On the MTV show called "True Life" there were two transgendered individuals that publicly detransitioned and it was jumped on by those that publicly are opposed to any help for transsexual children. They claim these two changed their minds as adults but the simple truth is neither of them were ever under care as transsexual children. Here is the link to the full MTV video.
http://www.mtv.com/videos/true-life-im-questioning-my-gender-again/1704884/playlist.jhtml
In many ways I feel sorry for these two young people. The MTF transgender individual is unquestionably a gay young man who somehow found a therapist that allowed him to do what he did although in all honesty there is really not much anyone can do about adults, over 18, getting implants and transitioning which is what this young man did well after his teen years. He obviously bought into the transgender mantra that you can be anything you want to be without ramifications. There should have been alarm bells going off when he decided for implants, big ones by the way, with no thoughts of SRS.
SRS was never in this person's thought process. He was upset because he could not find love as a man in a dress with a penis. What did he expect? His only option would be a tranny chaser and that has risks. He detransitioned to be a gay man which should tell everyone he was a gay man to start with and never transsexual but according to transgender activist certainly transgender.
The FTM individual started testosterone but she was never a he just a confused lesbian. I sometimes wonder what these incompetent therapists think about when they so easily agree with someone who obviously is confused about their gender but not confused about their sex so much. These idiots and their fellow transgender idiots have blurred the true difference between gender and sex in order to allow for gender fluidity that has lead to more than a few mistakes along the way. Listen to some of the Transgender activists and even look at them and what you see is a man who made a mistake. Look at the leadership of the old Transsexual Menace crowd and tell me that was not a mistake. This person now spends their time trying to spew their gender views on the world looking like a man and unfortunately acting like one yet many in the Transgender movement consider this individual important when in the simplest terms this is someone that made a mistake getting SRS and wants to demean its value to those who need it.
The same can be said of any FTM that wants to get pregnant because quite simply if you are a man why would you want to be pregnant. Only women get pregnant unless you want the publicity. The same goes for the Transgender crowd that believes keeping their penis does not prevent them from being women. It goes along with the male mantra that men get what they want and screw any women that get in their way. One could almost make a case that the pregnant men are doing it just to throw it in the face of women. Could they possibly be that shallow? Yes, I am sorry to say.
Detransition is another arrow used to deny transsexual children early hormone intervention. This entire fiasco simply goes to the point that therapists, shrinks, and the transgender activists have not one freaking clue about what being transsexual is truly about. It is not about the clothes. It is not about the shoes. It is not about gender. It is simply about being female for the truly transsexual MTF and simply being male for the truly transsexual FTM.
Truly transsexual people shudder at the thought of detransitioning and going back to what they never were. It is why SRS is so important to both the MTF and FTM transsexual. It is why we refuse to accept a man with a penis as a women or a woman as a man if she gets pregnant.
I do hope and pray that both of these individuals are finally happy but I kind of doubt it.
I cannot comment on what the effects of transitioning at 5 or 6 does for those that are not transsexual because I personally have never dealt with one. But I have dealt with kids that we helped that transitioned between the ages of 12-14 and without question they knew exactly who they were, girls, and what they wanted, SRS, despite their ages. Spend ten minutes talking with them and you knew they were the real deal and it is why we helped. There was never any regret nor did any turn back. Kim Petras is a classic example of the good that happens when estrogen intervention occurs early on before puberty.
Thankfully neither of these young adults had SRS but the male is headed for issues because he has had major injections of silicone into his body and the long term ramifications are unclear although the risk for cancer is certainly higher. The young woman has had to suffer throw laser hair removal and will need electrolysis to remove the remaining facial hair. Both of these young adults have paid a price for the folly of their actions which were certainly condoned and facilitated by the Transgender medical community all in the name of the gender free-for-all they have fermented.
It is not your gender that needs fixing if you are transsexual. It is your sex characteristics but this has been termed "unnecessary" which has led to this type of folly. Those that oppose helping children will point to these two, they already have, but as stated before these two were adults when they started this and it was their stupidity or lack of oversight or competence in the medical world that allowed these two disasters to take place.
Say a prayer for the kids that need help because it could be harder to get and right now it is darn hard to find a competent doctor that truly understands what a transsexual is and how to treat them. Treating a transsexual like you treat the transgendered is like treating a cancer patient for hemorrhoids, it doesn't work.
