i have a news feed on bloglines which gathers articles based on two google searches; transgender and transsexual. it helps me stay current with all things trans. i came across this story the other day, regarding a local trans woman in mesa, arizona, a few miles from my location.

in the first story from ktar.com, the headline from the feed reads “transsexual mesa man arrested for exposure” (emphasis mine). though the article itself is headlined “mesa transsexual arrested for exposure”. i guess ktar had to get in their digs. and the comments reflect the worst of humanity, referring to the trans woman with male pronouns, as a “freak”, confused, mentally ill, and one commenter considering themselves “fortunate to not have witnessed this news story”.

the second story from kpho channel 5 has the feed headline and article headline the same “transsexual charged with indecent exposure”.

az central.com reports the story as well, in the most objective and non-judgmental fashion.

the story itself is heartbreaking, on a few levels. i’ve encountered kendra on a message board a while back, and she’s complained about her neighbors on several occasions. the typical reports from transwomen that we’ve heard so many times in the past – childish and homophobic taunting and harassment, mostly from men who can’t seem to deal with people different from themselves. you know, the “family christian values” that members of lgbt community are accused of lacking.

not knowing the whole story, i can’t honestly make any kind of accurate assessment of the respective behaviors of each party. i can say that exposing ones self is never appropriate in our society except in a mutually consensual intimate context. and brandishing a gun, bb or otherwise, is far beyond inappropriate – guns are not toys, and even a bb gun can be deadly. but then again, we don’t really know to what level her tormentors drove her. she’s not the only person i know of to reportedly expose herself in public, nor is she the first person to recklessly brandish a weapon.

and having encountered these types of situations myself, i can understand what constant harassment of ones personhood and humanity can do to a person. and though i’d like to believe i’d never behave that way, it’s not like i’ve never surprised myself when i’m angry and upset.

julia serano, of whipping girl fame, is calling for transsexual narratives on her site, and on the trans group blog, in an effort to “challenge[s] psychologist Ray Blanchard’s causal theory of ‘autogynephilia’ “. further details are available on either linked site.

she plans on submitting her research to a peer-reviewed psychology journal. i believe this to be a worthy effort. no name or contact information of the people who submit their narratives will be shared or published.

i came across this article that covers a relationship between a trans woman and her female partner, in the context of national coming out day. it wasn’t the article itself that caught my eye, but rather the first three comments.

Posted by stevevs on October 12, 2007 at 10:06 a.m.
So did that one person go from being a guy to a lesbian woman?

Posted by olokun on October 12, 2007 at 10:52 a.m.
That’s what it sounds like, stevevs. I wonder how frequent that is. I also wonder how often the violence against “trans women” my [sic] straight men was precipitated by pre-op trans women secuding [sic] straight men then popping a surprise on them. I don’t condone violence, but that seems like serious provocation to me.

Posted by JustSayin on October 12, 2007 at 11:36 a.m.
“She described feeling “ripped apart” while still a biological male. “I had a desire for women, but I couldn’t really express it, and I didn’t know why.”"

So you have yourself surgically mutilated so you can become a lesbian? No ‘hate’ coming from me here, just absolute amazement.

olokun – there is no provocation worth violence – ya just gotta walk away.

this covers several issues – loaded language with “surgically mutilated”; “provocation” in being unfortunate enough to being attractive to some male, and failing to engage in the “big reveal” of ones medical history before he takes off your clothes, causing “popping a surprise”; among others.

i wonder about the reverse. imagine a scenario in which i am “provoked” to violence toward a man who failed to “reveal” he’d been “surgically mutilated” by circumcision, thereby “popping a surprise” on me. perhaps we ought to require everyone to carry “disclaimers”, clearly outlining any “mutilations” or other medical or social conditions, with a place for signatures by the “disclaimee”.

or, if one is offended by anyone or any body part that doesn’t exactly fit into ones idea of what a man or a woman is, you know, just ask, before you get into bed.

i came across an article on salon How did the T get in LGBT? and read through the usual unlikely bedfellows arguments. what particularly struck me was panther58′s comment in the letters.

I mean, you might be able to convince a married, straight conservative that a gay man can feel the same thing for another man that a straight feels for his wife. It’s a much harder sell, though, to convince a straight person that some guys will only feel whole after their penis has been lopped off.

here is a perfect showcase for misunderstanding. the stereotypical transgender narrative, created by patriarchal medicine, used to further push us into a corner. in the minds of “married, straight conservatives”, transgender people are simply men who will only feel whole after lopping off their penis.

never mind that transgender people include those assigned female at birth, as well as those assigned male at birth. never mind that a huge majority of transgender people never have their “penis lopped off”. never mind that most transgender people i know date members of the sex opposite to the one they were assigned at birth, rendering them gay after they transition.

don’t confuse them with the facts. it’s much easier to hate someone whose entire existence is defined by their need to cut off their penis.

i don’t believe panther58′s opinion is unique to the straight community. walt baby love, who posted on joe.my.god’s post about donna rose’s resignation from the hrc, says:

