TransAdvocate

People with penises in women’s showers?

Thank you Barney Frank, men should use their own showers.

Notice, nobody seems to mind coochies in the men’s showers, do they? Oh, that’s right - they’d be in mortal danger.

How many jobs require showering at work? An infintesimally small fraction of a tenth of one percent of jobs, most likely. And in those cases, alt arrangements can probably be made.

However, we probably need to get the heck over the “ohmigahd, lions and tigers and bears and penises in the women’s showers, oh my! mentality, as does Frank. It is not the penis that is evil, it is what a sexual predator does with it. M2F preop Transsexuals on estrogen are decidedly not sexual predators. Most I know would voluntarily do everything possible to avoid a public shower room when others were using it. Moreover, there is already plenty of law on the books that outlaw sexual assaults in restrooms. Punish the person only after the person is found guilty of the act - or did that go out with the Patriot Act?

As for Frank, of course he’s full of blarney, if not fecal matter. But it behooves us to listen to him. Yes, T people have lobbied for 10+ years. But our education attempts have not sunk in. Too often, our education has not gotten past the aides - so often they’re HRCites. Also notice that Frank never bothered to try to tell any of us who needed educating - never published the whip count. Only now do we really have a good idea who wasn’t on board - and I share the opinion of many that, if pushed, 2015 would have passed.

Rep Frank, tell us who we need to educate, and we’ll do it. But don’t blame us for not guessing who was and who wasn’t needing said education. We’re not clairvoyant.

According to a DC source I have, Frank intended for us to hire a big DC lobbying firm, and drop serious money on campaign funds in key offices. That’s usually how people are educated in DC. He obviously doesn’t know the T community at all, does he?

“What about Transmen, should they use a woman’s shower, since they have vaginas?”

My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.

“My concern is about keeping penises out of women’s rooms and not resolving the issues of the transgender movement.”

WOW!

That needs to be chapter one of the next edition of ‘A Politician’s Guide to Life: How Not to Answer Questions’

So what your equating a penis to is to sexual predation.

+1 for being offensive to anyone who was born with one or would like to acquire one.

With that logic what does vagina equal? Especially when it’s owned by someone who has committed sexual assault on someone else? Or do you not know that women can be rapists too?

And, as I said before, surely women’s rooms have cubicles for privacy? Or do you all stroll around naked in some communal area checking out each other’s genitalia?

“So what your equating a penis to is to sexual predation.

+1 for being offensive to anyone who was born with one or would like to acquire one.

With that logic what does vagina equal? Especially when it’s owned by someone who has committed sexual assault on someone else? Or do you not know that women can be rapists too?”

I find it really interesting that transgenders employ exactly the same arguments against women that Men’s Rights Activists employ. It’s called “WDIT” for Women Do it Too. Consider violence. The Men’s Rights claim is that women initiate violence. What they omit is that statistics show that women initiate violence at a four percent rate but the argument is used as if women employed violence at the same rate men do. The claim is made to neutral the offenses that men actually do to women. WDIT arguments are pervasive here. I wonder why transgenders sound like MRAs?

“In fact you completely missed the point of what you said. You want to keep anyone with a “penis” out of women’s bathroom, based solely on having it. Meaning that you think that anyone who has one is either tempted or driven to use it and take advantage of such a situation.”

No. I said nothing about temptation or anything else. I just don’t want males in the women’s room.

“Would you label a hand as evil since it’s been used by so many people to kill others?
No, blaming a body part for someone’s action is just asinine and shows how superficial you are to label anyone with a penis as being the same as a sex offender regardless of any action to the contrary.”

I didn’t answer your question because in your assumptions you put words in my mouth. I don’t owe you an explanation. I just want males out of the women’s room.

I regret that it was a far right organization that did this but they have been succesful in bringing the Montgomery County law to referendum. I’m glad. There won’t be men in the women’s room.

I don’t respond to things that I didn’t say.