40 comments:
Elizabeth,
Part 1
Public “detransitioner” (“misdiagnosis”) cases are not good politically, but it’s to be expected medically—no medical practice is 100% accurate and its foolish to think otherwise. This will have to suffice as the spin for now. Thankfully this doesn’t happen as often as those that are successfully treated. However, blanket barnacling another group for a few mistakes in diagnosis is not intellectual honesty; progress is better than so called perfection. I see it in epidemic proportions and the Conservatives-RadFems are following suit to blow it out or proportion—not a wise move. I don’t know who started this chicken or the egg argument but it’s a waste of energy.
The work I did to obtain health insurance for transition related services had a political effect to legitimize transsexuals in our new sex in law. You’ve only seen 5% of my efforts online. This was an unexpected effect, given the diagnosis has been around for 60 some odd years, yet I’m curious why someone has never crunched the numbers on risk management issues and health cost analysis; the cost to treat a condition vs not treat it; usually conducted by a medical economist, health underwriter or risk manager.
One of the duties of my license stated I’m not allowed to discriminate or diagnose. So understand my work had to include all those diagnosed. When I worked as an intern at a large insurance defense firm, before I transitioned, I noticed a huge gap in the case law between diagnosed as a sex opposite of birth sex (functionally what transsexualism is) vs genetically born as a sex. So sifting through 700 boxes (each box contains up to 10,000 pieces of paper) of legal memorandum and discovery (YUK!!), indexing this case for storage—crap work law student interns get to do. I noticed a memorandum of law which included an actuarial study. Now I can’t discuss this particular case due to attorney client privilege, but it educated me how the insurance industry, knowing a condition costs less to treat a condition than not to treat it, can influence medical decisions or the legitimacy of a particular condition. I went through a paper storm to hide this particular fact.
You are correct that there is a LBG-Transgender influence involved in the politics related to transition related services. One of my industry articles was edited. I used a general paraphrased sentence: It’s commonly understood and it’s better to diagnosis and treat transsexual patients when young. This was also edited out of a prominent LGB publication. Post transition I worked my way up the ladder of a brokerage firm to vice president, then the association for the industry. Suffice to say I couched my work it in a few insurance industry publications and a law review article. A few phone calls to legislators and a couple visits to DC lobbying for the Underwriters Association, proffering that it’s arguable to conclude that for every $1 spent to treat transsexualism, it will cost $10 not to.
Part 2
I created a ball and let someone else run with it—I’m not the only one that worked on it, many more competent minds had their hands in this effort. I’m pleased with the results.
Unfortunately, I’m not pleased with your generation’s apathy and lack of action to create this same possibility for me when I ran away from home at 16 to transition; there was nothing but a stigma of AIDS in the mid 80s and a shut down system. A fearful 16 year old can’t be blamed for their lack of knowledge and no family support. No, you can only be guilty of a crime for your positive wrongs and only rarely for your failures to act. The danger was very real, but the fear was a choice, yet in my time I hit a wall, many others hit that same wall and died, others barely lived.
I still wonder if your generation’s apathy born from fear and hubris can account for those 50,000 (conservative estimate) who died? I’m not blaming you directly but that fear to identify yourself and lobby those powers that be in the 1970s, to oppose Raymond and other similar conservative regimes in the 1980s, could have saved more lives than the few that you deemed worthy to help.
You should be praised for your efforts. So if you look at that CGI image I shared (to you only) you can understand my concern and anger towards your blanket indictment of those that are unfortunate to be visibly transsexual as if someone black condemns another for not passing as white because they didn’t use enough bleaching cream on their skin. More often than not ones failure to transition young has more to do with societies ignorance than the ones lack of legitimacy as a transsexual. What would have happened if that ignorance was enlightened in the 1980s? I would not have suffered as much as I have.
My boyfriend tells me there was a huge market for bleaching creams that black people would employ to look more white I the 1950s. It was a sad point in history, drawing lines between generations that wanted to fit in with mainstream white society vs those beautiful people who wanted to remain true to themselves. Why does a person who is disabled, who can hide their disability, do so? This need to fit in to some preconceived notion of normalcy is the problem. The word normal needs to be redefined to be more inclusive. Wouldn’t you agree?
Part 3
CONCLUSION
Your apathy has caused far more damage than "Public Detransitioning."
@Black Swan
You are such a complete and total asshole. Of course you are attempting to blame me for something I and others like me had no control over. I and none of m friends and nobody I have ever know had AIDS although I know there were some in the sex trades that caught it. It was a horrible time.
why do ou continually try to make some form of racial analogy ? It is both pathetic and inaccurate. The straight and simple truth is that societal ignorance had something to do with what happens when young but those that fought it showed courage because even if they were denied as children they began and finished the process before their earl 30's which was early for my time.
