Interestingly, Sherri Shepard was on Sirius OutQ’s “OutQ in the Morning” just before she started on the View and was all about the gays, though I don’t remember her saying anything about transfolks. I guess now that she got the job, she’s letting her real self come out.
Sherri was proud to openly bash transgender behavior, but notice her complete change in attitude when Barbara asked her how she would feel if her son said he was gay. Another example of how transfolk do not enjoy the same respect under political correctness as gays and lesbians.
She’s saying she’d abuse her son if he turned out to be trans. Psychologically, perhaps, but it is abuse. The lack of acceptance, the ironclad requirement to act cis. Sorry, but she’s about as wrong as wrong can be here.
Somehow, looking at the responses Sherri makes in ‘The View’, and the contrasting responses she makes outside the boundaries of the show; it gives me the impression Sherri was only play acting in ‘The View’.
In fact, she looks to have been employed by the show to be a comic relief with mindless statements for entertainment purposes.
good observation by lana, that trans people can still be disrespected in the pc circles. this, i think, is at the root of the whole hrc/enda thing. trans people are still seen as freaks, even in the glb view.
Interesting, too, how this debate ALWAYS focuses on boys wearing dresses, never on girls wearing trousers. Don’t give me the “it’s for their own protection/clothing is a cultural thing” argumetnt. Girls can wear (more or less) what they like because tomboyishness is not perceived as threatening to the social order, whereas sissyness is. A female presenting as masculine is seen as no big deal in this society; a male expressing femininity is seen as taking a step down from manhood and this is due to deeply-rooted sexism and mysogyny.
I dated what most people consider a dyke woman for over 10 years shortly after SRS. This woman had the word dyke stamped on her forhead. She was tall for a woman, big boned, definatly female yet she liked to wear comfortable mens style shoes, and sh had a mans suit that she occasionaly wore. Inside, she was not dyke although she was Lesbian. Most never saw that.
I have seen from first hand experience that women also are not given any slack at all if they cross the line. The line may be a bit furthur down the beach for a woman than it would be for a man, but don’t you think for one minute that women can outwardly dress as a man and get away with it, even when they are NOT trying to be a man or present themself as one. Just because a woman can dress in jeans or slacks or even a chequered red and white lumberjack shirt, they are not being men nor are they trying to pass themselves off as such. The transgendered do not fall into the same category and the argument is as moot as the one that there are a lot of masculine looking females out there… yes there are, but they ARE female, and they dont have to prove it, nor are they trying to disprove it.
> but don’t you think for one minute that women can outwardly dress as a man and get away with it
What do you call “getting away with it?” Drag performance, a la Marlene Dietrich? How about going to the prom dressed in a tux, the polar opposite of which is forbidden?
Your aside regarding the actual gender being expressed by such presentations is just that: beside the point. The fact remains that masculine presentation, largely because it is the cultural default, is far more acceptable for a woman than is feminine presentation for a man.
By the way, aren’t you the person who opened up by establishing her credibility as straight and married, and just recently sniffed that most of the rest of us “are probably gay?”
I’m reminded somewhat of some rather infamous transwomen who go on and on about how the most authentic expression of the true transsexual is total assimilation into the mainstream, and a complete divorce from everything “trans”… and yet their own relationships - friends, intimates - are almost all trans.
Queer is as queer does, kiddo. Welcome to the bandwagon.
That’s just what the poor kid in Indiana needs, a homosexually oriented legal team filing a lawsuit to defend the position that presenting in the opposite gender is not an expression of a sexual preference/orientation. Oh yeah…that’s gonna change some minds alright.
“The fact remains that masculine presentation, largely because it is the cultural default, is far more acceptable for a woman than is feminine presentation for a man.”
Absolutly correct… and as it should be in my opinion. What do you want from society? What is the purpose of blurring the sexes? Isn’t it a bit self defeating to you as a transsexual woman ? I mean if we merge the visual definition of the sexes will you blend better? Is that the true agenda behind the transgender movement, to so blur the definitions and cue’s that we all can dress as we like? and if you attain this what exactly does it do for a transsexual that wants to transition, I mean there would be nothing to transition too since the both would be one… am I missing something here ?
*****************
“By the way, aren’t you the person who opened up by establishing her credibility as straight and married, and just recently sniffed that most of the rest of us “are probably gay?” “
Now Listen ….