What I said - Having a penis does not equal sexual predator, it’s independent of anatomy.

What you are saying - Having a penis makes you a sexual predator it’s only a couple females that doesn’t matter.

Are you honestly so deluded to not realize how underreported it is? Yes more men are rapists, no that doesn’t mean that everyone of them is, no that doesn’t mean gender variant people are, and even less that they will invade your sacred bathroom which is more important than if it was the other way.

You’d be wise”er” if you viewed this blog post.
http://transadvocate.com/autumnsandeen/archives/1458

Laws such as the Montgomery one are important in protecting those who are gender variant for whatever reason. I don’t know what bathrooms you are frequenting where men are waiting outside the door just to get a peek inside but your reasoning is a step below the gay/trans panic defense. You are putting blame on people for things they have not done, perpetuate the idea that gender variant people are all deviantly sexually motivated, and that they are less people because of it.

The predators you think would jump at the chance to hop into the ladies room would do so regardless of the law. All the repeal of the law did was take away protection from a group of people that is heavily discriminated against.

What a crock.

“The law now reads that the requirements do ‘not apply to accommodations that are distinctly private or personal.’

Turner says the language addressing access to restrooms or locker rooms is too vague, but Patrick Lacefield, a Leggett spokesman, disagreed. In the county’s view, the bill provides an adequate exemption that would allow businesses or other entities to restrict the use of facilities, he said.”

This isn’t about “penises in the bathrooms”, this is about housing, employment and other discrimination - and the need for some to marginalize and delegitimize trans people as much as possible, using any available strawtranny.

What really astonishes me is that anyone is foolish enough to get caught up in this fake argument.

I guess Sandy believes that crossdressers and preop M2F TSs should be assaulted, then, because that would be the result of her peniaphobia. As a CD, I shall continue to use the ladies when presenting as a woman, for safety reasons.

I repeat my question: how do Sandy or the bigoted churchprudes of Montgomery County Maryland propose knowing what a T person has under her skirt? I hope nobody’s proposing foundation of the skirt police.

Sexual predatory assault is already a crime. I’m all for punishing criminals to the fullest extent of the law. But what you don’t see behind a stall door is not your concern or business. If it is made your business, then it is a crime and you can prosecute.

“OK, so let’s send in crowds of burly passing transsexual men to use the Ladies’ Room. That should keep you happy.”

Whatever. The misogyny is so obvious. You don’t care about women.

> Whatever. The misogyny is so obvious. You don’t care about women.

Whatever. the self-serving bigotry is so obvious. You don’t care about anyone but completely normative natal women.

1) There are already penises in the bathrooms. You lose. And the fact is that the Maryland law wouldn’t make it any more likely, since most trans people, unlike you, are pretty well socialized, are pretty sensitive to realworld context, and are averse to humiliation.

2) Felix is right, whether you want to admit it or not. If a passing transman - that is, a person with a vagina who looks like a man - were to follow your dictum and enter the same bathroom as you, you’d blow a fuse.

3) The Maryland law has got fuck all to do with penises in the bathrooms - and you even know it, but it’s easier to play the broken record than to address the actual issues of transpeople - employment, housing - who you would prefer to just disappear altogether. On which point, again: you lose.

“I think men, which includes but is not limited to all people with penises should be in the men’s room.”

Double standard much? So transmen without a phallus are men, but transwomen without a vagina are men too? Please explain how this crazy logic works.

Very neatly put, Niss! Rather like my friend’s penis.

Wow!
How do you handle the cognitive conflict?
I mean either you have to acknowledge some sort of sexism, give up the point and modify the argument or look really foolish as you fail to justify illogical nonsense.

Either there is something special about the presence of penises yet not their lack that causes the bias (which would seem sexist), some other sex based attribute that causes the bias (again would probably have to be sexist) or some point in the argument must change to make sense.

Either transmen without a phallus are women and transwomen without a vagina are men or transmen without a phallus are men and transwomen without a vagina are women.