I have total and complete sympathy for those truly born transsexual that cannot pass. I have little sympathy for those that are transgender and play their gender games and my sympathy is for the wife and children who have to face it. I have never wished any of them any ill will but telling me I should believe any dipshit that claims they are transgender and the same as all of us born transsexual is complete and total bullshit and the height of even your hubris but then I consider the source.
Your problem is you cannot understand the power of normal. No normal does not need to be redefined so a man in a dress is normal. It has been redefined so gay and lesbian is accepted as it should be and it should be redefined, if even necessary, so that those that have had SRS are "normal".
The problem you have is you express need to include fuckwits and perverts as normal. They are not and never will be. As long as they hurt nobody they have a right to their perversion and they have my permission to be a fuckwit whenever they like, just do not expect me to support them.
I thought you were not blaming me personally but then you have to add my apathy has caused more damage then public detransitioning. I cannot help it if you left to transition at 16 and failed. I cannot be held responsible if you waited until your mid to late 30's to transition. That was YOUR decision but then you wackos never wan to accept responsibility for anything.
I did what i had to do to get where I had to be. You did not so that is somehow my fault or others like me. I personally think it is more aptly a lack of our own personal character and courage that it took you so long.
Take a look in the mirror because the face looking back is why you ended up going through what you say you went through. I have my life and it was and is my right to live my life as a respected and well received member of the female/women of the world.
You on the other hand have chosen to demean women by attempting to redefine what we are and by some of the methods you use to make a living.
CONCLUSION
You are a typical delusional mid life transitioner that refuses to accept the simple concept you were weak when others were strong. Funny how I took two children to their womanhood in the 80's and surprisingly they were never questioned about AIDS or anything like that. Maybe you should consider our own lifestyle but then you would have to accept the simple fact you are incapable of accepting the simple fact you could have done it earlier but you did not.
So no I do not agree with any of your ludicrous analogies or your attempts to place blame on those just enjoying the lives they fought for harder than you ever did. You are such a pompous asshole at times.
why did you fail at transition at 16? Look in the mirror!!
Elizabeth,
I'm glad you were able to take two childresn to their womanhood. I just have one question for you: How did they find you? Or did you choose them?
@Black Swan
Actually there are more than two.
The first one found me in 1971. Another was brought to my attention by Harry. The others were found in varied ways or were pointed to us by friends who had walked this path earlier in their life or were doctors we knew.
If they met our qualifications we helped. If not we pointed them to doctors who could help. If we helped they bowed us not one thing other than trying to give back when they were able to. their own lives were what was important since they owed us nothing and they certainly owed some mythical community no one damn thing.
I've known several who fully or partially detransitioned. In each case they deceived the shrinks and themselves and paid the price. I know second hand of only one young "ts" who detransitioned. It turned out he was a gay boy who had parents who refused him to have sex with other boys. Claiming to be "ts" was a lever to gain parental approval. The truth came out when hormones began to kill his libido.
- an old aunty
You know Swan, you really are a case of misdirection. Let me explain: you are making this all about what you claim you have done in support of the TS cause against what Liz has done or not done. You also drag in the choice told remain anonymously and keep a history closed againstarading a medical condition to the idle curiosity of all and sundry. The fact is some of us have a choice in the matter and unfortunately most do not. So you blame all ills on those of us who live regular lives as wives and girlfriends dàughters and sisters. While doing so you seek to mitigate the damage the wanton publicity these idiots have sought. You are the fool here can you not see that fact. This is simply another one of your derails seeking to divert attention away from the subject matter under discussion. Or at least pointing fingers at places where they clearly don't belong. What a tiresome person you àre.
As for the .people in the show, I feel sorry for them because they are the ones who have fallen victim to the TG "We are all the same" nonsense, another fact that you deliberately avoid. For goodness sake figure things out for a change.
Cassanraspeaks
@Elizabeth,
"The first one found me in 1971."
-How did they find you?
-Who told them about you?
-Did you advertise?
-Was there a public forum?
-Since you have posted you only help minors (less than 18) how did this child find you without consent of an adult/guardian?
"Another was brought to my attention by Harry." This is a poor example of child-self determinism. This one is obviously privileged to have a progressive, insightful family because only an adult can consent to the care of a minor. My point, the child's efforts made no difference to finding you only an parental guardian could have gotten to you; chain of causality.
