Money, mouth, etc.
Amy of Amy’s Brain Today says that she’s done talking about trans issues.
But her trans hate site is still active. The frames and backgrounds are broken, but the site’s still there.
To be honest, I don’t mind if it’s still up or not. I don’t know how many people are aware that Amy is the current owner of Questioning Transgender, or, really, if anyone cares.
I just want it noted for the record.
March 21, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I figured with the number of times I had seen hir link to it, sie had some sort of affiliation with it. And with hir constant BS about the subject, I doubt it’s the last we’ll see of hir opinions. Sie’ll probably post under aliases or what have you. *eyeroll*
March 21, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Oh, Amy’s already weighed on on a trans thing at Witchy Woo’s since posting that.
Specifically, how horrible it is that trans people ppress women by calling them “cis women.” Because, of course, said women don’t ever refer to cis men, or cis people (men and women), it’s only women who get the cis label.
Anyway, it’s always been in the hands of someone associated with Off Our Backs, but the current (or at least, last I checked) owner is Amy. Some of the articles are from Off Our Backs, too.
March 22, 2008 at 3:08 am
i’m finding the whole ‘oh noes! you’re calling us cisgenders! nasty nasty!’ thing hilarious. i mean, hello, you’re grasping at straws to be offended here, or it seems like it.
March 22, 2008 at 3:20 am
Yeah. “You’re trying to insult us,” “to force a label on us,” “you calling me cisgendered is just like calling a person ‘coloured’” and that last one did happen, on Witchy Woo’s blog.
Heck, it was Witchy. Calling her cis will be as dangerous to her as racism against people of color is to them.
March 22, 2008 at 4:09 am
yes, and it was witchy who later presumed me to a ‘bloke’. i’m beyond being offended by such things really. in fact i find it laughable. still, nice case of double standards there :)
oh yes, this is la glitch by the way. i’m sort of trying to crawl out of my alter-ego :)
March 22, 2008 at 4:21 am
I’m still waiting for my patriarchal privileges as a woman who was born male to kick in. I hear they give you a toaster, and maybe some champagne.
And then I can oppress all the people who didn’t change by calling them “cis,” and the sky will fall on them and hold them down while everyone else mocks them for being so backwards as to not want to change their sex too.
Because that totally happens. I guess the lack of actual people who changed sex will be made up with all those edgy, trendy liberals who only defend trans rights so they can look like they’re progressive.
March 22, 2008 at 4:26 am
*squeeee* ~pop~
okay, crawled out.
in addition, in reference to amy’s post, she considers that there is nothing more to say in ‘the argument’, which is pretty mighty of her to say so. i think i’ve said before that i was glad that amanata wrote her post, flawed as it may be, and i was also pretty stoked by maia’s recent post (again, flawed, but it was an *advance* in understanding), but these words are not the definitive articles on the subject. for one side (if we’re going to consider an us and them situation) to say ‘that’s it! nothing more to say!’ without actually arriving at a mutual understanding with the other side (and in most cases not even listening to them at all!), well, that’s pretty presumptuous. it does also give a strong feeling that these people are used to being able to call the shots and be listened to, which if i’m not mistaken is privilege…….
oh, irony. it’s a giggle.
March 22, 2008 at 4:28 am
And then I can oppress all the people who didn’t change by calling them “cis,”
i recently deeply offended the inhabitants of deb’s blog by saying that i actually prefer to call people ‘cissies’. it seemed the humour was entirely lost on them and their hurt allowed them to completely ignore everything else i had said, poor kittens.
March 22, 2008 at 4:42 am
Amananta did try, although I am a bit disappointed with how she addressed trans women, or how she framed the entire argument as if trans people are on the same footing as radical feminists - that radfem theories about trans people are equal to trans people’s lived realities.
But yeah, there’s still more to say, and there will always be more to say so long as anyone - regardless of their political or religious stance - insists that trans people are worthy of less respect than other human beings. And there’s a lot of privilege in the idea that anyone who isn’t trans has the perspective and understanding necessary to describe trans lives, especially while ignoring or dismissing what trans people have to say about our own lives. And, then, they do this while simultaneously claiming that trans women (specifically) can’t understand anything about what it’s like to be a woman.
On the MWMF forum once, one woman said that she’d had a drastic shift in hormone dosage for some reason (something her doctor did) and it gave her all of the symptoms of PMS - cramps, bloating, etc - and she said that she’d experienced PMS. Heart flew into a rage and told her that she had no right to say she’d ever experienced PMS. I mean, it was almost…well, really, it was pretty sad. But then, Heart has some strange ideas about hormones - that estrogens that we take are somehow fake and thus the effects they have on our bodies aren’t feminizing or like what women who were born female have, but rather, our bodies are “chemically altered.” It doesn’t matter that ethinyl estradiol is chemically identical to the estrogen produced by the human body, it’s artificial and thus taints your precious bodily fluids.