Maybe you should consider Cognitive Behavioral therapy? If your mind can comfortably accept what appears neatly to be logically provable as an irational belief then you could have all sorts of similar irrational beliefs possibly leading to depression and other dangerous mental illnesses.

I’m impressed by Sandy’s ability to keep everyone focused on the non-issue of phalluses, vaginas, and toilets.

This is, of course, the same kind of redirection by which the bigots she either supports or represents were able to bring the Maryland law to referendum, regardless of the minimal- to non-relevance of this aspect of the law’s purposes and language.

Well, since Sandy didn’t answer my question directly, I must assume that she is a religious fundamentalist and that she supports preop and crossdressing T people being beat up for using the men’s room, or being arrested for using the women’s room. I also must assume that Sandy also supports the creation of a bathroom police force to peek in women’s room stalls.

Leave this list, Sandy, and go back to watching the 700 Scum, er, Club, along with the other sheeple.

I’m not Christian and I don’t practice any religion.

The presumtptions here are strong. I’ve said clearly that I’m not here to solve any trans dilemmas. They are not my problem. If they are being killed and beaten up by men you need to address that with men.

“Women are people who pass as women, who possess female genitals and identify as women. Period.”

This is simple trans silliness. A woman is someone who has been socially constituted as a woman AND who has a critical embrace of womanhood as an identity. Having a trans identity is not critically embracing womanhood - it is embracing trans.

I dislike the religious right as much as I dislike men in the women’s room and the trans movement.

Trans problems are not your problem, Sandy? I sincerely hope you don’t have any trans friends or family who hear you say that. Or neighbours, or co-workers or students. Or maybe the people who service your car, cut your hair, serve you in shops, rescue you from a fire? What a very odd and rarefied life you must lead with no transpeople around you worthy of your concern.

Logic is logic. Whether being spoken by a crossdresser or a natal woman or anybody else. Either the argument is cogent or it is false.

Clearly your argument is false unless you have a way out of the dilemma outlined before you and no amount of ‘I don’t have to answer to you’ rubbish will get you off the hook. You are stuck fast so either bring your rationalisation to the table or adapt your viewpoint and show you have some intellectual integrity by admiting when you are wrong. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. There is no shame in being wrong but there is a lot in refusing to accept it when you are.

However yes you do have to justify yourself. To me. To all of humanity. And yes these dillemas are yours! Why? Well you see if trans problems aren’t womens problems then womens problems aren’t mens problems and you have invalidated all the gains women and every other oppressed group of humans have made with the help of male/white/straight etc allies.

And if you are part of an oppressive system and you turn a blind eye to it’s oppressions when you aren’t in that specific case one of the group oppressed then you are also culpable. And by using that ‘not my problem’ argument you become culpable for all crimes past present and future where people have used that excuse. You morally adopt responsibility for all the rapes where witnesses walk on by, all the murders and lynchings when people stood and watched, and when the jews and gypsies and gays were dragged off to the camps and gas chambers while people just let it happen around them.

If trans problems aren’t your problem then YOU are the patriarchy! Because you validate the worst argument of apathy, the worst ever defence. If you really think that such an argument is ok, that it was ok for people to walk past while one of my best friends in her teens was raped in a public park in broad daylight because it wasn’t their problem, that it was ok for people to stand by while millions were sent to death camps including the jewish grandparents of another of my friends, the russian friend of my family and my german gypsy cousins. Well then why should anyone care about your problems!

So which is it? Is it ok for wrongs to be done to others, not others problems? If so then your problem with penisis in bathrooms is not my or anyone elses problem and no-one needs to listen to you (Ouch! looks like your own argument defeats itself!) Or is it wrong for people to stand by while wrongs occur to others (which is neccessary for anyone with a penis to give a damn about your issues with penises in womens bathrooms) in which case Trans problems ARE your problem and your problems are trans problems, womens problems are mens problems, gay problems are straight problems etc and we all end up bound to recognise and reciprocate equal rights.