I never said I was “ALWAYS” with guys, just that I am “NOW” married to one, and the woman I refered to was some 20 years ago. Long before that even, I was married to a woman but I didn’t consider her a lesbian. In fact, even though the woman I spoke of was a gg lesbian I didn’t consider myself a lesbian. I was dating a woman who herself was not in love with the GLB either.
I corrected my gender not my sexuality. Yes, I liked women back in the day as do most hetero TS’s. Most of us try to assume the role of Lesbian because it fits the mode we find ourselves in when we transition. Unless a T woman is inherently gay to begin with they are not likely to find a guy either during or soon after transition that they can be with, so most of us either end up alone or we try to “convert” wives and sweethearts to lesbians… such is male privledge. Some of us end up in relationships with GG Lesbian women and some find their future there. Many others end up dating other transgender’s or transsexuals. I have done that too! I have dated such woman yes, and I learned a lot from those relationships, one of which was that I was not happy being with women any more. I dont know what changed in me, perhaps the many many years of post op life, perhaps the realization that my journey was not complete. Perhaps it simply takes a while to trust yourself and to let men in. With GG’s, it takes 12 to 15 years on average, why do we assume that it would take us any less? As I have said to people before, and I believe it to be true, we have srs, and the real transition begins. Up to then its all getting ready to be born.
> Isn’t it a bit self defeating to you as a transsexual woman ?
Sorry, but I don’t care to enforce arbitrarily rigid boundaries on everyone else, just to support my own identity. As it happens, my own presentation is comparatively normative. But unlike you, I don’t feel threatened by nonconformant gender performance in others, and in fact celebrate it.
I don’t need to keep boys in pants, just to protect myself from others’ judgment.
Reading the rest of the above, and recalling this:
> I would rather not get into a debate on why I don’t support gay rights, suffice to say that I have never felt their support, so why should I support them ?
It appears to me that you, who have engaged in queer behaviors - how long ago is really beside the point - actually prefer to avoid gay rights issues simply in order to avoid any remaining taint of the Big Bad Gay in yourself. It’s a defensive, dissociative strategy, rather than any kind of considered political posture.
When you can comment like an adult, I’ll treat you like one. You can be an elitist ass till the cows come home, but when you start making sexually derogatory comments, expect to have them deleted.
but its ok to call me an elitist ass is it? I tried being nice to Val… and what do I get for the trouble ? more of the same … “your as queer as the rest of us BS” . ONLY a gay man would even suggest that, for certainly I and others that do not march to the gay banner have heard the same tripe from gay men since the the day we started transition. Not ONCE have I ever heard it from mainstream .. and you want me to tell you why I dont support you in gay rights … unbelievable!
She didn’t make a sexually derogatory comment, you did. You can be as obnoxious as you like within certain limits… but you have to know that this is out the bounds of good taste.
I missed the comment, but I think I can infer it. Leigh has been reading from a script, endorsed and promoted by people who like to think of themselves as insurgents against the great tide of PostModern Tranny Blasphemy. Like all radical fundamentalists, they can see the world only as divided, in this case between people who subscribe to a strictly approved narrative, and Flaming Fags.
And more power to them, really. I don’t believe in any one approach, and the bersekers pounding the barricades have their uses too, even if they are at least as prone to attack backward as forward, and cause no little collateral damage.
It must be hard living in an armored shell like that, with such narrow lines of sight.
Following this thread has been disappointing, though not at all surprising.
Instead of addressing the issue…the point…or the intended meaning of a post, the exchange digresses to a litany of repetitive, condescending back handed insults.
It must be hard living one’s life with such a limited means of expressing themselves.
You mean to say that it’s actually possible for you or Leigh to make a point about yourselves or the world as you see it, without either explicitly of implicitly (and your implications are never subtle) erasing, denouncing or snidely dismissing everyone who isn’t precisely conformant to your own identity politics, or without engaging in superbly twisted rhetorical tactics masquerading as reasoning?
This, I have to see. Skip the lectures. Drop the almost pathological xenophobia and boundary-policing.
Make a point and make it stick, entirely on its own merits.
I know this will be a novel concept for you, but ANY point one makes, EVERY time it is made, is either explicitly or implicitly presented.
Yes, it must be hard living one’s life with such a limited and, I must add, so utterly transparent an approach to discussion…it’s no wonder you are such a malcontent.