@CassandraSpeaks,
Elizabeth has not meet the burden of proof showing that "Public detransitioning” is a positive wrong and blame worthy.
If it is so.
Then: I proffer the argument that your generations apathy has caused far more damage than public detransitioning using Liz's own analysis for what is blame worthy.
Its not only on point but is shows a greater wrong to impeach the credibility of Liz's argument. Keep in mind when I use "You" and "Your" is in reference to "Your Generation."
Black Swan
My s
Apologies for some of the wording in my last comment. My second sentence should read "You also drag in what is a choice to remain anonymous and keep a history closed against parading a medical condition in front of all and sundry"
My apologies for the confusion, the iPad I'm using at the moment seems to want to put words in I don't intend.
Cassandraspeaks
@Black Swan
The primary criteria for every kid I and my friend have is they cannot afford to help themselves. Harry Benjamin rarely if ever charged anyone a dime he thought could not pay.
Neither I nor my friend owe some pretentious asshole like you any explanations for why and how we do and are doing what we do. we help children and their families that could not even afford the bus fare to meet Olsen or others.
You on the other hand are such a total pompous asshole. You have denied being born transsexual in order to make some of your claims for fame yet you question those of us that help. The kids we help would not fit your transgender world because they wee born transsexual and after they made it through they have gone on to lead productive lives as women, wives, and doctors. Unlike you they realized they were cured but you will always be "trans".
All of these children but one came from dirt poor families that defy any attempts to label them as privileged but then because your family are assholes anyone that has a family that are not certified assholes have privilege.
Harry brought the one child to me because he knew she was doomed unless we helped. That child's mother took a bus from Ohio with her 13 year old child and begged for help from Harry. He was almost retired by then but he asked me if I would meet with the mom and the child.
I did and I had the money to help so I did. There were no ulterior reasons nor do we require they maintain contact with us. No obligations but then you would just not understand this would you?
Leigh says you enjoy the attention but I enjoy how you continually put yourself in a corner and then try and place the blame or onus on others like me.
You believe you have the right to question me on why and how I have helped children. It is simple but then it has always been beyond you. They pushed their parents into seeking help just like I did with my mom. All we did is take the financial burden off a family that could never have afforded to help.
If you find that difficult to understand or comprehend then I would feel sorry for you but then you are so self absorbed into the Transgender lies it is impossible for you to feel anything for these kids because you were somehow denied help.
The simple truth is most of us, me included, were initially denied help but pushed ahead regardless. You did not and you feel the need to blame others for your self-perceived slight but then you did not make any attempt in your twenties but you have always sought the spotlight in your own sick little ways.
Look in the mirror.
Reading some of the commentary and endless questions by Black Swan, I simply must ask... is she a real person, or is she one of Cristan Williams' sock puppets? The similarities are uncanny!
Black Swan is a real person.
Back to the subject!
Last weekend I was at a small gathering a lesbian couple was having just because it's spring. Curious, spawn of satan hater that I am I don't seem to give two figs about who loves whom...
Anyway! One of the other guests was a lovely young woman (recently out) who had also just gotten her Masters in Gender Studies. Being that she was now "certified" as the fount of all wisdom she was holding court on the subject of "trans!" I sometimes wonder why the gods delight in fucking with me so! Because rarely have I had to work so hard in holding my tongue as I did that afternoon lest I out myself most horribly!
NOTHING this young woman said in anyway pertained to the reality of those children born transsexual. NOTHING! This erstwhile and big hearted young woman had just spent three years in acquiring a completely bogus degree in a completely bogus subject so she can "help" the LGBT trans-community!
Help? Help? Really? You call what she is wanting to do help? Because based on the many silly things I heard her say she is a fools fool who will happily lead legions of young women questioning, and rejecting their roles in a patriarchy to take testosterone as "men." Hey it's their problem when they wake up years later infertile balding with a beard and a baritone!
And god forbid this now certifiably dangerous person ever lays hands on a young child of either sex born transsexual! Any that is so damnably unlucky as to fall into her lair will be lead down her rose petal strewn path towards a lifetime in the "ghetto of other!"
My mother use to say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and never in my life have I seen that more clearly than I did that day!
So do these very public displays of immature and foolish people (all labeled trans, ne transsexual) waking up to the mistakes they made hurt those actually born transsexual? With them that as the narrative and these legions of helpers stirring the waters even more! You might as well line all the young ones up against the wall and at least have the humanity to get it over with quickly!
