Not Ready for Prime Time or How the TG civil rights movement went insane by talking only to themselves.
by Cathryn Platine
Let me begin by placing myself on the identity politics scale so you
understand the perspective I write from. First I am a woman
followed by a feminist then one born intersexed and lastly a surgically
constructed (at birth) transsexual. This colours my point of view
just as those who identify as some brand of trans come from an entirely
different point of view. I see the world through the eyes of a
feminist woman who has studied history and is also a pagan theologian.
I live within the greater world where the dominate viewpoint of
gender is a strictly bi-gendered one where most people's understanding
of gender is limited to there are men and women and if slightly more
enlightened, some people are born intersexed and some are born
transsexual but both these groups get put in either the male or female
bin. Joe Sixpack, Helen Homemaker and Larry Legislator all can
understand transsexuality within this worldview and are often willing
with just a little prompting, to understand transsexuals are actually
women or men rather than the sex assigned at birth. This is easy
enough to understand that even Pat Robertson got it. My lobbying
experience taught me that republicans have no problem understanding
this either once you explain it in simple terms. So why can't we
get basic civil rights? The answer is this point of view has been
viciously silenced by the trans-activists of the past ten years to be
replaced with trying to sell an idea of feminine penises.
When I first became involved in the trans communities, I assumed that
the womanhood of a transsexual woman and the manhood of a transsexual
man were the backbone ideals of the movement. I was completely
mistaken in this. The trans community has become all about gender
deconstruction and the idea that women and men of transsexual history
can never be "real" women and men. While I have no problem with
someone deconstructing their own gender, I have a major problem with
someone deconstructing my own but this is exactly what the trans community
demands. Think I'm full of it? Think again. Recently
on the Bilerico Project a woman of transsexual history was told by a
prominent transgender blogger and loud voice in TG activism that:
"You want to get technical Sue? In the strictest definition, you're not
female. The distinction between the "sexes" is that a female has the
ability to produce ova, and the male has the ability to produce
produces sperm. Your "sex" isn't based on an organ but on your
reproductive ability. For that matter, your neo-vagina isn't even an
"organ." An organ is tissue or a group of tissues that constitute a
morphologically and functionally distinct part of an organism. Your
"vagina" isn't a social construct, it's a surgical construct. And an
incomplete construct at that! Go find your bartholin glands...."
Woah! read that again because what it is saying is this woman is not a
woman at all. And this is not aberration but the actual position
of the majority voices in Transland today. It is the exact same point
of view of the most rabid of the religious right. The irony is
this is a viewpoint that demands TG entry to women only space (male
only space is rarely much of a problem for FtMs) Now as a
feminist woman I cannot understand why women should be expected to
welcome people who come to them not as women but as trans-something to
women only space but this is exactly what is demanded. Frankly it
stinks of male privilege and sounds like exactly the sort of thing that
the old radical lesbian separatists complained about. Some twelve
years of observation of both feminist and lesbian space has
demonstrated to me the truth of this because it is almost always a
third genderist "I'll never be a 'real' woman" transperson who pushes
for entry. I literally have never seen a woman of transsexual
history do this. And the life experience of most of the women of
transsexual history seems to be similar to my own......if you come to
women's space as a woman, you will be welcomed without any real
opposition. This would seem to me a no brainer. That those
who silence the voices of women of transsexual history, attempt to
erase them from view and then claim to represent them as part of some
unified "transgendered community" strike me as almost as pure examples of
patriarchal thinking as you can get. I even coined a term to
cover this denial of post-operative women's womanhood, neo-gynophobia.
That these same people demand recognition as "women" (this rarely
comes from the FtM side) when they actively deny it at the same time to
women who's bodies reflect their womanhood through surgical correction
almost defies the imagination. From outside the insular world of
the "transgender community" it frankly appears downright insane.
One thing most transgendered people seem to do is insist on talking
about their genitals. Often it's the first information they
offer. Please note that I do not use the word transgender in the
redefined umbrella sense but separate from intersexed and transsexual.
I use the term transsexual in the classical sense meaning someone
driven to bring their body into congruence with their gender. In
this usage there is no such thing as a non-op transsexual by choice,
only by circumstance. Now this verbal flashing would not be a
problem if it was confined to trans discussion groups, gender theory
and trans education presentations but this is not the case.
Rather than take the common sense approach in gaining civil
rights of using the fact that most people can understand transsexuality
fairly easily and that the poor state of surgical options for female to
male transsexuals can be used to defuse requirements for full surgery
and limit those requirements, if needed, to hormonal or surgical
removal of reproductive function.......rather than this, trans
activists insist on talking about the "rights" of people with penises
to enter women's space! Now I have to tell you again, viewed from
outside Transland, this just
plain looks insane to those who live in a bi-gendered world. It's
an almost impossible sell and the major reason no headway at all has
been made in Federal protections and why these protections probably
won't come about for a long long time.
What has happened is that actual civil rights that in a practical sense
would cover transgenders as well as people of transsexual history and
those in transsexual transition have taken a back seat to the agenda of
deconstruction of gender for all. Only within a group that talks
only among themselves can this be seen as sane. A small minority
is tilting at windmills if they think they can overturn the majorities
worldview. Maybe it can be done eventually........but isn't the
goal supposed to be civil rights first? Pardon me, but I don't
give a damn about deconstruction of gender but I do about having basic
civil rights. When you live in the real world these practical
matters trump some theory every time. And by the way, I'm a woman
and live a woman's life regardless of the opinions of some
trans-theorist.
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