It is not possible to “Drop the almost pathological xenophobia and boundary-policing” since that is the heart of the subject matter.
The gays and transgenderists have implicated those with HBS(Harry Benjamin Syndrome, formerly known as transsexuals) into their realm, against their will, without concern for the medical condition fully understood and documented scientifically by the medical community, they continue through their vocal noise making within the gay movement to further implicate us into their big happy federation where they imply there are no bounderies between the sexes or the genders and that, come one come all we are as val has implied .. “All Queer”.
We, the HBS men and women of the world have been silent as this movement has gathered strength and sucked us into the vortex they have created in order to legitimize their fetishes and sexual deviencies. We take exception to being catagorized as part of their agenda or community and in order to fight back we too are becoming vocal against what we see as the tide of transgenderism that threatens to make laws that will effect OUR legitimacy, OUR lives, and regress OUR rights.
For every step you take to blur the lines and furthur the Homosexual agenda, you blur them for us too. We are not and never have been out to change society as you are. We are comfortable with society as it is, we are comfortable with the fact that heterosexuality is the default human condition, that most of the planets males do not want to be emasculated and that most of the planets females dont want emasculated males.
If the gay movement and the transgenders want HBS men and women to support them in their efforts they must remove us from their rolls, they must acknowledge our right to be different from them and you must publically acknowledge that the goals you seek and the issues you have, are not the same as those with HBS. The gays in particular must come to terms with the fact that HBS people are not merely over the top gay males that have removed their penis in order to hide their gayness.
This is at the crux of the matter for which HBS men and women are called elitists, scorned for having traditional views, villified for not supporting the GLBT.
I have put the issue as plainly as possible. There is no debating this. We are not interested in debating it. It is the ultimatum we now present against you, for we will not happily be consumed in your melting pot. You don’t need us and we certainly don’t need you.
1) I have no problem with you declaring yourself to be a member of a separate class, defined by a specific medical condition. Unfortunately, you have little evidence for that condition in either yourself or anyone else who hasn’t undergone an autopsy. In the absence of such evidence, you seem to base your assessments on purely political terms… that is, those who recite the party line are, and those who do not are not, like you in any substantial way. This strikes me as thin grounds for such a strongly held identity.
2) Where was all this energy when Michael Bailey was declaring all of us to be either AGP or HSTS? Is “transgenderism” really such a great evil in comparison? Your priorities are strange to me.
3) I understand that identity is something to be validated, not challenged at every turn - though I also know that neither you, Susan, nor any of the “HBS” advocates feel at all the same in return - but I maintain that, given your actual history, being so ardently anti-queer is more than just ironic, it is suspect.
4) Finally, if you don’t need us, then fine… why are you wasting your energy in this manner? I challenge you to make your stand on your own terms, and not in constant opposition to something you claim to be indifferent to.
5) Even if I weren’t trans I would be a progressive. Log Cabin Republicans make no sense to me. Neither do transsexuals who insist that gender and sex remain completely rigid for everyone else, just so that their own apparently delicate identity isn’t threatened.
A) As usual no reference to the post I made as a whole, merely more attacking as follows:
1) I hold as evidence Harry Benjamin Syndrome. I attended the Gender Unit at Charing Cross Hospital in 1978 at the age of 27 where I was diagnosed transsexual by the leading psychiatrist in the country, who was as a side note a really strict MF that challenged me(not asked) to immediatly go full time and get a varifiable job OR to never darken his doors again. I complied and fullfilled his requirements within one week. I have also seen several other gender psych’s prior to eventual SRS in 1985. Sorry that I cant present you with a death certificate…. yet.
2) I am not interested in Michael Bailey’s or for that matter Anne Lawrences diagnosis of what makes me, me. I did meet Anne Lawrence briefly one time and took an instant dislike to her. As I said in my post, I and other HBS men and women have been silent. Personally, I could care less if Michael Bailey writes a dozen books, doesn’t effect me at all since for the most part mainstream society is not likely to read them or care.
3)You know little of my actual history. We are talking some 28 years of full time in which I have run across all sorts of people from all walks of life. I have held low paying jobs and I have owned and operated several businesses in that time. I have lived in the cities and in rural america. I have had friends amongst gays and straights alike, I am anti-queer only in retalition to those in the gay world that would try to make me to be one of them as you have tried to do. I do not need to validate my identity but I sometimes need to challenge those that would try to invalidate it.