I could go on like this all day - seriously, the stuff they say to us is so beyond the pale, and they think it’s so reasonable and makes so much sense, but they’re living in echo chambers, encouraging each other to greater heights and litanies of transphobia. If I really wanted to, I could blog every day for a year on something different a transphobic radical feminist has said about trans women, and not run out of material.
I really should reconstruct a post I lost a few weeks ago - it has some more flagrant hypocrisies from the past couple of months.
On Debs’ blog, I said “to be honest,” which apparently meant to thebewilderness that I was lying. I always thought it was the text equivalent of a verbal tick, an annoying preface to a paragraph that I try to delete when I catch myself doing it. I hate it when I say or write it, and I don’t even always realize when I do. It’s like “basically,” or “essentially,” or any of those other words - just garbage verbiage that adds nothing to your point.
But using it makes me a liar.
March 22, 2008 at 4:55 am
>>In reference to amy’s post, she considers that there is nothing more to say in ‘the argument’, >>
sweet, so she’ll be shutting the fuck up about transpeople, then? oh. right.
March 22, 2008 at 4:58 am
and yeah, Heart’s grasp of science in general would appear to be about–well, about what you’d expect from a decades-long backwoods fundamentalist homeschooler who probably spent a good chunk of her time around Creationists as well as all the other usual assortment of tinfoil-wearers. I think she thinks that the Goddess will prevent her from ever needing patriarchal medicine or anything sullied by such, you know, as long as she does everything she thinks she’s supposed to. hell, death and illness are probably patriarchal inventions too, come to it.
March 22, 2008 at 5:00 am
and of course the really weird part of that story is why it sends Blanche into a -rage.- Again: there are over three BILLION women in the world; it’s not like fucking -cramps- are this sooper special thing too precious for trans women to lay claim to?! fuck, I’d be more than happy to donate my share.
something seriously wrong with that person.
March 22, 2008 at 5:05 am
as per witchy presuming blokehood: no fear, she does that to about half the people she comes across who she thinks look at her funny. (delphyne even more so). that, or they/we SOUND like a bunch of MEN, which is apparently a fate worse than death (last hurled at some of us when we were breaking some ice with a becoming-disaffected radfem, at a friend of mine’s place, mind, making silly puns).
mind you, at the same time she’s shacked up with one of them, or was last I bothered to check.
oh, and she’s offered to sacrifice her son for the Feminist Revolutionary Cause (in order to protect her granddaughter from rape–try not to dwell on all the implications of this); curiously enough she thought of him -before- the S.O.
I’m just eagerly waiting for her to share her wisdoms on how “straight” is offensive now, too.
she’s special, that one, she is. stupid, mean and sanctimonious: always a winning combination.
and that’s -without- the crap she pulled with Renegade.
oh yeah: someone if you get a chance, ask her about her refuge’s policy toward trans women, will you? Inquiring minds and all.
March 22, 2008 at 5:11 am
I still love the current thing that’s going around and around, about how lesbians who want to have sex with women are missing the point of being a lesbian, or that it’s trans women who dragged sex into lesbianism.
I really need to rebuild that post, because I had that comment for Satsuma and why the lesbians are most likely leaving that support group (it’s not the sex, it’s the Satsuma browbeating them).
I just don’t get this whole idea that lesbianism is supposed to be divorced from sex. That’s completely unlike any lesbians I’ve ever been around, but then again, I’ve never been around a woman who chose to be lesbian as a Lysistrata-like political statement. “You can be a lesbian if you don’t sleep with men.” No, you can’t. A lesbian is a woman who prefers to have relationships (and sex) with other women. You may call yourself a lesbian, but you’re just colonizing the idea of lesbianism and trying to mutate it for your own purposes. As a woman attracted to women, I’m 100x the lesbian these wannabes are.
And thank the Goddess for that, too.
Want to call me pornography minded? Here’s a bit of a manifesto from a lesbian cis woman on the subject. Language not safe for work. Please tell her that her “male socialization” is what makes her discuss sex in such frank terms. I’m sure that’ll go over splendidly.
March 22, 2008 at 9:16 am
I’ve always liked Amy. She once wrote a post about her father’s bigotry against French Canadians, that was a good deconstruction of whiteness. Her comments about fat have also been thoughtful and radical; I’ve learned from her.
It is my fervent hope that she either takes the site down, or allows some arguments with it. If she only wants to allow “nice” people to argue, that would be enough. But that list of Q-and-A has been answered many times by trans activists and she has not acknowledged their replies by printing them alongside the questions and answers that currently occupy primary space on the site.
And BTW, Karla Mantilla (author of one of the most transphobic articles on the site) is on the staff of FEMINIST STUDIES (with Minnie Bruce Pratt!!!! HELLO?), and that means an openly transphobic person is in a position to spread their poison as “feminism”.
They are, in short, on the offensive.
Amy, do you side with these people? Apparently you do. Time to decide. I know, it hurts to tell people that you have admired, that they are wrong. It hurts to admit WE have been wrong.