Now as intelligence is not sex specific and logic has been used perfectly well by women down through the ages despite attempts to keep them uneducated I think you can answer now. Intelligently, rationally, cogently.

Thanks Susan for the quick synopsis! What Sandy has shown is that clear and unwavering doesn’t always equal logical, cogent thought.

By the way, Susan, two of your own compatriots - Sue and Cathryn - have affirmed that penises are acceptable in the women’s bathroom as long as their owners observe proper decorum… and can be authenticated as being in transition, of course.

Take your finite energy and post elsewhere then? If you don’t care about trans issues I’m not sure why you are posting/reading here except to troll.

Posting your point over and over with no logical discourse or debate is nothing more than spam.

Well, now, Val, when it comes to vegetables, who am I to argue with you. Then again, you are one of those with a penis she is talking about…no wonder you are a bit testy. Gee…you ARE an authority…for once. And thanks for the update on Sue and Cathryn, I’m sure you realize that means a lot to me.

I am perfectly capable of understanding what you say, I however think your argument is incoherent.

You yourself said you had finite energy, and you’re not interested in trans issues, so why post here? Again basic logic seems to elude you.

As for having priveledge that would be hard to be the case to make with me.

If you want to make a point, hurry up and make it, quit making personal attacks (Call me a man all you want, or anything else you fancy as an ‘insult’ it doesn’t really make it the case), and quit wasting everyones time.

I really wish I could edit, cause I tend to hit submit too fast

Also want to point out that you’re making this your issue here, not the other way around. I don’t know many pre-op trans women who declare they have a penis first thing after they enter the restroom.

> Your movement has no validity.

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in quite a while. Sandy rails against the claims of transpeople (that’s all transpeople, by the way, Susan), and then pretends that she can just make an entire class of person vanish by wishful assertion.

What a shock it must be for some people to live in the real world.

The other reason I really like Sandy’s lengthy post is that, after mindless repetition of a single, irrelevant point, she finally lets the lid off to reveal:

> It’s not women that lynches people, IT’S MEN.

… the misandry we knew was there.

As an aside, it occurs to me that one of the other things that really pisses her off is that she feels ideologically robbed. She hates transpeople because they make use of the idea that “gender is a social construct” - an idea which is actually at the heart of her own struggle, since the social construction of gender is what limits the “allowable” behaviors of women in the patriarchal culture - and puts it to uses that she cannot permit.

Quite a dilemma, to which the only resolution is the intransigence that we’ve seen here.

> He speaks of oppression and he is a white male and lives as one.

This just caught my eye. It occurs to me that the reason Sandy is here pressing this point is that she thinks the locals are easy to box in with a certain set of arguments, and are probably not as well schooled in the rather limited language of her brand of feminism.

She could never carry this off against Monica Roberts.

You know, I’m angrier about this than I thought.

By reducing all transpeople to “white crossdressing men”, Sandy conveniently packages everything into the easiest target of a certain kind of rhetoric. Then, by reducing all trans reality into “penises in the women’s room,” she eliminates all consideration of what really matters.

Every year our community holds a vigil for people who are murdered because they don’t conform to someone’s idea of what they ought to be… because they refuse to accept that biology is destiny. We have recently been treated to stories of kids killed because they were just too queer… or maybe just too something else, but let’s not call it “transgender” because that’s painting a target on their backs, right, Susan?

The fact is that these people exist… “transgender” as a movement is just a way to try to speak about them. Fulminating against “the movement” won’t make real people vanish, or stop behaving in the way they do. It simply supports the violence against those people… the attempts at erasure.

I say screw you, Sandy. You are culpable. You are the kind of person who makes it possible for others to call transpeople “things” and to dehumanize them to the point where they’re easier to kill. You use “white crossdressing men” as a straw figure to represent a wide class of people of all kinds, and turn them all into objects… disposable objects.

To hell with that, and with you.