4) I never said I was indifferent to it. Nor do I have a stand to make. Simply, I am tired of listenening to the clap trap coming out of the gay world about transgenders and by association, transsexuals. Your group have done their work, you have sold HBS men and women down the river for your own agenda. You are on talk shows, are the topic of talk shows, on movies and feature specials, in magazines that delv into the psycho babble of gender expression and the “lifestyles” you have chosen. You are standing on the steps of congress, dressed to the nines looking like a bunch of June Cleaver era wannabe’s, or dressed to kill in cloth’s that would make a french whore look wholesome. In short, good job! You have managed to totally represent all of us in a light we don’t care to be seen in.. congratulations! For that, I now feel its the turn of HBS men and women everywhere to make it known that we are not you and that we would like very much if your group would make that clear to the world. I am doing my part to convey that message.
5) I don’t care what your’s or anyone else’s identiy might conform to. I just want it made clear that it’s not MY identity. Your right about one thing, my identity is delicate as is all our identities, for we are on the front lines in this war and it will be us the posties that suffer as a result of your constant babble to blur the lines. I am not your enemy, We are not your enemy .. you are your enemy. When you get a few years down the road in post op mode, you may see that what you sow today will come back to bite you in the rear. As with all things, be careful what you wish for, laws are easily made, seldom rescinded, and the law that fits today might be the one that works against you tomorrow.
“I have no problem with you declaring yourself to be a member of a separate class, defined by a specific medical condition. Unfortunately, you have little evidence for that condition in either yourself or anyone else who hasn’t undergone an autopsy.”
Only you, Val, could dismiss 50 years of medical and psychiatric research related to and regarding trassexuals.
The planet’s round, sweetpea, regardless of how flat you think it is.
I was under the impression that, in the absence of observable physical anomalies, those who have adopted the “HBS” label stake their claim to an intersex condition largely on post-mortem brain studies.
The world is round because it is demonstrably so, snuggly-woogums, not just because you assert it. And like it or not, we both live on the same planet.
Ah well. In all fairness, I didn’t really think you were up it. Rather than rise to the challenge to make an independent, coherent point, you descend further into the recitation of rote fallacies read from a playbook… lifted, with a deliciously absent sense of irony, from the radical feminists, to whom your central thesis - “you can tell a real woman because she behaves in precisely this way and no other” - is completely antithetical.
I will, however, grant one political point. “HBS” aside, it is clear that the “LGB” coalition is problematic as best. For education on this point, I look mostly to Katrina Rose, who has been sounding that alarm for many years, and whose accumulated evidence of malfeasance, malice and damage is pretty compelling.
The simple fact is that, while you may see a particular etiological doctrine as the boundary across which you and I erase each other, I care much less about that than actual strategies and outcomes.
And, painful as it all is - receiving contempt from just about everyone, from gay classists to radical feminists to transsexual separatists - I’m not convinced that it’s time to give up yet.
36 Comments, Comment or Ping
Ethan St.Pierre
Sherri Shepard’s house seems a lot like Barney Frank’s House. I wonder if Sherri Shepard will be running for Congress.
Dec 6th, 2007
Niss
Well she also thinks the world is flat… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbizzLzcpnM
And jesus predates everything
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckb0Pwfpkbc
I think her main purpose on the show is to make everyone else look incredibly smart and sane.
Dec 6th, 2007
Polar Bear
I hope not, Ethan. The CBC has too many with her attitude already.
Dec 6th, 2007
Leigh
I think sherry shephard is right, not politically correct perhaps but right none the less.
Dec 6th, 2007
Rebecca Juro
Interestingly, Sherri Shepard was on Sirius OutQ’s “OutQ in the Morning” just before she started on the View and was all about the gays, though I don’t remember her saying anything about transfolks. I guess now that she got the job, she’s letting her real self come out.
Dec 6th, 2007
Lana
Sherri was proud to openly bash transgender behavior, but notice her complete change in attitude when Barbara asked her how she would feel if her son said he was gay. Another example of how transfolk do not enjoy the same respect under political correctness as gays and lesbians.