It hurt me too, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.
March 22, 2008 at 9:17 am
http://www.feministstudies.org/aboutfs/editors.html
March 22, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Yeah, in many ways Amy’s had some good things to say, but for whatever reason(s) she’s particularly rigid and blandly cruel about this. She rethought some of her shit on race, I saw; I guess this is, you know, a bridge too far.
on the bright side, technorati stats show the QT site has, like, a couple of dozen links total spread out over the past year or more, and of those, a good third to a half are basically, “can you believe this foul shit?”
March 22, 2008 at 2:34 pm
A commenter on Piny’s post over at Feministe referenced this article at a British site, The F-word.
Shorter Laura: I don’t feel like I have a gender, so why do trans women have to reify gender all the time? Yeah, she did wrap it all in layers of velvet, and the language is not the hateful crap that you see at Questioning Transgender or the Michfest boards, but still she’s talking at us and is so sure that she knows our experience without getting to know us.
Funny (in a sick way) thing is, they’ve got my site on their blogroll. (I am aware that The F-Word is a group blog, and there is a trans woman blogging there, but it still seems that Laura is the primary blogger.)
Well, I was thinking of writing a lengthy, angry comment, and asking to be removed from their blogroll.
But I’m not going to. I am just getting so tired of this fight. I have no interest in engaging with these people.
I see how the social construction of gender (gender expression, really, I’m not sure that there isn’t some innate core identity that is physical) hurts everybody — every single person, whatever their gender, even those who benefit from the privileges that patriarchy give them.
I see these transphobes defining womanhood on their terms and their terms only and womening the barricades to defend womanhood while claiming to be for the elimination of gender, and I ask - who’s reifying gender here? It ain’t me, and it ain’t Lisa, and it ain’t cis allies like belledame. And who’s throwing around “male” energy? We aren’t the ones going around and denying the very humanity of this or that group of women; we aren’t the ones calling for certain women to be assaulted in bathrooms (see Alix Dobkin); they are.
Radical? I think not, and that’s why I’m reluctant to even use the term “radical feminist” in reference to their ilk.
March 22, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Hey, I think you mean this post? The post you linked is right back to here.
Also, despite the fact that I have the spam filter set pretty high (number of links before it’s spam), the spam filter caught your posts.
And yeah, something that a lot of cis people do not realize is that sex is for them like air is to people or water is to fish. It’s something you take for granted.
That is, they say “I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say I don’t feel a lack of dissonance with my physical sex.” And, er, that’s why you don’t know, because you don’t feel that dissonance. Sure, you may feel dissonance with how your body looks, lots of women do, but many simply don’t feel dissonance with being female in the first place. Same with men - it’s like someone who said that men and women don’t have preferred sexes - which isn’t true, they just aren’t in a position to have to choose to be that sex. If your brain and body match, the whole idea of what trans people deal with is probably invisible to you.
I also see a lot of women go on about how the patriarchy devalues womanhood and how awful it is to be a woman, and then when someone like Twisty blasts lipstick, they jump on the lipstick-blasting bandwagon. While I certainly agree that womanhood is treated as second-class compared to manhood, I think that a lot of feminists are actively participating in sustaining that second class status.
March 22, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Thanks for rescuing my comment. I was wondering if it got caught someplace.
RE: The link - geez, and I call myself a web developer.
March 22, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Laura’s generally good people; she’s coming from a basically radfem perspective, but she does tend to listen and exchange dialogue and change her mind, even at the risk of being thrown out of the treehouse. I don’t think she’s really considered trans stuff much before; at least, I haven’t seen her do so pre-F Word, which I don’t much read.
Not saying you shouldn’t respond or be angry; just, you might try seeing if you can get her to hear before asking to be taken off the blogroll, at least once. for whatever it’s worth.
March 22, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Yeah, I posted a couple of times to that discussion, although I don’t think they’ve been approved yet.
I just think, like if you have air, you don’t think about it. If you’re suffocating, it’s all you can think about. Cissexual people have air, transsexual people do not.
People tend to focus on “Well, if you feel so strongly that you should be the other sex, I should feel strongly that I should be my current sex” except that for cissexual people, their sense of their own sex is never really tested, and thus they’re never likely to have strong feelings in the way a trans person does.
March 22, 2008 at 6:11 pm
And I sit here as a cis woman going, “You know, I really hate my menstrual period. I find the whole thing just unpleasantly icky. I’m weirded out by the women who talk about their whole spiritual experience of their moonblood thing.
“… and every single trans guy I know well enough to have talked about this with has referred to menstruation, independently, as ‘cognitive dissonance week’. Some with really intense feelings of horror, alienation, and genuine trauma.”
So this bit of woman-body? I find it unpleasant. I’d rather not do it. But it doesn’t leave me feeling like crawling out of my skin.
March 22, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Yeah, exactly.