MKIA
Apart from what has already been mentioned there are a number of reasons why de-transitioning by individuals has a significant impact specifically younger transsexual but also those who transition not in their teens. The reasons are both political and medical.
The medical dimension is that incidents such as this appear to patently demonstrate that diagnosis of transsexuals is largely a crap shoot. The reason why it has become a crap shoot is that transsexualism as a medical condition was annexed by the psychiatric/psychological community in the early '70s and was expanded into an industry in the late 90s.
In doing so, this community claimed huge amounts of research dollars and virtually all research was conducted into "gender" issues. Add to that the entire inception of gender studies etc. created this industry the outflows of which we see everywhere today. What however was missing was actual medical research into the transsexualism is missing almost entirely. The result was that what Benjamin and Pauly began was not further developed into a body of work that would have provided real science for one thing: That transsexualism and gender variance are two entirely distinct issues.
#2 to follow
Lacking this distinction, the impression has been created in the eyes of the public that "we are all the same" and that transsexualism is somewhat of a life style choice. It is on this basis that the general consensus that treatment until the individual is of age has to be postponed. In addition, because of the perception that this is a lifestyle choice, the public has felt free to opine about the rightness or wrongness of "decisions" by transsexuals. Combine that with the annexation of "transsexualism" as justification for "gender" based distress syndromes it is clear that the conflation of sex and gender has significantly harmed young transsexuals but not only them.
#3 to follow
When persons de-transition they are recognized as having made the wrong choice. Consequently, those that have no choice are assumed to have one. Being perceived as persons with a choice, needed treatment is refused or at least deferred. That is an often life aletring or ending determination.
This is where the political dimension, you, BS so eloquently speak of comes in. The actual role of responsible women with a transsexual history have in this is to ensure that gender variant do not do anything to obscure the reality of transsexualism. Trans-activism, including yours does exactly that. It obscures the reality of transsexualism often out of a misplaced sense of compassion with someone who apparently suffers from gender variance issues. You believe that the distress you see around you among the gender variant justifies lying about the underlying medical-transsexual issues and about the the underlying gender variant-psychological issues. You hope to obtain a measure of relief for those that you pity and feel compassionate about. It is one of the worst forms of the end justifying the means, and in the process you actually do huge damage to everyone.
MKIA
Thank you for saying what has been on my mind for a while now.
May it be slow burning and itching ass cancer. :)
NYF
To all
Personally I do not wish illness or harm on anyone that comments on my blog because it is against my personal beliefs and that certainly goes for Black Swan and even June Hingle.
O would suggest we cool it on the getting cancer and dying stuff.
Thanks.
Liz
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/susan-ann-robins.html
Andrea James spotted that one.
http://lgbtweekly.com/2011/07/28/defining-the-many-women-in-our-global-society/
Spotted again!
......................
This blog is loaded with "Trolls" who backup this blog.
About "Trolls":
http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/19/how-to-starve-the-trolls/
You Elizabeth are 67 1/2 years old. You shame other people for being who they are. What are you ashamed of Elizabeth...showing an updated photo of yourself that isn't 40 years old? Maybe your obvious pleasure for mocking people has something to do with your own lack of? You have several people here on this blog who consistently back you up, that have a history of mocking other people because of "their own person burdens", making it difficult for them to live normal lives, whereas they have to spend so much time berating other people to coverup for their own lack of whatever... Look in the Mirror Elizabeth!
What the idiots like BS and the rest of the tee-gee brigade fail to recognize is that the very public detransitions such as were covered in the MTV program and elsewhere involved young people (the current bone of contention in treatment circles) and also illustrate that, at least to many, transition is a choice.
When the tee-gee brigade made the decision to conflate transsexualism with everyone else they shove under the umbrella, they brought the fun-trans autogynophiles to the table...the ones who just want "boobs" yet still want to retain their original equipment. They have no compelling mental disconnect but instead and for whatever reason feel that mid-life changes by choice sound like fun...then reality sets in. But because they shoved persons with a transsexual condition to the back of the bus, the masses now see the stories in the papers that make all trannies out to be people who made a choice, missing out on the small demographic that had a very real condition where the only choice was transition or die. If someone got to their 40's, they did not have that inner conflict...
Public detransition does a very real disservice to those poor souls who would otherwise benefit from competent medical care by qualified professionals (not the gender quacks that have turned up seemingly on every corner nowadays).