Dec 7th, 2007
Lisa Harney
She’s saying she’d abuse her son if he turned out to be trans. Psychologically, perhaps, but it is abuse. The lack of acceptance, the ironclad requirement to act cis. Sorry, but she’s about as wrong as wrong can be here.
Dec 7th, 2007
YukiChoe
Somehow, looking at the responses Sherri makes in ‘The View’, and the contrasting responses she makes outside the boundaries of the show; it gives me the impression Sherri was only play acting in ‘The View’.
In fact, she looks to have been employed by the show to be a comic relief with mindless statements for entertainment purposes.
Dec 8th, 2007
nexy
good observation by lana, that trans people can still be disrespected in the pc circles. this, i think, is at the root of the whole hrc/enda thing. trans people are still seen as freaks, even in the glb view.
Dec 8th, 2007
Felix
Interesting, too, how this debate ALWAYS focuses on boys wearing dresses, never on girls wearing trousers. Don’t give me the “it’s for their own protection/clothing is a cultural thing” argumetnt. Girls can wear (more or less) what they like because tomboyishness is not perceived as threatening to the social order, whereas sissyness is. A female presenting as masculine is seen as no big deal in this society; a male expressing femininity is seen as taking a step down from manhood and this is due to deeply-rooted sexism and mysogyny.
Dec 8th, 2007
Northern Cyprus
I admire her for having te guts to say it on TV. It takes a lot of courage to say things such as that.
Dec 9th, 2007
ANja
It makes me angry that they still disn’t recognize that girls can be born with a penis.
Dec 9th, 2007
Leigh
I dated what most people consider a dyke woman for over 10 years shortly after SRS. This woman had the word dyke stamped on her forhead. She was tall for a woman, big boned, definatly female yet she liked to wear comfortable mens style shoes, and sh had a mans suit that she occasionaly wore. Inside, she was not dyke although she was Lesbian. Most never saw that.
I have seen from first hand experience that women also are not given any slack at all if they cross the line. The line may be a bit furthur down the beach for a woman than it would be for a man, but don’t you think for one minute that women can outwardly dress as a man and get away with it, even when they are NOT trying to be a man or present themself as one. Just because a woman can dress in jeans or slacks or even a chequered red and white lumberjack shirt, they are not being men nor are they trying to pass themselves off as such. The transgendered do not fall into the same category and the argument is as moot as the one that there are a lot of masculine looking females out there… yes there are, but they ARE female, and they dont have to prove it, nor are they trying to disprove it.
Dec 11th, 2007
Val
> but don’t you think for one minute that women can outwardly dress as a man and get away with it
What do you call “getting away with it?” Drag performance, a la Marlene Dietrich? How about going to the prom dressed in a tux, the polar opposite of which is forbidden?
Your aside regarding the actual gender being expressed by such presentations is just that: beside the point. The fact remains that masculine presentation, largely because it is the cultural default, is far more acceptable for a woman than is feminine presentation for a man.
Dec 13th, 2007
Val
By the way, aren’t you the person who opened up by establishing her credibility as straight and married, and just recently sniffed that most of the rest of us “are probably gay?”
I’m reminded somewhat of some rather infamous transwomen who go on and on about how the most authentic expression of the true transsexual is total assimilation into the mainstream, and a complete divorce from everything “trans”… and yet their own relationships - friends, intimates - are almost all trans.
Queer is as queer does, kiddo. Welcome to the bandwagon.
Dec 13th, 2007
Susan
That’s just what the poor kid in Indiana needs, a homosexually oriented legal team filing a lawsuit to defend the position that presenting in the opposite gender is not an expression of a sexual preference/orientation. Oh yeah…that’s gonna change some minds alright.
Dec 13th, 2007
Susan
…a high schooler described by Lamda Legal as a “…feminine gay male” no less.
Dec 13th, 2007
Leigh
Glad your paying attention
“The fact remains that masculine presentation, largely because it is the cultural default, is far more acceptable for a woman than is feminine presentation for a man.”
Absolutly correct… and as it should be in my opinion. What do you want from society? What is the purpose of blurring the sexes? Isn’t it a bit self defeating to you as a transsexual woman ? I mean if we merge the visual definition of the sexes will you blend better? Is that the true agenda behind the transgender movement, to so blur the definitions and cue’s that we all can dress as we like? and if you attain this what exactly does it do for a transsexual that wants to transition, I mean there would be nothing to transition too since the both would be one… am I missing something here ?