March 23, 2008 at 1:39 am
“Funny (in a sick way) thing is, they’ve got my site on their blogroll. (I am aware that The F-Word is a group blog, and there is a trans woman blogging there, but it still seems that Laura is the primary blogger.)
Well, I was thinking of writing a lengthy, angry comment, and asking to be removed from their blogroll.
But I’m not going to. I am just getting so tired of this fight. I have no interest in engaging with these people.”
Hi!
I am the editor of The F Word (www.thefword.org.uk)
I am really sorry if this post by one of our bloggers has caused offense - without wanting to speak for her, I am really sure it wasn’t meant. I really hope you will stick with us, gallinggalla, as I really like your blog and don’t want to delink it :)
Perhaps it was a bit of an ill timed post, considering the blog war that has been brewing. But I really think that Laura and the people who have been commenting were coming from a place of trying to understand rather than setting up her/their own version of what it means to be a woman…
One of the founding principles of The F Word is to reflect the diverse range of voices and debates within feminism, and I think that this really is an issue that many cissexual feminists do struggle with & need to process, which I think is what is going on in that post and the subsequent discussion.
Anyway, I am also sickened and depressed by the hateful things that have been said on some feminist blogs of late, and definitely don’t want The F Word to be seen to be aligned with that ‘viewpoint’ at all.
March 23, 2008 at 1:55 am
Thank you for dropping by, Jess.
I would love to see real talk about the terminology that doesn’t come from dismissing it as a slur (and yet somehow it’s okay to call trans people trans, while cis is a slur?) or making absurd claims like “If you call me cis, you’re denying my womanhood,” or even “this is just another name men have piled on women.”
So, yeah, I’ll be watching the F Word thread - which so far, looks constructive.
One thing about Witchy Woo’s post on the subject is that she outright claims that “cisgender” and “cissexual” means she’s not female or a woman. What that tells me is, that she also believes that transgender or transsexual obliviates my womanhood. When I explained that it’s an intersection, not an overwrite, much hostility ensued.
Or rather, if many radical feminists insist that “cisgender” or “cissexual” is a slur, then that is a stark indicator that they view transsexual or transgender as a slur. That being trans obliviates our having a valid gender at all - it overwrites the possibility that we could be men or women, we’re just something that’s neither.
Fun times. I should actually post on this.
March 23, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Oh yeah, you know what, this is her just now over at dear witchy’s:
Amy’s Brain Today // March 23, 2008 at 5:44 am
if they believe they are male (or female) and identify as such, then it would be rude or disrespectful for me to refer to them according to the way I perceive them, rather than the way that they perceive themselves.
LM, why? I really mean that–this is something that I have thought about often, but never see talked about–the way that, um, okay, assigned-female-at-birth, raised-as-female, still-female-as-adult people are asked to deny our own perceptions of reality WRT, um, okay, NON-AFAB-RAF-SFAA people.
My experience is that many NON-AFAB-RAF-SFAA people THINK they are passing when in fact AFAB-RAF-SFAA people in their immediate environment are being, as you say, “respectful.”
I would like to know what other radfems think about this.
****
What a fuck.
March 23, 2008 at 1:38 pm
…so basically, when people like this call themselves “radical feminists,” bent on revolutionizing the world, since I don’t experience them as either radical or feminist, it’s totally okay for me to call them as I see it, i.e. “hopelessly deluded clump of hateful reactionary tinfoil wearers with strong cultlike leanings”? Just checking.
March 23, 2008 at 1:47 pm
…ah, sorry, I see I’m behind the curve again, never mind. but, yeah. charming.
March 23, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Yeah. “Don’t you dare use words to describe us in any way, but I will constantly use words that demean you, and I’m right to do so. And stop calling me a transphobic bigot!”
Every time Amy decides to share her opinion on trans people, I care in ever decreasing amounts about anything good she might have ever had to say on any other topic ever. Ever.
March 23, 2008 at 5:45 pm
yep.
I just think: what exactly did trans people do to her? Piss in her cornflakes? Yeah, okay, Renee and some of the other Michfest regular crashers are nutbars, but really, you know, there are also names for the process of deciding what an entire group of people are like based on the behavior of a few nutbars one has encountered.
March 23, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I’m just thinking, you know: there must be a number of homo-bigots out there who produce similar whines about being called “straight,” although I don’t know the exact argument for that one. Certainly there’s been epic pissing and moaning about how TERRIBLE it is that -those people- have -taken- a -perfectly lovely word- like “gay” and RUINED it, there goes Western Civ, wring hands, gnash teeth. and so forth.
but then, as already noted, the various protests about “phobia” sound exactly the fucking same without even really needing to tweak anything, so if they don’t want to hear -that-, then there really is nothing to say.