@June
Sorry dipshit but the only troll around here is you. In fact you are also a sockpuppet. Would ou like me to list the names you have posted with on just this blog? I can think of at least six.
what do these links have to do with anything? I have never supported Bailey, Blanchard or any of those clowns.
This is the same complaint you make on every comment I let through by you.
Why would I show an updated photo of myself. That photo is when I was 25 and my life is private unlike yours.
I am a blogger that writes about the oddities in the Transgender community which fortunately gives me lots to write about. Just look at you.
You June Hingle are just so mockable it is beyond my willpower not to mock you. COme on just looks at June Hingle.
A preposterous little man who in his 50's had a revelation where his garage roof mysteriously melted away over his head and the magic fairy in the sky informed him he should be a girl so the little man walked into the house an announced to the wife he was getting a sex change. He had never been to a therapist but immediately started a website so this "well known expert" on transition could help all those he knew required his help. After all everyone knows a 50 year old man knows more about being a woman than anyone else. Just ask him.
Then you lied to your therapist and her competence was so pathetic ou convinced her you were a Type VI Benjamin transsexual which if the very thought was not sickening and insulting to those actually born that way would have made me laugh for about a week.
You then redesigned or recreated your past so you always knew you were a girl and then accused me of screwing every gay boy while you managed to avert all of that because you were of course a girl. Minor problem was nothing you said was true including your accusations against me.
You then were hell bent to out me and promoted many ideas of who I was but you actually never bothered to read much I have written so you were out to lunch.
Over the last 13+ years you have personally become a pariah on basically every chat room, message board or blog in existence involving anyone in this community.
You are under psychiatric care and use psychotropic drugs to keep your rather week and sick mind under control and when you go off them you can get nasty. By the way that came from someone who was actually your friend at one time who is so scared of you it is worrisome.
Now we have your obsession with me. Come on June you are so mockable there isn't a comedian alive, not that I am one, that would not pay to mock you.
I have lived a normal life and so have many of the people I know on here. You are the abnormal life you pathetic wanker.
Now crawl back under your moss covered rock with all the other snakes and things that crawl or maybe better head back to hell well your buddy Satan has a hot spot waiting for you.
"Your problem is you cannot understand the power of normal. "
>b-but n-normal is a social construct!
>women are trolls because they object to men declaring themselves women!
never stops with these peeps. Btw, I'm arguing with someone on another forum that thinks women having breasts, uteri and vaginas is a social construct.
This is a verbatim quote:
"Basically what I'm arguing is that someone who affiliates with a certain gender IS that gender. There isn't a deeper level of being 'female' or 'male' than affiliation that makes one "really" one or another."
>this is what teegees actually believe
And the worst part is that I think they're not TG at all but some cultural maxist deconstructionist hipster.
Also will someone pretty please explain the "June Hingle Roof Story"? It sounds like something out of a bad acid trip, or a really weird inside joke.
The roof disappearing is how June Hingle came to believe he was transgender. A late life awakening.
I'm a radical feminist who has recently been reading about transexualism and the political controversy about it. I really appreciate your blog and think it offers a lot of clarity. I've read a number of your posts and what you say makes perfect sense to me.
I think most of the reason for feminist controversy is that males like Colleen Francis and their supporters feel it's o.k. for a man with a penis to just walk into a women's locker room and say "I'm a woman now" and there can be no comment without the accusation of transphobia. I would not feel safe alone in a locker room with someone who presents like Francis and has a penis. We live in a rape culture, I can't sacrifice my sense of safety for an ideology.
I think the problem is, as you write, that politically, transexual people can readily be lumped in with transvestites and everyone in between who has a so-called "gender issue." It defies reality for me to look at him with his penis and call him a woman whom I should feel as safe around as any other woman, or feel that I have ANY shared experience with "as a woman." What does the word "woman" even mean then?
But when you describe your early experience and the certainty with which you transitioned, I can understand your experience and need to transition. I really believe that the divide in feminism is coming from the ideological transgender movement, NOT from those who have the experience of being transexual as you describe it. I can't imagine anyone I know not accepting you as a woman.
Your blog is really helpful for giving another perspective on this issue ("transgender" vs. transexual - I learned that distinction from your blog) and I hope you keep writing. It's very hard for me to talk about these issues because I want to be understanding of people's issues and I don't want to be insensitive, but I agree with you that it just doesn't make sense for a man to literally be able to walk out his door one day and say, "I'm a woman and you have to accept me in your women's locker room now or you're a bigot." It seems to make a mockery of women's lived experience as women and our need to be very cognizant of violence against women by those with penises. I can't deny that reality.