Mercedes, you’re spot on as usual. I’ve considered closing this post up because it seems everyone is talking past each other, but I haven’t because the discourse has been somewhat civil. I don’t want to hamper discussions, but at times it feels more like a shouting match than a discussion.

That, and anyone that spouts “men do this, women do that” isn’t any kind of feminist. That’s a component of essentialism, and as far as I know, the only essentialism I know of that is excepted in feminist circles ( albeit, radical feminism) is physiological/anatomical essentialism, and Sandy isn’t included in that crowd. That and I have no time for people that are ashamed of what they are. She’s said, essentially that she’s stealth in a lesbian community. In other words, she’s dishonest. I’m not wasting my time arguing with such a person.

“That, and anyone that spouts “men do this, women do that” isn’t any kind of feminist. That’s a component of essentialism, and as far as I know, the only essentialism I know of that is excepted in feminist circles ( albeit, radical feminism) is physiological/anatomical essentialism, and Sandy isn’t included in that crowd.”

This is a totally bizarre statement, there is something culture and men certainly learn it.

My thinking isn’t ideologically permeated by gay male thinking.

It’s permeated by Enlightenment Philosophy, Egalitarian ideals, Civil Rights, Feminist thinking.

I was raised by my mother and grandmother. My family has had a long line of highly educated strong willed women going back well over a century and a half. My grandmother was a political activist and journalist. Her mother fought to preserve native languages by translating the bible and other works into native languages and collaborating on dictionaries.

These are the people who raised me and taught me. Strong, intelligent, logical women.

Sandy, I believe you are a “woman born woman”. But I also strongly suspect you were a baby girl born with a penis. Once again, will you please take the time to explain which public toilets you used when presenting as a woman but prior to vaginoplasty? If you were born anatomically female, please accept my apologies for my assumption.

“If you were born anatomically female, please accept my apologies for my assumption.”

Accepted.

Also, many women and black philosophers, in fact pretty much all modern philosophy draws upon the enlightenment and egalitarian ideals.

Nietzsche is the only philosopher who comes to mind that tried to move past the logic and tabula rasa of the enlightenment, and even then he doesn’t really say what he would have us move past to.

By the way, Sandy’s effort to pull the “more schooled than thou” trip is exactly what I was talking about earlier… she believes - possibly even with some justification - that the people she’s arguing with here are easy targets.

I don’t pretend to be a scholar of feminism, civil rights, or even of trans issues… this makes me and people like me easy to play certain cards against (though I expect that Sandy is also caucasian, so that little trope is purely tactical on her part).

But it’s a chickenshit game, really… pick off the ones who can most easily be tarred with the “patriarchal” brush, and through them take down the whole “transgender” thing. It’s a strategy that, as I said before, would have no success at all against someone like Monica Roberts… not only because she is a woman of color, but because she is far better educated about the core issues that Sandy is trying to hold over us, and is more than capable of quite a substantial bit of schooling herself.

So we’re the designated straw figures against which Sandy can exercise her contempt.

It’s ok… it’s not exactly the first time I’ve been someone else’s whipping girl.

No, Val, not a crotch grab of any sort nor abandonment of any kind; but you know that. I don’t precisely align with anyone but I do think that if someone is HBS/transsexual/classically transsexual/true transsexual they have known their entire life there was a mistake at birth, and GRS is a given.

Why haven’t you had GRS, Val? I would guess you are just content to “identify”?

Again, I think you are a fake…a troll. You have no history, no perspective, no experiences you call upon. You simply enjoy argument, criticism, and insult. The blogs are crammed with you doing nothing but that. 17 out of the 78 comments in this thread alone are yours, doing NOTHING but arguing and insulting…it’s your way. If anyone else made that many comments with that much diatribe, Marti would accuse them of hijacking her blog. That, in itself, says a lot.

Oh my oh my, I see again that certain questions have again been avoided.