I suppose the one thing about Amy is that I’ve never especially noticed her making “we shall Win the War!! we shall change the Earth!” bugling a la Debs or Heart; she just wants to go off to her little lesbian-separatist hidey-holes and not be bovvered…except when she’s creating whole sites “questioning” other people, of course. (or maintaining?)
but it’s an endless source of fascination to me how there’s often an inverse relationship between the narrowness of a group/enclave/ideology and the declared universality of their aims.
I mean, that’s the real difference, bottom line. They act as though trans people are doing unto them what they’re actually doing unto everyone else: insisting that their way is the One True Path , everyone fall in line, not just accept ‘em for who they say they are but BE LIKE THEM, or prepare to be shouted down and, I don’t know, “smashed?”
i swear I saw Blanche say there was one way, and one way only to get rid of gender, in just so many words, coupla years ago.
So, yeah, there it is. It’s like the War on Christmas crap: you are oppressing us by not letting us dictate the terms for everyone else.
the -only- difference is the relative popularity of the positions: Christianity, even loathsome Gospel of Wealth neocon Christianity, has a lot more real world power than does radical feminism per se, yes, that’s correct.
However. My contention is that people like Blanche don’t get a cookie just because their current religion is even more (justifiably) marginalized than the one that threw her out. She, and the others like her who don’t even necessarily have actual Christian theocratic backgrounds, make it abundantly clear that if it’s the thought that counts, they absolutely would be as intolerant as any other fundamentalist regime if they ever acquired any actual power. I see no reason to cut them any slack just because they’re unpopular, as long as they’re still hurting people and generally spreading an atmosphere of zealotry and hatefulness.
March 23, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Also, I want to point out in reference to Amy’s quoted words above:
She’s assuming that all the trans women she reads as trans women are all the trans women she’s ever seen.
She’s assuming that trans women are blissfully unaware of being read, of how the social currents shift when people know we’re trans.
She’s assuming her reality - that she sees us as men - is more important than our reality, that we live in every day, and she only intersects with.
She’s assuming that the bullshit she goes through for being overweight is okay to dump on other people for being trans.
She’s assuming that it’s okay to judge people on the basis of their appearance, but only when it’s women who look too masculine, and then only some women who look too masculine. Don’t judge butches. Don’t judge based on body weight. But judge someone because you think she was born with a penis? Oh, yeah, that’s perfectly fine.You know what those people are like, right?
Plus, I thought she was going to take herself and her painfully simplistic analyses of trans people out of the debate.
March 23, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Oh, yeah:
She thinks it’s okay to betch about how trans people are imposing identities on her when we’re not, but staunchly defends her so-called “right” (privilege, actually) to impose identities on trans women. Clear double-standard.
March 24, 2008 at 9:37 am
well, sure: barring admission to major womens’ events and even rape/abuse shelters as well as blithely standing by and cheering while other people throw such charming epithets as “freak” “Buffalo Bill” “it” “wolves in ewe’s clothing” and “nutjob who belongs in a straitjacket” is totally the same thing as zomg having the term “cis” applied to oneself by a handful of people whom one barely acknowledges as existing anyway.
March 26, 2008 at 4:30 pm
“On the MWMF forum once, one woman said that she’d had a drastic shift in hormone dosage for some reason (something her doctor did) and it gave her all of the symptoms of PMS - cramps, bloating, etc - and she said that she’d experienced PMS. Heart flew into a rage and told her that she had no right to say she’d ever experienced PMS.”
That would have been me. And yeah, Heart jumped on my ass for it. My mother agreed it was probably PMS at the time, but I got shouted down so bad about appropriating the holy femaleness that I backed down.
March 26, 2008 at 5:15 pm
You know, it’s funny that the crazy people are saying that about ethinyl estradiol. I’m a cis woman (and no I don’t mind that term at all) and I’m taking a combo ethinyl estradiol/ somethingorother acetate birth control/acne pill… does that mean I’m teh evul as well?
God. The parade of stupid never ends with the anti-trans “activists”, does it?
March 26, 2008 at 5:28 pm
cytoprene acetate?
March 26, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Ugh I meant cyproterone acetate, typo sorry.
from wiki:
“Cyproterone acetate (Androcur, Cyprostat,Cyproteron, Procur, Cyprone, Cyprohexal, Ciproterona, Cyproteronum,Neoproxil, Siterone) is an antiandrogen, i.e. it suppresses the actions of testosterone (and its metabolite dihydrotestosterone) on tissues.”
“In addition, cyproterone acetate has weak progestational activity (e.g., it acts like progesterone) and can be used to treat hot flushes. As part of some combined oral contraceptive pills (Dianette in UK and Diane-35 in other countries) it decreases acne and hirsutism (male-pattern hair growth).”
March 26, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Schala, hi. I used the name “StellaMaris” on the forum, but didn’t stick around long.
Not because I didn’t want to keep talking, but because I’d rather raise my voice a bit. :)
Lindsay, I once had a dentist refuse to treat me because he was concerned that the estrogen I was taking would have an interaction with the novocaine.
