When we first started the idea of WBT (Women Born Transsexual) back at the end of 2000 we were denounced as traitors to “The Community” for daring to propose a few simple ideas: 1. Transsexual was something you were born with, a medical condition amenable to medical treatment. 2. That after transition we were women, not trans-women. 3. That there was never A Trans-community but rather many different trans-communities. 4. We did not accept the “Transgender Identity” and saw it as a trap that kept us from assimilating into post-op lives as ordinary women or men in the case of F to M people.
In short nearly 20 years ago we divorced ourselves from the “Transgender Community”. Not from from caring about friends and or strangers who see the “Transgender Community” as a path to liberation but rather from the on-line political games of purity and proper thinking.
It has been one year shy of 50 years since I first started hormones and began transition. It took only a couple of years after SRS to start leaving the community and moving to the lesbian feminist community.
People are surprised when they discover the same thing happening in their own lives, many of the most vocal activists of even ten years ago have found that life has given them new priorities.
The following article is by yet another woman who has discovered a life post-trans.
From Tablet Magazine: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/257446/divorcing-the-transgender-community
I thought I’d found a warm and supportive home, but being Jewish made that difficult
By Gretchen Rachel Hammond
March 13, 2018
“You’re a fucking kike!”
It was not a single thought expelled in one, rapid sentence, and the tone was so much more than mere hatred. It was maniacal rage that curled around each word and threw it down the speaker of my phone before pausing to pick up another. The last sharpened piece of flint was aimed directly at my head with relish.
I’m usually very good at come-backs. I am a movie fanatic. Rather than the occasional piece of annoyingly catchy music which shows up like a mosquito on a summer evening to persistently circle around one’s ear, my days tend to recall random pieces of screenplay that match how I’m feeling. Thus, I have a library of borrowed quotes for every occasion.
The caller did not immediately hang up. They were waiting for a response. Maybe something from Eric Bogosian?
“Tell me something. I’m curious. How do you dial a phone with a straitjacket on?”
Or Bob Clark?
“You aren’t even smart enough to be a good bigot!”
Either would have done. Anything would have done. Instead of just sitting there in thunder-stuck, ineffectual silence.
It was June 28, 2017, and I was an adult, but I might as well have been my 11-year-old, effeminate, half-Indian school-kid self again, reliving the day in 1981 when at least a half-dozen of my classmates at North Cestrian Grammar School in Manchester, England telegraphed their latest attack with “Paki Puff!”
It was their invitation for me to run. They liked it when I ran because it marked the beginning of the hunt and I was always the easiest prey to catch.
That morning, I didn’t manage to get out of my chair fast enough. So, they picked me up and sandwiched me between the wall and the heavy wooden classroom door. With their collective weight, they pressed against it until I could not move and then could not breath. I grew increasingly more faint; unaware of the blood streaming from my nose which bore the brunt of the first assault. If their look-out hadn’t suddenly yelled the name of an oncoming teacher, they would have killed me.
You would think, in 36 years, I might have learned something about fighting back.
But as I gripped the phone, my breath stopped in my throat. Any physical or mental defenses were useless.
I recognized the voice of my attacker—a transgender person who participated in a transgender liberation rally in Chicago that I had covered earlier in the year in my capacity as a reporter for the city’s LGBTQ newspaper.
Members of the transgender community filled the frozen streets of the Chicago loop that night to demand their civil rights and fight back against society’s bullies; something that had become a life goal since my school-days.
Now that I was the focus of their rancor, ‘paki’ had become ‘kike.’ The boys behind the door were members of my own community, and I didn’t know what the hell to do or feel about it.
For four years, I had watched the transgender community eat its own to the point where becoming dinner was accepted as an inherent risk of belonging to it. As the call continued, I didn’t feel like dinner so much as the scraps thrown down the garbage disposal.
“What did you say?” I finally whispered.
The invitation was accepted for the door to be pressed harder.
“Oh, you fuckin’ heard me. Your story was a lie and your bitch ass is finished as a reporter.”
“Why are you doing this?” I was beginning to shake. “It wasn’t a lie….and I know you…I….”
The voice was gone.
Continue reading at: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/257446/divorcing-the-transgender-community
Women Born Transsexual 