Questioning Transphobia

My gender is rage

Transphobic tropes #2 – “Patriarchal Privilege”

with 36 comments

This is one that’s particularly directed at trans women, but occasionally at trans men too. Simply put, it is the notion that before, during and after transition we are privileged members of the patriarchy.

The notion that trans people are the worst examples or supporters of the Patriarchy is a common one in radical feminist thought–notably Janice Raymond’s notorious The Transsexual Empire, Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman, and any number of works by Sheila Jeffreys. The ludicrous premise of recent “science fiction” film The Gendercator was that trans people had collaborated with the Christian Right to force transition on everyone, so that an absolute gender binary would be upheld.

This is, however, complete twaddle. Trans people on the whole are no more in favour of the binary than anyone else, and since it is fracking impossible to just snap your fingers and change gender categories legally (or you know, fall into the Spring of Drowned Girl), we often inhabit a precarious legal space in-between genders–and therefore have very good reason to argue for the abolition of gendered categories.

Transgendered people are discriminated against legally, economically, and socially. Let’s break it down:

Violence

I can’t overstate this enough, because it is so frequently elided in studies of transgendered people. We are disproportionately, constantly, the victims of violence.

Trans people are murdered for being trans all the time – there’s a bloody reason why one of the few times we come together as a community it’s to Remember Our Dead.

Viviane Namaste in Invisible Lives found that 1 in two trans people had been the subject of violence in the past year, compared with 1 in 7 gays and lesbians. Violence is most likely to occur, unsurprisingly, against the most vulnerable people–sex workers, women of colour. Some trans women are both, and it adds up to a particularly volatile cocktail in a world that, frankly, hates us.

Oh, and I shouldn’t forget the violence against proto trans youth. Bullying at school, often sanctioned by teachers, for being “gay,” “too feminine,” “a man,” whatever. And often hostile home environments, where our gender expression is “cause” to beat us, be a man, be normal, and so on.

The point is, trans bodies are the subject of violence because of our genders. This is a patriarchal privilege how?

Murky legal status

Trans people have an often murky legal status, which can vary from state to state, nation to nation. Different places have different standards for allowing us to change our gender—for instance in Australia where I live in, you’re required to have genital surgery if you’re a trans woman (an expensive surgery that requires an 18 month waiting period supervised by a psychiatrist…), in the UK the standards are less onerous and require a Gender Recognition Certificate, in some states in the United States like Texas a trans person can never legally change their gender.

But this does not mean that we get patriarchal privileges, even if for trans women we continue to be legally seen as male.

What this means is that our identities are often not accepted, and so we are placed in the wrong gender category, which is not just upsetting, but it is often dangerous. As Viviane Namaste shows, trans people are systematic erased by institutions.

Now as we all know, ID like driver’s licenses and passports have genders on them. For trans people, there can be a massive difference between our paperwork and how we are presenting, which places us in an extremely vulnerable situation. You’re open to discrimination—this is not a very friendly world to trans people—and charges of identity theft, fraud and even target as potential terrorists (because we’re “disguised.” Flying is particularly difficult for trans people after 9/11).

Ok, so imagine what happens when you get pulled over by the cops and your driver’s license has the wrong gender. You get the phenomenon of “driving while trans,” where some transphobic cop decides to pull you in for driving without a license. Or, a friend of mine found herself having to convince her bank that she wasn’t committing fraud when she tried to change the name on her bank account.

In the US, Social Security sends a “no-match” to employers, which can out stealth trans people. And since there’s very little legal protection stopping employers from discriminating against trans people, said employer is generally free to fire you for being trans. Which leads me to…

Employment

Trans people are disproportionately unemployed, and comparatively poor as a group. The myth of the trans woman who transitions late in life after she’s got all that fat Patriarchal money, power and privilege is just that, a myth.

From trans group blog

“A study in the San Francisco Bay Area conducted in 2006 of 194 transgender individuals found a 35% unemployment rate, with 59% earning less than $15,300 annually.”

According to this report from the Williams Institute,

13%-56% of transgender people had been fired
13%-47% had been denied employment
22%-31% had been harassed, either verbally or physically, in the workplace

So poverty, and employment based discrimination is a patriarchal privilege? Shiny.

Anti Discrimination Laws

In most places, transgendered people are not covered by anti-discrimination laws—this is what the big ENDA mess was about in the US, where gay and lesbian organisations discarded trans rights from an anti-discrimination law.