March 26, 2008 at 5:54 pm
That’s weird for a dentist I guess. Mine has had no such problem, and he fixed 18 of my teeth while removing 5 (and yes, I’m bad about brushing my teeth >_> ). There was absolutely no issue. I think he pulled that out of his ass, unless he denies all his female patients in case they have estrogen.
I get shouted down a lot there, and the discussion is rarely what I would call productive. I get arguments turned around or totally ignored, and I get tag-teamed on. Maybe if I can’t take the heat at some point I’ll just stop going. I still consider it pretty toxic, though probably less than womensspace (even if Heart is on MWMF and has full acceptance about her bigotry there, she’s more diluted).
March 26, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Oh and hi Lisa, now I forget all my manners today. I really like your blog too, I read whenever there’s a new post.
March 26, 2008 at 6:03 pm
It’s not a dentist thing, it’s a bigot thing. :(
As for Heart - have you been reading the comments on my post about “Transphobia and Sophistry?” Someone came around and called me a liar because I’d said Heart has called trans women “men,” that she never refers to people as anything but how they identify, and all the quotes I found of her doing precisely that were denied as me lying. That particular saga starts here.
It’s got a long thread, though, and there’s a lot of other stuff in it as well.
Part of the reason I left was…I was spending a lot of energy talking to people who weren’t listening, rather than talking for the benefit of people who would. Another part was that that they kept offering compromises that sounded like “if you take a full step backward, I won’t ask you to take more than another half-step backward.”
The big reason was, though, I was spending so much time doing that I didn’t really have time for anything else, just for the few days I was there. There’s so much to respond to, and I suck at not responding to it, because as was said on XKCD, “I can’t go to bed yet. Someone on the internet is wrong.”
March 26, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I’m reading that thread, but I think I’ll sleep on it. I’ve been reading about the blog war from all over, and now that FCB had a new post on Kiuku’s 400 post separatism thread that I didn’t read yet, I give up, tomorrow is another day. I posted on MWMF about 4 hours ago too, I’m sure my essay length post over there will be trashed left and right, or at least I expect it to.
March 27, 2008 at 10:13 am
I finished reading it, pretty long thread, and I agree with most points made by Lisa, belledame, nexy and Little Light over here and in other places.
Oh and my post didn’t draw that much criticism, only 4 or 5 said it was bad. Out of 6.
March 27, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Arrgh. Freaking bigots. I don’t usually harbor violent impulses, and yet, I want to open fire on them all. Actually, there are a lot of them, so maybe I harbor violent impulses more than I think I do.
And yeah. Cyproterone acetate. That’s the one. I knew what it was, I just wasn’t sure how to spell it and I didn’t want to make an ass of myself.
March 27, 2008 at 3:34 pm
“And yeah. Cyproterone acetate. That’s the one. I knew what it was, I just wasn’t sure how to spell it and I didn’t want to make an ass of myself.”
I take this myself now, along with estrogen, to transition. Maybe not the same dosage or the exact same medicine names, but yeah, essentially still the same thing.
March 27, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Schala, is dirtywhiteboi still talking about the trans final solution over there?
Also, yeah, on that thread. The real headdesk moment for me was this Carol person wandering in and saying Heart never calls trans women “men.”
Well, that and Maggie saying that intersectionality is too academic and thus isn’t really truly applicable.
March 27, 2008 at 7:22 pm
No, dirtywhiteboi left the party a while ago, and we haven’t seen Renee in a while too.
Heart is still there though, telling me that liking my female body is because of ignorance and being duped and that no WBW in her right mind would ever like her body or her femaleness.
And yeah, Heart likes to be subtle, more so than lucky nickel and dirtywhiteboi anyways, but she’s still transphobic and she calls trans women all terms that ultimately boil down to “tainted by maleness forever”. Cultural (conditioning) or biological essentialism, one of the few who uses both at once, sometimes in the same argument.
March 27, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Yeah, I just don’t get the whole idea that because women are in many ways second class citizens that we should be ashamed of being women, hate being women, reject the idea of womanhood as anything but a boot on my neck forever and ever. I admit, I come to this from LGBT pride. That having pride in who you are and an unwillingness to bow down to satisfy others, and claim who you are without compromise. That’s how I see it.
But then I guess Heart not only spends time appropriating other women’s experiences as her own, but she also spends time defining other women’s experiences for them.
As for Lucky, yeah…she trolled here a couple of times. One post didn’t get approved because, you know, polite society and all that.
Renee trolled here once, too. The worst part is that she starts out looking reasonable so you accidentally enable her until she usees one of her codewords and you go “Damnit.” :(
Dirtywhiteboi’s mostly about the LJ and blogular drama, and is often unwilling to link to whomever she’s snarking. Guess she doesn’t like the idea they might try to talk to her.
March 27, 2008 at 7:41 pm
And yeah, it’s surprising how so many of these transphobic feminists are so willing to bash trans people for essentialism while at the same time insisting we’re essentially male due to biology, socialization, or both.
