Real Trans-Bigotry


by Rev. Cathryn Platine

I hate those HBS women”You do not have to go very far to read this over and over in any blog that tackles the TG vs. TS problem within the alleged “trans” community. You will almost never see the opposite number, instead you see “I hate being lumped in with transgender” or “I hate the way transgenders keep attacking our bodies and identities” or something similar. Why is this? Many of us “HBS” women or women of transsexual history or even women born transsexual (all pretty much the same thing) worked tirelessly for trans civil rights, changing IDs and whole nine yards for years and years only to be insulted and then driven out by the new breed of trans-activist who are almost exclusively non-operative TGs full time or not. This new breed of activist doesn’t stand on the shoulders of those who came before them, they must be standing on their dead or dying bodies instead. They cannot feel they are the 12″ trout in the 13″ puddle of transactivism if anyone besides themselves and their cronies is recognized for anything they did. They literally hate us, it’s not rhetoric. They hate us for what we did before them, they hate us for transitioning to actual women rather than trans-somethings, they hate us for having female bodies. It is crystal clear in almost every word written or spoken by the loudest of them and echoed by others when they say it.

They are rabid about deconstructing gender for everyone, validating their choice to remain physically male but demanding they be seen as women and they hate those of us who differ from them in having seen our gender-sex mismatch as a treatable problem and treating it then moving on with our lives. One sees an interesting dynamic among these “activists”, a non-trans woman can say the exact same thing a HBS woman does and get a total pass on it, but the HBS woman will be reacted to with a level of insane fury that has to be experienced directly to be believed and this is a transference of their own misogyny to the “safe” target of the “less than total” woman. They will turn feminism on it’s ear, project their own misogyny on to the HBS woman, call them transphobic or actually misogynists and never never never miss an opportunity to attack the very bodies of the HBS woman with terms that are totally unacceptable anywhere else and only found among the most rabid of the religious right. Mutilated crotches, always a man because of your genetics, penis turned inside out, neo-vagina surgically constructed but not real….the list of these insults are almost endless and yet they also demand the right to include these women of transsexual history in their own “transgender” category because on some level they know without the legitimacy of transsexuality, no one, no one at all, is going to take their own claims of womanhood seriously.This would be an interesting study in psychosis if it didn’t have a real impact on those of us who had a medical problem, dealt with it and merely wish to get on with our lives. The only reason I can see for this reaction is an internalized sense of patriarchal shame for wishing to be feminine, choosing to keep the male attributes and thus hating us for not being them. Any attempts to debate them on the virtues of live and let live and don’t define others results quite quickly in extreme personal attacks rather than disagreement because they know on some level their demands and excuses just do not hold water in the greater world. Told that women can handle them in the restrooms but communal showers are a different thing they will say we wouldn’t do that only to have several of their number argue they have a “right” to do so because they feel they are women. They appear to be in constant conflict with the world at large and make excuses about “passing privilege” of some women even when told there actually is no such thing. They walk, talk, act like men, often dress outlandishly and then wonder why they have problems. They push themselves into women’s space using the most alpha male, privileged behaviour imaginable and then scream foul when they are not accepted by anyone as women.Funny thing, I stopped passing as a man years before I transitioned and that was as a master cabinetmaker who tried very hard to dress very male at the time. Why? Because I wore a full beard for years to trip the “male” category in most people’s mind and almost the minute I got rid of it, all that was left was woman vibes and people reacted to that even when I was in the most masculine of places such as hunting and fishing with my friends. I’ve heard of the opposite happening pre-transition from FtMs…. I didn’t “learn” how to act like a woman or think like one, all I had to do was stop actively trying to not do these things. I suffered almost none of the transphobia in the greater world they constantly are complaining about. Transition for me was literally the easiest thing in the world other than the fallout most of us get from those who knew us pre-transition. It was a coming home, not an act.”I HATE those HBS women”……and some wonder why there is conflict within the subset of trans-whatever. How can there not be?
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