Trans people are not covered by sex discrimination laws, or sexual orientation laws. Sexual discrimination laws are about legal sex, not gender identity.

Sexual orientation laws are about being (or being perceived to be) gay, lesbian or bisexual. Neither of these address the specific discrimination people face for being transgendered.

Homelessness

It’s really difficult to tell, but an extremely large number of trans people are homeless at some point in their lives – the trans group blog post above suggests the majority, but stats are unreliable. A January 2007 report from the (American) Gay and Lesbian Taskforce suggests that one in five transgendered people are homeless. The reason for this is twofold – the aforementioned discrimination for employment, and often unfriendly or abusive home environments.

Trans youth are particularly affected by the latter, and this is doubly compounded by the often gendered nature of homeless shelters.

Marriage

It is true that some trans people are able to get married, and hence get some of the privileges thereof. However, as with everything else, this is patchy and who you can marry and the legality of your marriage varies wildly from place to place, and depends on your surgical status.

But, even if you can get married, the United States has a policy that specifically excludes marriages where one partner from being able to immigrate to the country. The apparent privilege of sometimes being able to be married is able to be disregarded at any moment.

Now, I could just go on and on about this, but I think the point should be clear enough. Trans people are systematically disempowered, on macro and micro levels. Why on earth does any of this sound like we’re getting monthly muffin baskets from the Patriarchy?

Written by queenemily

July 17, 2008 at 7:03 am

36 Responses

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  1. I really never understood this idea. I mean, I saw a lot of what you’re seeing.

    I wish the people who need to read and understand this *would*.

    GreenEyedLilo

    July 17, 2008 at 8:25 am

  2. Yeah. I mean, it should seem obvious, right? It seems to me if you were privileged, you might actually have SOME of the signs of privilege as a group.

    And I didn’t even really get into things like sensationalist and disrespectful reporting, medical treatment, coming out to parents…

    I do think people–even some allies–don’t really understand how absolutely institutionalised discrimination against transgendered people is. That tiny little gender marker on a million different forms has the ability to produce all kinds of horrific consequences.

    queenemily

    July 17, 2008 at 8:45 am

  3. “Yeah. I mean, it should seem obvious, right? It seems to me if you were privileged, you might actually have SOME of the signs of privilege as a group.”

    Yeah, that’s the thing that really gets me about a lot of the people who retreat into theory when someone claims “wait, that’s not how my life goes.” It’s like they came up with this nice little explanation of what one kind of privilege (male privilege) is and how it works, not realizing that there are other forms of privilege at all. And now you’re saying “But what about this, over here?” and they’re going “well, but that isn’t in my theory, so it must not exist.”

    Trin

    July 17, 2008 at 12:23 pm

  4. You also have those who acknowledge trans people are oppressed, but try to erase that oppression by claiming what we experience is identical to normal sexism and/or homophobia.

    A damaging example of the stuff you’re talking about was John Aravosis trying to use the fact that some trans people remain married to their (now) same-sex spouses as a sign that trans people have it better than gay men and lesbian women, and pretending to get angry at trans people for having that “privilege” while he still had to fight for respectability. And all of that posted while ENDA was pulled out from under us.

    Lisa Harney

    July 17, 2008 at 12:25 pm

  5. “A damaging example of the stuff you’re talking about was John Aravosis trying to use the fact that some trans people remain married to their (now) same-sex spouses as a sign that trans people have it better than gay men and lesbian women”

    Oh, right, because a technicality resulting from someone not being seen as a man or woman that happens to allow for a happy loophole means you’re Not Oppressed.

    Kind of like “there was no patriarchy in Victorian England, proof: Victoria was the Queen.”

    Trin

    July 17, 2008 at 12:39 pm

  6. Yes.

    I should have said “a particularly damaging example” as this stuff is always damaging.

    Another example would be when Andrew Sullivan and Heart both said that trans people are natural allies to religious fundamentalists because trans people in Iran are allowed to transition – but there was a subtext there of “it’s wrong for trans people to get rights before GLB people” as well as completely ignoring the fact that Iran as a nation is not friendly to trans people just because Iran has a law that makes transition easier. And these are of course just an outgrowth of the Gendercator crap.

    Lisa Harney

    July 17, 2008 at 1:58 pm

  7. In the US, Social Security sends a “no-match” to employers, which can out stealth trans people. And since there’s very little legal protection stopping employers from discriminating against trans people, said employer is generally free to fire you for being trans.