March 27, 2008 at 8:26 pm
“And yeah, it’s surprising how so many of these transphobic feminists are so willing to bash trans people for essentialism while at the same time insisting we’re essentially male due to biology, socialization, or both.”
Yeah the argument goes that, transitioning inherently implies the existence of gender as ‘real’ (or a good thing or something), because we don’t transition to ‘nothing’ instead.
Then they add the argument that due to not having a womb or ovaries or a vagina, or a leery neighbor at 12 years old 6 months 4 days 5 hours 41 minutes and 13 seconds, looking at your breasts - that we can’t be women, because we lack that experience of having this leery neighbor or those body parts in this exact timeframe.
Then they switch to cultural essentialism, saying that we perceived ourselves as inherently superior to women, cause we had to do that, cause patriarchy forced us to. Frankly, given negative media and social portrayal of men and maleness, it pretty much had the opposite effect for me, I thought (falsely) that women were inherently superior. Now I think there are differences, but not superiority, and that those differences have very little to do with gender roles.
This is probably why I’m both not feminist and not masculist, but I dab in both arenas and blogs (still mainly feminist, but more moderate). I want fairness and the end of injustice, as hard to attain as it sounds. By some feminist definitions, I would be one. Though by my relative anonymity, I’m not sure others would acknowledge it. I personally want to dissociate from the luckys and dirtywhitebois and Hearts who make feminism a dirty name. I also want to dissociate from the more extreme “back to the 50s” misogynist MRAs (which is far from all of them, but it’s some - for example I don’t consider Hugh, TS and ballgame to be MRAs or anti-feminists on FCB, to name some).
My experience was that I suffered a great deal more than I was privileged for being legally male. This is tied to other things than just being male, but I don’t like to have someone presume my automatic enjoyment of things I either had no control of, or that never actually happened to me. I know my experience isn’t universal, but I would be wary of dismissals of those who do suffer (and I’m not blaming anyone about this, I know many feminists who do acknowledge suffering because of being male).
March 27, 2008 at 9:57 pm
“I have the utmost respect for a queer or a transgender who is HUMBLE, admits up front they are deviant, and recognizes that although they are different this isn’t the life the God / nature intended for humanity. I personally have the utmost respect for a transgender who is HUMBLE, has the COMMON SENSE, respect, tolerance and understands the differences and clear divisions between intersex and trans.”
At least Heart *seems* open to dialogue, this guy is a damn brick wall.
From http://kallmanns-syndrome.blogspot.com/
Oh and this isn’t his first post on the matter. He seems to love ranting about how transsexuals are evil, and how, he, by virtue of being intersex (though male-identified, male-looking and with no intent to change that at all) can call himself lesbian or wear clothes marketed to women without cross-dressing. Actually, if you want to infuriate him, just call him a cross-dresser, he’ll bring up the DSM and DNA and all that to deny the term works with him.
His earlier posts about HBS don’t make sense at all, I’m pretty sure he misunderstood the premise, because he was pro-HBS, but he is anti-transsexual (and yes, post-op as well). Look him up for a laugh, though discussing with him seems improbable. I know him from being on XXYTalk, at a time I questioned wether I was intersex or not, he’s not very well-liked even there.
I chatted through messenger with him too, same brick wall. He takes the stance that ISNA has, that anyone transitioning, if they have an intersex condition, officially and irremediably renounce their intersex status.
I hope this isn’t too off-topic.
March 27, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Wow, what a jerk.
I am curious as to how he knows God’s or nature’s intentions for humanity. It seems to me that if it’s possible for trans people to be born, then it’s not as if we’re unnatural or not human.
I do understand the differences and divisions - as well as intersections - of trans and intersex, although it does make me sad to see people who are marginalized and abused by society and the medical profession to turn around and claim that trans people are less worthy of anything than they are. That seems pretty self-serving.
I don’t care if he feels that he can wear women’s clothing without being a cross-dresser. It’s his thing, and whatever. He’s not a lesbian, though - male-identified (I don’t care if he looks like, it’s his identity) people aren’t lesbian because of their identification as male. A lesbian is a woman attracted to women, not a man attracted to women.
Anyway, it seems clear that he’s trying to assert some kind of privilege of intersex over trans, something I’ve seen several intersex people do - like the author of the trans privilege checklist. I like that what he says really comes out as “I really respect trans people who know their place.”
Heart’s more of a time-waster because she presents a front of having a dialogue, and it might take a few hours, a few days, or a few weeks before she lets her real feelings slip out.
March 28, 2008 at 1:29 am
“Heart is still there though, telling me that liking my female body is because of ignorance and being duped and that no WBW in her right mind would ever like her body or her femaleness.”
Oh well then there you go.
