internet before you were born!” – BARB
(eyeroll) SRSLY,
– bonzie anne – “1984 was a GREAT year for me!”
PS: Oh, and the music was better back when: like Eddie Kramer (engineer for Hendrix etc?) said (roughly) in a seminar I attended a couple of years ago… rock music died sometime in the early 70’s, killed off by the growing greed and reckless commercialism of the record industry… and these days, as my own observation, hardly any musicians can make enough money as professionals to make a living at it, so even though there are monstrous levels of talent out there, those folks never have the opportunity to develop their skills to the point that they are TRULY GREAT – especially in ensembles that stick together long enough to merge together fluidly and develop a unique sensibility as a band rather than “a project.”
April 18, 2014 at 10:42 pm
Unlike a lot of these people I don’t unfriend people because I disagree with them on some matters. They kind of have to prove themselves to consistently be a-holes.
There is a lot of extremely good music out there if you like outlaw country/Texas Outlaw/Alt Americana.
But the crap on the charts is a different story.
April 19, 2014 at 4:58 pm
Ah… usenet of the the mid, late 90’s. Celeste, Diane, Cheryl, Laura, Julie, Karen Ross, Usher etc etc… Don’t miss that at all!
Some of the worst battles (outside of Laura and usher related one) were between post-ops and NOT about being stealth or out… Lots of harm done back then.
I have been out of the T fray for a good while now … things are better that way.