    My SIL keeps banging her head against that one; she’s entirely cissexual, but was registered as male at birth due to a clerical error. Some dipshit put a cross in the wrong box 30+ years ago and she’s had SS errors forever after. And cis privilege is what allows her to laugh it off every time, and tell her employers about the error and that they have to run her checks as if she was a guy.

    Why do SS even have to know your gender anyway? What possible purpose or benefit is there for them to have that information? Even the enforcement of marriage inequality doesn’t have to be in the remit of SS. It’s just plain old stupid fixations on gender binary. The idea that trans people are the ones who are hung up on the binary is absurd.

    Lisa – You also have those who acknowledge trans people are oppressed, but try to erase that oppression by claiming what we experience is identical to normal sexism and/or homophobia. Mmm. Trans people who blog often write about the intersections between these things (like how transitioning brings new insights wrt sexism, for example) and it’s sad that some see that as an excuse to conflate the different issues. Though I believe that sexism, homophobia and transphobia are all manifestations of the same thing, and that none of these three can be eliminated while any of the others still stand.

    Thene

    July 17, 2008 at 2:54 pm

  8. Yeah, I’ve said many times that all three are manifestations of the same thing, which is entirely different (as you point out) from saying they’re identical. The latter is just erasure.

    Lisa Harney

    July 17, 2008 at 4:08 pm

  9. I can understand the claim that trans women still have some male privileges (I personally think that most of it is heavily reduced during the transition, but depending on the people’s life some can stay with a bit, e.g. diploms it would have been difficult to obtain as a woman and such) or that trans men gain some during transition.

    But that there is some privilege because you actually are transgender ? Uuuh. Do we really live on the same planet ?

    And I don’t quite get their argument about marriage. Yeah, depending on the legal status and law, it is possible for a transperson to get an homosexual marriage; on the other hand, when this is the case, s/he doesn’t have the right to an heterosexual marriage. Does this mean there is some homosexual privilege? Huuum.

    Elly Rouge

    July 17, 2008 at 4:12 pm

  10. I honestly believe that when most parents see a baby with a penis, that child is planned for in a way that a girl child is not. In my family, resources were scarce and the good stuff went to the boys–it was set up that way long before any of us got here. But the males benefited. I think many women are reacting to this truth.

    What we didn’t think of, is what happens when the child-with-penis doesn’t measure up to patriarchal expectations. In many ways, I think the punishment for such a child (trans or NOT) is just very fierce. Many feminists seem only able to sympathize with lesbians, butches or transmen, who also are punished similarly. But they seem unable to accept the fact that people born with penises could be so oppressed.

    If they would see the people in question as WOMEN, of course, the oppression would make complete sense in a feminist framework. But they can’t, so they can’t admit that the children-with-penises could be so tortured. So, the convolution is: they were born with male privilege!

    It just doesn’t EXPLAIN the situation or acknowledge what is really going on. IMHO.

    (I hope that made sense.)

    daisydeadhead

    July 17, 2008 at 5:28 pm

  11. It does, Daisy.

    If the patriarchy’s got all that investment in boy-children, then surely it’d want to hold onto it, by any means necessary? To transition to the other sex demonstrates that 1. men are not innately superior 2. gender is not essential, unchangeable and instilled at birth.

    I’m not sure why it’s so hard to accept that young trans girls would be severely punished for acting femininely (eg parents trying to “beat it out” of you).

    I mean, where’s the encouragement to transition? The patriarchal incentives?

    Oh that’s right, THERE IS NONE.

    queenemily

    July 17, 2008 at 10:29 pm

  12. Oh, they’ll accept it, they just won’t admit that it’s real oppression.

    Daisy, I was treated much worse than my sister growing up. I also got to meet my real father and his side of the family in my late teens, and got some seriously oppressive pressure from them as they all wanted me to be my father’s son, as he had none that were related to him. It may not have felt oppressive to a cisgendered male, but to me it sounded like Hell on Earth.

    I transitioned only a few months later.