So just because the profound thoughts and contributions of women and black people and plenty of other people have not been recorded means that the ideas of the enlightenment don’t apply? Again you put more weight in the messenger than the message. A classic logical fallacy.

So you don’t think all people should be equals? Because Egalitarianism never pretended that all people were currently in an equal situation. The whole point was that birthright was invalid! Otherwise they would have happily kept the nobility! The error historically has come from people who only wanted to shift the benchmark and move privilege only to some not all. This is counter to the notion of egalitarianism.
The philosophical truth comes not from an assumption that everyone is identical, the variability of talent and skill is recognised, however the point is that all people should be treated as equal. Something that has never happened because people using the same arguments as you wanted the power and balence redressed for their own groups while maintaining the inequality for others.
Suggesting that all people should have equal rights, equal support, equal recognition.. how can that gloss over womens issues when it directly demands they be raised to a level that has not yet happened in the modern world?

Your arbitrary catagorising of things, ideas as ‘male’ is both sexist and stupid. It disregards womens importent and often suppressed contributions to science, maths, philosophy etc. It limits women to what? Illogic? Some sort of might-makes-right notion of power?

The combined notions of freedom and equality are the principles behind most modern schools of ethics. If you think that equality is invalid because men thought of it what system of moral/ethical reasoning do you subscribe too? What makes the things that have been done to women against their will wrong if it is not the fact that it is against their will ie that it violates their self determination ie that it is a violation of their freedom and equality?

You think I’m caucasian because of the people I appeal to as sources of Authority? I haven’t appealed to anyone as a source of authority! I have pointed to the validity of IDEAS not people. Ideas that no-one has yet successfully invalidated over many centuries. Maybe you are unaware of the importance of the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates in the non-western world? They were held in higher regard in the islamic world than the christian for a large part of history! Maybe you aren’t aware of the influence of Aristotelian logic on confucian, taoist and bhuddist philosophy?
Ideas flowed back and forth along the silk and spice roads. Even religions moved back and forth and mixed together. Maybe you never knew how prevelant Islam has been in China or that Quan Yin the compassionate one is believed to have originated in the appropriation of icons of Mary. Your the one whose arguments appear to be culturally ignorant!

Lots of people know that the world isn’t egalitarian. Even white males. Plenty of Irish Australians are old enough to know that. Plenty of red haired people with extremely white skin know that in Australia you can actually be too white. Huge groups of people have known that the world isn’t egalitarian only the most sheltered and ignorant would say otherwise. That doesn’t invalidate that they should be treated as equals just because they aren’t!

So if people shouldn’t be treated as equal? What? What then defines how people should be treated?

“What feminist is it that argues for people with penises to be in the women’s room based on the atrocities of the Holocaust?”

What happened to your brain? Or are you deliberately misstating my actual position? This is the second time you have stated I’m advocating something that I am not. Why would you say that again when you know it isn’t true?
I’ve ACTUALLY argued against the existence of communal space in toilets and other public amenities like changerooms and showers so there won’t be mens rooms, womens rooms or co-ed rooms but unisex one-person-at-a-time rooms! And I didn’t mention the attrocities of the holocaust in relation to that.

I had relatives die in the gas chambers. Did you? By your own arguments unless you did shouldn’t you just listen to my points on the matter and accept them? Or do you consider the message valid irrespective of the messanger but only when you are the messanger?

I mentioned the attrocities of the holocaust in direct relation to your ‘not my problem’ argument! I was appropriatly and aptly demonstrating that people who allow abuses and oppressions to occur without speaking out because they do not effect them personally or a specific group they consider themselves belonging too are also guilty of the attrocity. A specific example related directly and specifically to a simple principle argument in basic moral reasoning. A field that it seems you could do yourself and everyone else a substantial service by exploring.

So stop arguing against things I’ve never said, points I’ve never made. Address my actual agenda, my actual argument. Getting it wrong on account of a mistaken assumption is reasonably understandable the first time but to reiterate the idea when I have directly stated otherwise is falsehood.