Honestly, you know, I think that’s a big chunk of why the peculiar animosity here: part of their whole schtick is based on the notion that there is no repeat NO reason why anyone would -want- to be a woman in this our patriarchal world. The fact that some people born with male privilege (according to them) WANT to switch over to the Oppressed Class kind of gives the lie to that; better classify them as slumming or insane or something.
it’s so, so fucked up. “We’re the most miserable people that ever miseried, and if you boyos [tm lucky] think you’re going to take that away from us, -you’re crazy!-”
Honestly, has that woman ever been happy in her entire life? Have any of them?
March 28, 2008 at 1:33 am
..and of course, it’s not as though years and years and years worth of being steeped in a religion that basically says that women are inferior and dirty and so on, it’s not like she’s still got that internalized or nothin’. and i am sure they were just grreeeat about y’know, queer anything.
even her idea of sanctified, sexless lesbianism is straight out of the Book; “whither thou goest I will go.” just leave the malefolk out of it and apparently that’s “radical.”
March 28, 2008 at 1:36 am
I still think Carol was Heart. notice she didn’t come back after I suggested she was?
March 28, 2008 at 4:36 am
I think you’re right.
March 28, 2008 at 5:03 am
“I do understand the differences and divisions - as well as intersections - of trans and intersex, although it does make me sad to see people who are marginalized and abused by society and the medical profession to turn around and claim that trans people are less worthy of anything than they are. That seems pretty self-serving.”
He doesn’t claim to have been hurt about being intersex. He claims to be privileged since he has a team of doctors with him who make decisions for him. I’m not sure if having people decide for you is a privilege, but he seems fine with the results.
“Anyway, it seems clear that he’s trying to assert some kind of privilege of intersex over trans, something I’ve seen several intersex people do - like the author of the trans privilege checklist. I like that what he says really comes out as “I really respect trans people who know their place.””
Well he has no intention to transition and is more about calling those who do as fakes. He agrees with Barney Frank with ENDA because “transsexuals are sometimes bad in the media and pride parades and prostitution”. In short he’s saying it’s all our fault and that this perverted mediatic image is of our own doing, that we should blame ourselves for not speaking against prostitution and such. Explaining to him that some people have no choice in the matter didn’t make him concede anything.
March 28, 2008 at 5:11 am
“even her idea of sanctified, sexless lesbianism is straight out of the Book”
Yeah, it made me laugh a little when I learned she married 3 times and had 11 children. Then she has the guts to claim she’s more lesbian or knows more about it - even still being married.
I at best claimed to be bi-curious, and I don’t pretend to know more than I do about relationships, or to be more important or better because of my relationships or lack thereof.
“Honestly, has that woman ever been happy in her entire life? Have any of them?”
I don’t consider myself to have been happy, yet I don’t hold such a negative view towards being a woman, towards life. I did keep my close family through transition, so I’m lucky.
March 28, 2008 at 6:01 am
Oy, that guy should hook up with Renee, and maybe an ex-gay or so.
March 28, 2008 at 7:49 am
A lot of intersex people are hurt by the medical establishment. Is he really so self-absorbed as to think that just because he’s happy, then everything’s fine with the world? I’ve known a handful of intersex people who were assigned at birth or early life who transitioned later on, and they certainly didn’t seem happy with having that decision made for them. Is he just ignoring ISNA on this particular point?
So he’s just a complete idiot? I mean, it sounds like everything he knows about trans people he made up himself, inspired by bits and pieces picked up from the media.
March 28, 2008 at 9:32 am
“I’ve known a handful of intersex people who were assigned at birth or early life who transitioned later on, and they certainly didn’t seem happy with having that decision made for them. Is he just ignoring ISNA on this particular point?”
The ISNA is generally not approving of those with intersex conditions who were assigned or reassigned as male at birth. This is also reflected in other intersex support groups, like AISSG which focuses almost solely on those declared legally female at birth. This is what their mission statement says, and what I heard them doing. Their information on male-assigned is sorely lacking and I’ve only found very few bits of information about it elsewhere, for AIS.
“So he’s just a complete idiot? I mean, it sounds like everything he knows about trans people he made up himself, inspired by bits and pieces picked up from the media.”
Well yeah, more or less. He made a lot of it up by regarding ISNA’s policy, and ENDA. He joined in the HBS debate a couple months back with absolutely no knowledge what HBS was. I bet he thought it was an intersex condition that teh evil tranz were appropriating, and he defended the HBS folks…go figure.
March 28, 2008 at 9:36 am
About male-assigned AIS, the only information I got was how a few trans women later discovered they had mild AIS (actually two testimonies), and suggestions of masculinizing treatments (mastectomy, testosterone). No mention of a possible female identity was breached in any of those except the testimonies, which were personal. The ratio of 5-10% female-identified who transition to female (who have AIS) seems to suggest it’s not the majority, but not something to ignore totally either. If I had been diagnosed and the treatment options were 1) doing nothing 2) testosterone, I probably wouldn’t have known about option #3) estrogen and might have fucked my body up, along with my mind, just to go along their theories.