I always thought of transsexuals as gays who were so self loathing they were willing to mutilate themselves rather than be labeled gay.
Just being honest about what I think.

thanks for your honesty, walt. at least we know how horribly wrong the narrative forced upon us has manifested in the minds and souls of our fellow human beings. that same narrative trans people are forced to use (or were in some cases, in which therapists and other medical providers finally got a clue) to obtain medical care.

so what can we do? i guess continue the fight. continue the education. continue protesting harmful stereotypes. and wait until these dinosaurs die off.

i was going to wait until i finished it, but i just can’t. this book is amazing. julia serano is insightful, intellegent, and cuts right to the root of the issues. i was amazed even after the introduction and the trans woman manifesto, which are even before part one, chapter one. she rocks. this is required reading for *everyone*. and it’s even available on amazon. buy it and read it. now.

i’ve blogged about trans termonology here and here, and i believe i’ve finally found a definition for “trans” that works for me. you can find it on the blog no designation on their definition page. it reads:

Transgender or Trans – Traditionally defined as a person who doesn’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, I prefer to shift the focus away from assigned gender and define transgender as a person who’s gender is not universally considered valid. That means that someone, somewhere, will tell a transperson that they are not the gender they say they are. (ex: a transman is someone who identifies as a man and that there would be someone out there who would tell him that he isn’t a man)

this not only rings true for me with regard to my understanding of myself, but also with my experience as someone who is universally considered as a transsexual. since even the definition of the term “gender” is often shrouded in haze, i much prefer to define trans outside the context of gender, but not only because gender is a term whose definition is in flux.

if one looks at the traditional definitions of gender identity, it’s always in the context of how one views themselves in the context of an internal awareness of being a man or woman (or male or female). i’ve never had any such awareness. i wouldn’t know what an internal awareness of being a man or a woman is. and the fact that these traditional definitions often interchange “male or female” with “man or woman”, or “masculine or feminine”, as if these terms are interchangable. from my perspective, these terms mean very different things, and depending on which terms are used, the definition changes drastically.

on the other hand, i have personally experienced having my gender erased and invalidated, and i’ve personally experienced observing *all* trans people’s genders erased and invalidated, on many occasions. so this definition works very well for me.

on the flip side, many people who would be considered men and women based on their “identity”, that is, how they see themselves, their biology, that is, how they would fit into a classification based on whether they produce eggs or sperm, and their social standing, would also fit under this definition, while they would not consider themselves trans. .

and this is yet one of the many problems when we humans try to clearly delineate socially constructed classes of people within the infinite diversity of life.

via kactus’ post on twisty’s anti anti-trans-ness, it looks like the radfem’s vs trans argument once again rears its ugly head.

at least this time we’re not nutjobs.

it seems to me that this discussion keeps running around in circles. the way i see it, the two camps are simply not communicating, and to me, that just goes back to a basic misunderstanding of the terminology each group uses to express themselves.

i don’t post over on i blame the patriarchy because twisty insists that commenters use the caps key, and you know, i have issues with silencing, even if it’s because i don’t follow punctuation rules. :\

marti has written a post on the transgender vs transgendered “controversy” over on transadvocate (though since i’m now on the same domain, i don’t know that the “over on…” terminology is correct anymore). i’ve expressed my dissatisfaction with trans terminology in general many times in the past. in fact, i’d go as far as to say that i take issue with the term “trans” anything regarding those people, such as myself, who live outside the male/female dichotomy.

“trans-” as a prefix is defined as “across or through” by dictionary.com as well as most other dictionaries. scrolling down the page, it’s further defined by the american heritage stedman’s medical dictionary as a prefix as follows:

1. Across; on the other side; beyond: transilient.
2. Through: transpiration.
3. Change; transfer: transketolation.
4. Having a pair of identical atoms on opposite sides of two atoms linked by a double bond. Used of a geometric isomer. Usually in italic: trans-butene.

and as an adjective:

Having two genes, each carrying a mutation, located on opposite chromosomes of a homologous pair. Often italic.

all of these definitions frame the term trans in the context of a binary. and since trans refers to sex and/or gender (another set of terms that disturb me greatly), the presumption is that the general population of humans can be unequivocally divided into two sexes. that one is either male or female, that everyone is either male or female wholly, that no one exists outside the state of being male or female, and that the states of being male or female can be completely defined medically, scientifically, legally, socially, and any other “-ally” that controls our lives.

and unless you’ve bought into the brainwashing that suggests god created “adam and eve, male and female” only, and you’ve had your eyes and ears closed singing “la, la, la” while example after example passes by, we all know that the sex binary is totally false.

so i’ll take the transgender vs transgendered discussion a step further and object to both terms as being totally inaccurate and perpetuating false and harmful stereotypes.

in the mean time, i use “trans” as a noun to describe myself, only because people seem to know what i’m talking about. yet, if isna can lobby to change the term “intersex” to “disorders of sex development (DSDs)”, we ought to be able to come up with a term that at least describes who we are in a medically accurate and socially unstigmatized fashion.