    Lisa Harney

    July 17, 2008 at 11:09 pm

  13. Ah, right. It’s the fake kind of oppression. Cos you have that Y chromosome immunity from getting the shit kicked out of you.

    queenemily

    July 17, 2008 at 11:16 pm

  14. Also, it’s impossible for cis women to oppress trans women because males have privilege over females.

    Lisa Harney

    July 18, 2008 at 12:20 am

  15. In my coverage of Sean Kennedy’s gay-basher’s trial, I wrote that his life was only worth 10 months. I realized that if Sean had been trans, there probably wouldn’t have been a trial at all; “trans-panic” and all that shit. (Especially around here.)

    Mental exercises like that, changing places, etc… always helps me clarify things.

    daisydeadhead

    July 18, 2008 at 9:09 am

  16. Another thing that changed my mind, was a male co-worker, heterosexual, cis, white… who just had the temerity to act like a girl. THAT’S ALL. He was a cook by trade, giggled, long-haired hippie type, squealed with delight, the works, was often taken for female (even wearing t-shirts that showed his skinny, ultra-flat chest) . He and his girlfriend (whom we all knew very well) were starry-eyed in het love, even. (She loved his girlie ways and proclaimed him “highly evolved.”)

    The derision and hatred directed at this person, for no other fucking reason than acting like a sissy, really blew my mind. He was even arrested for loitering at a rock concert (!) and for possession of reefer. Lots of harassment like that. He was passed over for a promotion that he deserved, and quit his job.

    Good Lord, what if he HAD NOT been cis or straight? It was one of those mental exercises, stated above, that educated me. I could not believe such overt hostility, every time his name came up, guys would sneer, grunt, roll their eyes in disgust and mutter insults under their breath. One of the female cooks refused to work with him, saying he was “upsetting” since she kept calling him “she” by mistake, which he didn’t mind at all, laughingly saying it had happened to him all his life. SHE was upset, not him.

    The happy couple finally moved out to California, where I hope they will be safe. (His goal is to be a househusband and stay-at-home dad.)

    It was an education all right. Maybe some of the radfems need a similar tutorial.

    daisydeadhead

    July 18, 2008 at 9:22 am

  17. Sexual discrimination laws are about legal sex, not gender identity.

    So, what about those of us who aren’t gender confused, but have transitioned from male to female or female to male or “other” to something? For many of us, it’s not about gender, but sex. I really hope you’ll consider us in your future writings.

    (I think a lot of our communication gets mixed up when we talk about “gender” using it as an umbrella term, because for so many people it has multiple meanings and in the RadFem world, it has a particular meaning that actually does make their points a lot more understandable, if in my mind still misguided and quite wrong as in the many examples you have pointed out.)

    NerfButch

    July 18, 2008 at 12:25 pm

  18. I would like it if people avoided using loaded terms like “gender confusion.” That label is often used to imply that trans people don’t really know who we are, and transition is somehow misguided and wrong.

    Lisa Harney

    July 18, 2008 at 1:54 pm

  19. Daisy, isn’t it funny how people who get angry about gender nonconformity make it about them, not about the people they can’t handle?

    By “funny” I mean “stupid.” It’d be nice if we could teach people about how anything that anyone does around them doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with them, nor is it their business. Yes, I’m being unrealistic.

    Lisa Harney

    July 18, 2008 at 2:08 pm

  20. “The derision and hatred directed at this person, for no other fucking reason than acting like a sissy, really blew my mind. He was even arrested for loitering at a rock concert (!) and for possession of reefer. Lots of harassment like that. He was passed over for a promotion that he deserved, and quit his job.”

    Yeah, this. As a top, I see a LOT of stuff like this, though usually milder, and a LOT of men who are afraid of this happening to them. And yeah, there’s supposedly-feminist claptrap that says “oh honey, he just doesn’t know if he can handle being demoted, but that’s nothing like being a woman!”

    well, y’know what? the last time I walked by someone selling Take Back the Night shirts that read “stop gender violence”

    I realized I’m actually more uneasy about my partners getting raped, at least some of them, than I am afraid for me. Those words “gender violence” had me seething.

    Because to me it’s never been BEING a man or woman that was the marker. It’s been how you fit into gender. Yeah, if you’re female, you’re a target. My being a top is not immunity. I’ve been harassed. I’ve been in situations where only dumb luck meant people didn’t try to rape me.

    BUT IT’S ALSO TRUE THAT if you are, or act, or do things associated with, what the wrong kind of people deem feminine, particularly in ways people think of as threatening, you’re a target.

    Trin

    July 18, 2008 at 3:40 pm

  21. Hi Nerf Butch.

    I *was* considering people who transition from one gender to another.