*****************
“By the way, aren’t you the person who opened up by establishing her credibility as straight and married, and just recently sniffed that most of the rest of us “are probably gay?” “
Now Listen ….
I never said I was “ALWAYS” with guys, just that I am “NOW” married to one, and the woman I refered to was some 20 years ago. Long before that even, I was married to a woman but I didn’t consider her a lesbian. In fact, even though the woman I spoke of was a gg lesbian I didn’t consider myself a lesbian. I was dating a woman who herself was not in love with the GLB either.
I corrected my gender not my sexuality. Yes, I liked women back in the day as do most hetero TS’s. Most of us try to assume the role of Lesbian because it fits the mode we find ourselves in when we transition. Unless a T woman is inherently gay to begin with they are not likely to find a guy either during or soon after transition that they can be with, so most of us either end up alone or we try to “convert” wives and sweethearts to lesbians… such is male privledge. Some of us end up in relationships with GG Lesbian women and some find their future there. Many others end up dating other transgender’s or transsexuals. I have done that too! I have dated such woman yes, and I learned a lot from those relationships, one of which was that I was not happy being with women any more. I dont know what changed in me, perhaps the many many years of post op life, perhaps the realization that my journey was not complete. Perhaps it simply takes a while to trust yourself and to let men in. With GG’s, it takes 12 to 15 years on average, why do we assume that it would take us any less? As I have said to people before, and I believe it to be true, we have srs, and the real transition begins. Up to then its all getting ready to be born.
This is my experience.. your result may vary.
Dec 13th, 2007
Val
> Isn’t it a bit self defeating to you as a transsexual woman ?
Sorry, but I don’t care to enforce arbitrarily rigid boundaries on everyone else, just to support my own identity. As it happens, my own presentation is comparatively normative. But unlike you, I don’t feel threatened by nonconformant gender performance in others, and in fact celebrate it.
I don’t need to keep boys in pants, just to protect myself from others’ judgment.
Dec 14th, 2007
Val
Reading the rest of the above, and recalling this:
> I would rather not get into a debate on why I don’t support gay rights, suffice to say that I have never felt their support, so why should I support them ?
It appears to me that you, who have engaged in queer behaviors - how long ago is really beside the point - actually prefer to avoid gay rights issues simply in order to avoid any remaining taint of the Big Bad Gay in yourself. It’s a defensive, dissociative strategy, rather than any kind of considered political posture.
Dec 14th, 2007
Leigh
comment removed.
Dec 14th, 2007
Marti Abernathey
When you can comment like an adult, I’ll treat you like one. You can be an elitist ass till the cows come home, but when you start making sexually derogatory comments, expect to have them deleted.
Dec 14th, 2007
Leigh
but its ok to call me an elitist ass is it? I tried being nice to Val… and what do I get for the trouble ? more of the same … “your as queer as the rest of us BS” . ONLY a gay man would even suggest that, for certainly I and others that do not march to the gay banner have heard the same tripe from gay men since the the day we started transition. Not ONCE have I ever heard it from mainstream .. and you want me to tell you why I dont support you in gay rights … unbelievable!
Dec 14th, 2007
Marti Abernathey
She didn’t make a sexually derogatory comment, you did. You can be as obnoxious as you like within certain limits… but you have to know that this is out the bounds of good taste.
Dec 14th, 2007
Val
I missed the comment, but I think I can infer it. Leigh has been reading from a script, endorsed and promoted by people who like to think of themselves as insurgents against the great tide of PostModern Tranny Blasphemy. Like all radical fundamentalists, they can see the world only as divided, in this case between people who subscribe to a strictly approved narrative, and Flaming Fags.
And more power to them, really. I don’t believe in any one approach, and the bersekers pounding the barricades have their uses too, even if they are at least as prone to attack backward as forward, and cause no little collateral damage.
It must be hard living in an armored shell like that, with such narrow lines of sight.
Dec 15th, 2007
Susan
Following this thread has been disappointing, though not at all surprising.
Instead of addressing the issue…the point…or the intended meaning of a post, the exchange digresses to a litany of repetitive, condescending back handed insults.
It must be hard living one’s life with such a limited means of expressing themselves.