You say: "I am a blogger that writes about the oddities in the Transgender community which fortunately gives me lots to write about. Just look at you." Just look at you!
You once again lie, distort, and bully.
???You missed the entire subject matter of those links.??? I did you a favor, and you are too stuck on yourself to be able to actually read & comprehend...and you call me a dipshit?
You show a photo that is 42 1/2 years old. I call that deceptive.
I told no "friend" of mine what you just stated.
You know nothing of my past, the testing I went through, or those things I experienced, other than what your demented mind might conjure up.
Somebody should alert Andrea James, Lynn Conway, and the other various GLBT support networks to what you are doing. You are doing nothing but harm, with various trolls to back you up every time you bark.
@Anon 10:10 PM
I have always felt the radical feminist views were aimed at the transgender people and people like me got caught in the aftermath but then my views on feminism has always revolved on my fight as a woman in a male dominated world to get paid and promoted just like the good old boys.
I would feel extremely uncomfortable with one of them in my private women's spaces but if you oppose them they are on you immediately. The lumping of transsexuals with the transgender is a deliberate attempt to both get them some credibility and in some cases to hurt us. It has unfortunately worked and we have political correctness and the simple fact it is men giving other men privilege and rights they do not deserve regardless of the fact they are destroying and/or taking away rights from women.
Get use to it because it is going to get worse.
(Anon from a couple posts ago...)
When I was in college I worked on an anti-rape campaign with Andrea Dworkin (I guess the "queen" of radical feminists), and I agree with your analysis. As I see it, the radical feminist views that seem so controversial about transgender are definitely not aimed at transexual people like you. (There are always going to be some people who are very extreme and don't see nuance, but I'm not talking about them).
It's that it doesn't make sense to have a class analysis of "women" when any guy - a man with a beard and a penis and all the historical privilege of maleness - can walk out his door, walk into a women's locker room, and proclaim himself a woman. The word doesn't seem to mean anything then.
Like I said, your distinction between "transgender" and transexual makes a lot of sense in clarifying the issue. I think a lot of people aren't talking about this with the nuance that you are.
I just learned about Colleen Francis today, and to me he's the epitome of why people question and are confused by the transgender movement.
First off, what the hell does a disappearing roof have to do with transsexuality or trans anything? I mean, what kind of person sees a disappearing roof and thinks "I'm a wimmin"?
Secondly, while feminism per se is obviously beneficial to everyone the radical variants were too much infected with cultural Marxism Marxism and deconstruction and essentially tried to define gender out of existence instead of valuing the things that made females and femininity special and unique and placing it as equal and interdependent with males and masculinity, while redressing the social and economic inequities between the sexes.
@Rosenkreuz
Well the idiocy of the roof scenario is supposedly the sudden awakening of his woman within. I rest my case on the psychotropic drug consumption.
June
You and Ardenia James are so completely full of shit on so many levels, James posts anything that will get him / her attention in order to stay reverent in the Tee-Gee community. This blog gets more hits than tsroadmap.
If you are drawing a link between me and the person in your first link, you are full of shit as usual.
Just like you always have been.
NYF
Elizabeth:
My apologies for coming late to the conversation, but family matters always come first and we've had a cart-load of them lately. :/
I continue to count my blessings that there were a few people who took me seriously when I was in my late teens, and that at the time the various medical bills came due (including the surgeon, who wanted his cash up front, of course), there were folks willing and able to help pay those bills.
One rapidly comes to understand that one is better to 'pay it forward' from then on. We've had the great honour and privilege of being able to help a few young girls along their way, even though where we are, we're hampered by the relevant age of emancipation being 16, which is a bit late when one considers the accumulating damages of puberty. Nrgh -- I ran away at 17, and should have run away earlier but information was not as readily available then....
Back in the 'old days' (hah, I'm talking the late 70s, but I suppose that's after your day) we had no notion that puberty could be blocked or delayed, but there was already common knowledge that high-dose birth control pills (if taken in sufficiently-high multiples and being always careful to stay on them) would do good things for us. I'm not a physician, but I can tell you from subsequently personal mishap with breast cancer (and with liver damage, too) that the risks came home to roost eventually. I'm glad that there are **some** physicians in **some** places who can and will prescribe blockers to teenagers. Honestly, I'd have taken them, as long as they weren't being offered to me as some sort of sidetrack from what I knew was the requisite outcome all along: a body which reflected my personal understanding of who I was (and still am, in these delightful middle years!).