    I intentionally used “sex” in its narrow legal sense, namely, whether your documents say M or F, because that’s how the law will treat you.

    So sexual discrimination legislation is only helpful for post-operative trans people, *if* they’re being discriminated against for being that post-op sex. If you’re being discrimated against for being trans, tough luck, that doesn’t count.

    And inhabiting an in-between space is NOT confusion. You might intend on having surgery, but be sitting in the 18 month waiting period, or not have enough, not to mention the many trans people who *choose* not have surgery.

    queenemily

    July 19, 2008 at 4:38 am

  22. Never mind.

    I apologize for using a set of words that you don’t want on your blog. I just pulled them out of my memories as throw-aways and that’s always a bad idea.

    As for my point, I failed to make it. I’m too tired to try again. I’ve been tilting at the umbrella terminology windmill too long and still have nothing to show for it. I guess it’s time to let the next generation to take things where they want them to go. I sure I may be happily surprised with the results.

    Ciao.

    NerfButch

    July 19, 2008 at 6:34 am

  23. Well, for me, it is about sex – about being female and not male. I also agree that using gender as an umbrella term can be confusing (although I don’t think Em was in that instance). The problem I have with the radical feminist definition of gender is not that it’s a social construct (I do believe it is a social construct, but I do think there’s some nature in that nurture too), but the conclusion they reach (at least about trans people) that since it’s a social construct, that means it doesn’t exist, it’s a complete fiction, an imaginary windmill to tilt at.

    Anyway, you’re definitely welcome to hang around and add your stuff – I didn’t have anything to add to your comment, it’s just that phrase tends to have very negative connotations for me, being as I see it used dismissively against trans people or specifically to imply that we don’t really know who we are and who we should be.

    Lisa Harney

    July 19, 2008 at 3:31 pm

  24. I know that this piece has transwomen in mind, but I’d like to say a bit about trans guys, because in the first paragraph queenemily stated that trans men have this argument aimed at them as well.

    Though trans guys do face a great deal of discrimination, along with the legal problems (crap, I a trans guy who lives in Texas), I think that it’s not entirely correct to say that trans guys don’t recieve on some level some amount of male and/or patriarchal privilege. Trans men are, after all, moving to a gender that is privileged over another. Though trans guys may be in a unique position to interpret or redefine what that privilege means and how they’ll deal with it, that doesn’t mean that trans guys don’t take part in male privilege in some way.

    quiteneil

    July 19, 2008 at 5:41 pm

  25. What Emily means, I think, is that you’ll find transphobic arguments – from feminists, mostly – who will say things like “trans men don’t really get male privilege” or, well… Heart says somewhere in her Robin Morgan post on Women’s Space that trans men are never really accepted as men in the way trans women are accepted as women, that society allows mobility from male to female (and even implies that society perhaps celebrates it) but denies mobility from female to male.

    A lot of the feminist writings about trans men are – aside from being awful – try to deny their lived realities as men by presenting them as women duped into abandoning womanhood, or taking part in a fad. In that respect, trans men are accused of receiving male privilege a lot less often than trans women.

    This has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with the writers’ or speakers’ biases, though.

    Lisa Harney

    July 19, 2008 at 9:44 pm

  26. Yep Lisa. And that particular strain of argument, that society allows a one-way movement, is just plain bullshit.

    But yes, I get that for trans men, on a day to day level, there’s gonna be some privilege if you pass.

    But on an institutional level, I don’t think so. Also, I think that the de-gendering that I mentioned in the previous post makes that privilege so much more tenuous that of cis guys.

    queenemily

    July 19, 2008 at 10:14 pm

  27. Theres also the idea that trans*folk may not internalize society’s messages like others who were assigned the same sex.
    A little trans*girl may not be treated like her cis*sister, but she may internalize the same messages from the media.
    I know I have both male and female conditioning; and I wonder if I made myself internalize “female” messages when I was trying to be a girl (though no way of ever knowing of course).
    I’ve heard a fair number of trans*folk say the same thing.
    It certainly explains why the (supposed) majority of trans*women are feminine and trans*men masculine–without trying to say that femininity is biologically inherent in women and masculinity in men.

    drakyn

    July 20, 2008 at 11:51 pm

  28. [...] at Questioning Transphobia, has begun a really great series on transphobic tropes. Her second post, Patriarchal Privilege, addresses transphobia in feminism. To some extent, this comes from a lack of understanding; women [...]