And while your at it, why don’t you go back to explaining your toilet double standard?

>“Women are not born”… but we are definitely made, meaning socially constituted which the trans movement does not want to discuss.”

“Wow, have you got it backwards. There is a particular class of transwomen who I refer to as “transsexual fundamentalists” who love your anti-trans rhetoric, but who insist that gender is very specifically not a social construct, because they perceive that idea to be at the heart of what they think of as they transgender fallacy.”

I can read too. This is what is called the HBS group and I definitely disagree with them on their attributions of ‘cause’ as they are fundamentally essentialistc. You may say that I agree with their conclusions about the movement but I don’t agree with their foundations. At a fundamental level they are saying the same thing the trans movement is saying only there is a “the devil made me do it” twist. I do not doubt that there are kids. I’ve seen Oprah but the role of learning is being discounted by the HBS group. The whole trans movement is predicated on the mysterious idea of internal gender. I say someone may learn a way of expressing themselves that is gendered in society. So what? That doesn’t mean they are women. There are masculine women. By the way, I don’t support gay men who assert they were born gay or lesbians who say the same. It’s far more powerful to say, “Yes, I choose to love other women because women are worthy of love”, politically than it is to say, “I have a woman-loving gene – or my hormones made me do it.”

“The “trans movement” however, such as it is, is predicated on that principle. Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes? That’s exactly the argument we’ve been having among ourselves, with most of the people you’re now taking such a strong position against, arguing in favor of what amounts to your own position: that gender is a system, not a box.”

I realize that during this discussion that I have taken a position due to the implicit politics of the trans movement and I can’t take a what to me is a cogent position without confronting part of that politic which is the assumption of homogeneity of all of the people under your umbrella. It looks like this:

Transvestite/crossdresser = drag queen = kid (ala Oprah) = late transitioner.

Under trans politics they are all the same. They do not look the same to me. Only one in that population will coincide with De Beaviors definition of a woman which are the children on the Oprah show.

“Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes?”

I want to return to this question. I don’t think gender exists. If you remove gender as an explanation could we re-examine the contents of your umbrella. Here your loudest talker is a cross dresser (how appropriate). He is a gender stereotype but not the kind you are speaking about.

Now then, I don’t know the people here. Felix is rather nice and I could talk to felix. Val, actually when you aren’t putting words in my mouth, you’re OK. But I want to continue with this. I’m not concerned with your poltics. I’m just not. In that respect, it sounds like you are bombarded with rejection. Have you wondered why? You have people with you-know-whats who desire to keep their you-know-whats and they wanted to be responded to as women when women do not have you know whats. Included under your umbrella are drag queens who are often misogynistic. They openly say they are men. You have transgenderists who want to keep their you know whats. You have the hbs types who want nothing to do with you and it’s clear your movement annexes them. You have kids whom I think have are legitimate when they say “I am a boy or girl”. Then you have sixty year old men who have been men all their lives and have no earthly idea how women apprehend the world and they never will. So there is an A to Z that isn’t one boat but perhaps ten.

These people are all as different as can be. It’s the backdrop of patriarchy that makes them appear the same. But this umbrella has no credibility but seemingly an incredible amount of power.

At the center of the trans movement is this MAGIC thing called gender. “That football player or paratrooper over there is really a woman.” “That sixty year old man who has been married as man four times is really a woman.” The crossdressing logician here would support such a stement while claiming to be the king of logic. There’s absolutely no logic or foundation to it. It’s simply male declaration. That’s all it is.