Dec 15th, 2007
Val
You mean to say that it’s actually possible for you or Leigh to make a point about yourselves or the world as you see it, without either explicitly of implicitly (and your implications are never subtle) erasing, denouncing or snidely dismissing everyone who isn’t precisely conformant to your own identity politics, or without engaging in superbly twisted rhetorical tactics masquerading as reasoning?
This, I have to see. Skip the lectures. Drop the almost pathological xenophobia and boundary-policing.
Make a point and make it stick, entirely on its own merits.
Dec 15th, 2007
Susan
OK Val, now pay close attention…
I know this will be a novel concept for you, but ANY point one makes, EVERY time it is made, is either explicitly or implicitly presented.
Yes, it must be hard living one’s life with such a limited and, I must add, so utterly transparent an approach to discussion…it’s no wonder you are such a malcontent.
Dec 15th, 2007
Leigh
OK.. PAY ATTENTION … EXPLICITY
It is not possible to “Drop the almost pathological xenophobia and boundary-policing” since that is the heart of the subject matter.
The gays and transgenderists have implicated those with HBS(Harry Benjamin Syndrome, formerly known as transsexuals) into their realm, against their will, without concern for the medical condition fully understood and documented scientifically by the medical community, they continue through their vocal noise making within the gay movement to further implicate us into their big happy federation where they imply there are no bounderies between the sexes or the genders and that, come one come all we are as val has implied .. “All Queer”.
We, the HBS men and women of the world have been silent as this movement has gathered strength and sucked us into the vortex they have created in order to legitimize their fetishes and sexual deviencies. We take exception to being catagorized as part of their agenda or community and in order to fight back we too are becoming vocal against what we see as the tide of transgenderism that threatens to make laws that will effect OUR legitimacy, OUR lives, and regress OUR rights.
For every step you take to blur the lines and furthur the Homosexual agenda, you blur them for us too. We are not and never have been out to change society as you are. We are comfortable with society as it is, we are comfortable with the fact that heterosexuality is the default human condition, that most of the planets males do not want to be emasculated and that most of the planets females dont want emasculated males.
If the gay movement and the transgenders want HBS men and women to support them in their efforts they must remove us from their rolls, they must acknowledge our right to be different from them and you must publically acknowledge that the goals you seek and the issues you have, are not the same as those with HBS. The gays in particular must come to terms with the fact that HBS people are not merely over the top gay males that have removed their penis in order to hide their gayness.
This is at the crux of the matter for which HBS men and women are called elitists, scorned for having traditional views, villified for not supporting the GLBT.
I have put the issue as plainly as possible. There is no debating this. We are not interested in debating it. It is the ultimatum we now present against you, for we will not happily be consumed in your melting pot. You don’t need us and we certainly don’t need you.
Let our people go!
Dec 15th, 2007
Val
Ah. I see. So without recourse to special pleading, straw men, and other such gambits, you really have nothing to say.
Good enough. Let’s move on to Leigh, who appears to at least be making an effort…
Dec 15th, 2007
Val
1) I have no problem with you declaring yourself to be a member of a separate class, defined by a specific medical condition. Unfortunately, you have little evidence for that condition in either yourself or anyone else who hasn’t undergone an autopsy. In the absence of such evidence, you seem to base your assessments on purely political terms… that is, those who recite the party line are, and those who do not are not, like you in any substantial way. This strikes me as thin grounds for such a strongly held identity.
2) Where was all this energy when Michael Bailey was declaring all of us to be either AGP or HSTS? Is “transgenderism” really such a great evil in comparison? Your priorities are strange to me.
3) I understand that identity is something to be validated, not challenged at every turn - though I also know that neither you, Susan, nor any of the “HBS” advocates feel at all the same in return - but I maintain that, given your actual history, being so ardently anti-queer is more than just ironic, it is suspect.
4) Finally, if you don’t need us, then fine… why are you wasting your energy in this manner? I challenge you to make your stand on your own terms, and not in constant opposition to something you claim to be indifferent to.
5) Even if I weren’t trans I would be a progressive. Log Cabin Republicans make no sense to me. Neither do transsexuals who insist that gender and sex remain completely rigid for everyone else, just so that their own apparently delicate identity isn’t threatened.