  29. Also, while my parents gave my sister gendered messages and me different gendered messages, I heard what they said to her. I admit, I rejected some of those messages as sexist (and confronted them about it when they’d let me go out at night but wouldn’t allow my sister the same freedom).

    I took that stuff personally. I knew the only reason it didn’t apply to me was the one thing I hated above all else in my life – that my body was wrong.

    Lisa Harney

    July 21, 2008 at 9:06 pm

  30. Lisa – “In that respect, trans men are accused of receiving male privilege a lot less often than trans women.”

    so… the feminists are being disproportional, punishing women more than men? partly because they’re women? and they’re feminists *how* exactly? and, um, gender doesn’t exist, but you’re a traitor to your gender if you transition? WTF? honestly, i’m trying to understand the different positions in this conversation (which seems more like the “radfems” shouting over everyone who disagrees, than an actual conversation), but this… this just doesn’t make sense. (note to self: rethink your self-identification as a radical feminist.)

    i can see that FtM might get some male privilege (assuming they “pass”), but it is so contingent on not being “outed,” and the consequences for being outed are often so massive… well, i guess even if one gets it, the can’t relax enough to enjoy it or take it for granted.

    am… so… confused… by… “feminists”…

    silver

    July 23, 2008 at 2:16 am

  31. stlver: “am… so… confused… by… “feminists”…”

    Mm-hm, I know that feeling!

    Like banging one’s head against a wall, it’s nice when it stops.

    Helen G

    July 23, 2008 at 11:58 am

  32. I wouldn’t say that trans men are treated better, really. A lot of the time, you can see they’re implicitly assumed to be women – Lesbian events open to “women and trans only” often mean “women and trans men only,” and I’ve known at least a couple lesbians who would tear down other lesbians for dating a trans woman and thus negating her lesbianness while at the same time dating a trans man and not considering that this has any reflection on “attracted only to women.”

    The radfem analysis of trans men tends to position them as deluded women who are taking the cheap way out of oppression, but can’t ever really escape it because everyone who sees them can see the “I was born female” tattoo on their foreheads – just like the patriarchy gives cookies to trans women because of our “I was born male” tattoos on our foreheads.

    But it’s unfair to generalize all feminists as being anti-trans in their various ways. Just those who seem to have a lot invested in policing gender.

    Lisa Harney

    July 24, 2008 at 3:21 pm

  33. Just see the couple new threads where I participated at MWMF, Parker and dirtywhiteboi did a ‘team-up’ on me. I can take heat, but now I decided to take a couple weeks break from the forum. A bit too vitriolic.

    This gem from Parker: “I’m female so I can’t oppress anyone.” (and I did point out racial, class, able-bodied, sexual orientation oppression possibilities before she said that)
    and then dirtywhiteboi chimes in “You oppress ALL by virtue of being male.” (speaking to me)
    which Parker promptly agreed with

    Schala

    August 3, 2008 at 7:08 am

  34. [...] Transitioning is metaphorically killing our mothers as Germaine Greer put it in The Whole Woman. Or the notion that trans women are most “naturally suited” for prostitution or otperverts transitioning to get ourselves off proposed by J Michael Bailey in The Man Who Would Be Queen. And thus, since our experience has been precluded from the start from the field of discourse, trans people are hopeless dupes of the medical profession, who provide us with placebo treatments because we won’t allow them to cure the root cause of our desires – whatever that root cause may be. We’re cajoled, tricked, and coerced to seek surgery, we never independently come to the conclusion that we want to change our sex before we even hear it’s possible. And we are, after all, still the proud recipients of all that Patriarchal privilege. [...]

  35. Dirtywhiteboi is in her 40s, allegedly, and acts like she’s in high school.

    Just a reminder: Read the comment rules before posting. There’s only one rule: don’t refer to people by the wrong pronouns or tell them that their gender is wrong or invalid.

    If your point requires you to say that trans women aren’t really women or trans men aren’t really men, then there are other blogs where you can peddle your bigoted nonsense. You don’t have to go home, but I don’t want you here.

    Lisa Harney

    August 11, 2008 at 6:00 am

  36. [...] to women’s services” to “how can trans women be so selfish and have so much male privilege to think they should have access to women’s services?!?” Of course, it’s a pretty [...]


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