But here is the problem your politics presents. Because of the absurdity of your movement and by absurd I mean, you want that crossdresser in my bathroom because of his hobby. If I said, if the child were in treatment, then is would be OK for her to be in the bathroom. Then the crossdresser jumps up and the sixty year old man jumps up. Remember, felix asked about a “preop” (ever notice how your movement turns people into objects?). Felix said nothing about their social history. If a young person has shown a life long history of an identity that is not consistent with original their original assignment and they are in treatment in preparation to have their body fixed, OK. But not transgenderists. Not someone who has actually lived as a man. No drag queens or crossdresser or transgenderists. Haven’t they made their choice? You will probably scream at this but this is how I feel about it. Your are supporting some boats that really look absurd. When I eliminate “gender” from the picture, most of the boats look absurd. What does the drag queen have in common with the sixty year old man? What does the sixty year old man have in common with the kid? The one assigned as a male will actually have a radically different life than either the drag queen or the sixty year old man.

“Are you really so primitive that you think of transwomen as nothing but gender stereotypes?”

I think they are a very heterogeneous group of people. I think some are valid and some because of their own choices, chose to let the cake burn in the oven. You can turn them into victims if you like but what is not arguable is that a constellation of things were more important to them. It may be male status and privilege or family or whatever but they made their choices. By the same token so do transgenderists.

“I put it to you that you argue out of ignorance of what “transgender” really is, what its language and issues are, and who the people really are that inhabit it. You insist that none of it is your problem, but you have chosen to be hostile to something you really know very little about.”

I am ignorant and I admit that because “transgender” makes absolutely no sense to me, especially since I see gender as a social construct. I see your movement as being male defined and doesn’t care about women. If you don’t care about women, how can you claim to be one? Do I have to know a lot about the KuKluxKlan or NAMBLA to know I oppose them? The way your movement reifies gender as well as defines it supports the very foundations of the justifications, used by patriarchy, to oppress women. There really is no way that you can avoid saying that politically the trans movement hurts women. “Transfeminism” is not feminism at all because it’s trans-centric and not woman centered.

So, I haven’t been spiteful or hateful and I haven’t attacked anyone here. If you wish you can explain transgender to me. BUT, keep in mind that I think that both sex and gender are social constructs and as such they are not separable at all because they are social phenomena. So I don’t buy into women with you know whats at all and I do not see someone who would be OK with a you know what as a woman. Do I see them as gender stereotypes? No. I see most them simply as men. You spoke of the transgender fallacy. I have not been able to even hear a cogent statement so I have no idea what it is. It also starts with a pseudo-sophisticated spiel on how sex and gender are not the same. I would say that they are the same. Patriarchy has defined and constructed both of them along lines of power. So yes, I am ignorant but probably not indoctrinatable. Sex and gender point to who has power and who doesn’t.
“Oh my oh my, I see again that certain questions have again been avoided.”

They haven’t been ignored. My take on them is that they are hopelessly dense.

Long post, that merits thorough consideration and response.

1) If both sex and gender are social phenomena, then on what possible grounds can you be so certain as to what a man and a woman are? You are explicitly permitting exactly the subjective experience on which a lot of transpeople base their existence. You appear to be simultaneously rejecting and embracing essentialism (a point Batty has tried to make, at more length).

2) I know many trans people who do not adhere to the strict doctrine of “having been born this way” but who in fact assert their own agency and will… their choice, if you will. And yet you would seem to reject precisely those people, because such an act of agency is a more adult, than childish approach.

3) You probably know something of what it means to grow up lesbian, or even gay. You know nothing of what it means to grow up trans - to have that consciousness that something really, really just isn’t right - and then to have to work out the consequcnes, in the face of what appears to be immutable reality. The fact is that many of those who transition as adults were those kids you see on Oprah, but they didn’t have the privilege of the kind attentions of a culture now fascinated with the phenomenon.

4) I really hope you are not equating trans people with members of NAMBLA or the KKK. In any case, yes… if you are so dedicated to our destruction, it does behoove you to learn more about us. No one seriously committed to the elimination of a class of people should do so from a position of ignorance.

5) The problems you identify with the infamous transgender “umbrella” are well known, and are the subject of much rancorous debate among ourselves. The points are more well taken than either you or Susan would like to believe, but there are problems of differentiation which are too subtle in many cases to dismiss the entire thing out of hand.

More later. Must have tea.