Dec 15th, 2007
Leigh
A) As usual no reference to the post I made as a whole, merely more attacking as follows:
1) I hold as evidence Harry Benjamin Syndrome. I attended the Gender Unit at Charing Cross Hospital in 1978 at the age of 27 where I was diagnosed transsexual by the leading psychiatrist in the country, who was as a side note a really strict MF that challenged me(not asked) to immediatly go full time and get a varifiable job OR to never darken his doors again. I complied and fullfilled his requirements within one week. I have also seen several other gender psych’s prior to eventual SRS in 1985. Sorry that I cant present you with a death certificate…. yet.
2) I am not interested in Michael Bailey’s or for that matter Anne Lawrences diagnosis of what makes me, me. I did meet Anne Lawrence briefly one time and took an instant dislike to her. As I said in my post, I and other HBS men and women have been silent. Personally, I could care less if Michael Bailey writes a dozen books, doesn’t effect me at all since for the most part mainstream society is not likely to read them or care.
3)You know little of my actual history. We are talking some 28 years of full time in which I have run across all sorts of people from all walks of life. I have held low paying jobs and I have owned and operated several businesses in that time. I have lived in the cities and in rural america. I have had friends amongst gays and straights alike, I am anti-queer only in retalition to those in the gay world that would try to make me to be one of them as you have tried to do. I do not need to validate my identity but I sometimes need to challenge those that would try to invalidate it.
4) I never said I was indifferent to it. Nor do I have a stand to make. Simply, I am tired of listenening to the clap trap coming out of the gay world about transgenders and by association, transsexuals. Your group have done their work, you have sold HBS men and women down the river for your own agenda. You are on talk shows, are the topic of talk shows, on movies and feature specials, in magazines that delv into the psycho babble of gender expression and the “lifestyles” you have chosen. You are standing on the steps of congress, dressed to the nines looking like a bunch of June Cleaver era wannabe’s, or dressed to kill in cloth’s that would make a french whore look wholesome. In short, good job! You have managed to totally represent all of us in a light we don’t care to be seen in.. congratulations! For that, I now feel its the turn of HBS men and women everywhere to make it known that we are not you and that we would like very much if your group would make that clear to the world. I am doing my part to convey that message.
5) I don’t care what your’s or anyone else’s identiy might conform to. I just want it made clear that it’s not MY identity. Your right about one thing, my identity is delicate as is all our identities, for we are on the front lines in this war and it will be us the posties that suffer as a result of your constant babble to blur the lines. I am not your enemy, We are not your enemy .. you are your enemy. When you get a few years down the road in post op mode, you may see that what you sow today will come back to bite you in the rear. As with all things, be careful what you wish for, laws are easily made, seldom rescinded, and the law that fits today might be the one that works against you tomorrow.
Dec 15th, 2007
Susan
“I have no problem with you declaring yourself to be a member of a separate class, defined by a specific medical condition. Unfortunately, you have little evidence for that condition in either yourself or anyone else who hasn’t undergone an autopsy.”
Only you, Val, could dismiss 50 years of medical and psychiatric research related to and regarding trassexuals.
The planet’s round, sweetpea, regardless of how flat you think it is.
Dec 16th, 2007
Val
I was under the impression that, in the absence of observable physical anomalies, those who have adopted the “HBS” label stake their claim to an intersex condition largely on post-mortem brain studies.
The world is round because it is demonstrably so, snuggly-woogums, not just because you assert it. And like it or not, we both live on the same planet.
Dec 17th, 2007
Val
Ah well. In all fairness, I didn’t really think you were up it. Rather than rise to the challenge to make an independent, coherent point, you descend further into the recitation of rote fallacies read from a playbook… lifted, with a deliciously absent sense of irony, from the radical feminists, to whom your central thesis - “you can tell a real woman because she behaves in precisely this way and no other” - is completely antithetical.
I will, however, grant one political point. “HBS” aside, it is clear that the “LGB” coalition is problematic as best. For education on this point, I look mostly to Katrina Rose, who has been sounding that alarm for many years, and whose accumulated evidence of malfeasance, malice and damage is pretty compelling.
The simple fact is that, while you may see a particular etiological doctrine as the boundary across which you and I erase each other, I care much less about that than actual strategies and outcomes.
And, painful as it all is - receiving contempt from just about everyone, from gay classists to radical feminists to transsexual separatists - I’m not convinced that it’s time to give up yet.
Dec 17th, 2007
Leigh
…. and once again she coughs up a thesaurus …… lol
Dec 17th, 2007