I'm never all that sure that the transgenderists have succeeded in snowing the medical providers as much as they'd like to have done. The literature's still clear enough that we're talking of more than one syndrome, no matter how much the loons would like to co-opt our lived experience and, further, seek to muddy the legal waters.
You've fostered some interesting conversation. As always, my apologies for being one of the anonymae here, but it's just plain wise in a score-keeping society such as ours nowadays.
Thanks so very much,
your friendly far-away elfchick
Unfortunately MTV restricts their videos by market, so I cannot see this one. But if both cases started transition after their teens then I don't see that it will reflect on children who need help at puberty. The populations, and practitioners are quite separate.
There was a case in the UK last year that seemed more dangerous because he first appeared as a 13-year-old, but although he featured in several newspapers, on several TV shows, and had a documentary made about him (there had to be a publicity agent involved), in fact the only medical intervention he got, though to 18, was perhaps a few shots of blockers. All the talk of hormones and imminent surgery were lies. He did "live as a girl", although he didn't attend school, and behaved more like an overweight, rather violent, often drunken gay boy in dresses that were too short, and too much make up, earning money from giving sex in saunas. So when he went on TV again to express his embarrassment at realising he was really a man, and sorrow that his family had disowned him for involving them, the system actually looked as if it had worked, and no physical harm had been done. Of course the official children's gender clinic would use it to say their denial of hormones until 16 was vindicated, if it weren't that he was one of their patients and didn't even get blockers until 17 when they claim to be giving them at 12 now.
I suspect this was a case of a gay drag-queen teen in a tough neighbourhood being encouraged by his family and the local press agency to go full time to be more easily understood, remunerated, and famous. Of course the blockers soon disillusioned him. And that's an argument for those being available younger, not later.
Had those two MTV cases been previously involved with the media? I do get worried by transition being the subject of TV coverage that verges on being a reality show. But so far the worst outcome seems to have just been more drama, but no regrets.
All the post-SRS detransition cases seem to be later transitioners who then fall into the hands of Christian sects who persuade them they must revert.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
-> (Anon from a couple posts ago...)
->
-> When I was in college I worked on an anti-rape
-> campaign with Andrea Dworkin (I guess the "queen" of
-> radical feminists), and I agree with your analysis. As
-> I see it, the radical feminist views that seem so
-> controversial about transgender are definitely not
-> aimed at transexual people like you. (There are always
-> going to be some people who are very extreme and don't
-> see nuance, but I'm not talking about them).
I wish you and Elizabeth were right, but my experience says you are not.
The hatred was definitely aimed at "transsexual men", and because they saw us as men forever, but invading "women's space", which they equated to rape. So simply by existing we are supposedly rapists.
Andrea Dworkin ended up known for not being anti-transsexual. Janice Raymond was the lead hate-monger, but her mantle was taken by Sheila Jeffreys some years ago now, with Julie Bindel as another figure. The notorious RadFem crowd are their associates.
The fact that "radical" can mean different things, and there's no patent on the term "radical feminist" means you can obviously be a radical feminist without being one of that lot, but confusion is inevitable. Proposed radical feminist conferences in the last two years have both been intended to feature them.
Elizabeth was fortunate to never encounter RadFems in 3D, but I did, in London in the late 1970s though late 1980s, where they decimated the women's movement in prosecuting their policies of excluding women who had any links to men (including their own children).
I'm a woman like Elizabeth except English, bisexual, two years younger, and deprived of ever having met Harry Benjamin. I had SRS a year later. I was a transsexual toddler.
I got outed to the Radfems by a foolish friend, and they really went to town on me. One had tried to bed me and I'd turned her down (very nicely), so that didn't help. They advocated I be forcibly tattooed on my face so that no one else could suffer in the same way.
They tried rape accusations (which was a total mind-fuck for a feminist woman with friends working in Rape Crisis), theft allegations, incompetence in feminist campaigning allegations. They tried to have me fired from work. They threatened to out me to the red top press, but apparently didn't. They tried to kill me twice, that I experienced.
They got all the available stuff on transition and pushed it out in newsletters to try to discredit me. The stuff about post-op dilation was the worst, for me. Very distressing.
The reason I can be sure it was transsexual women (or, in my case, a woman with transsexual history) rather than transgender they were after is that, part way through, I met some early-in-transition women who basically were getting no problem from the Radfems, and indeed were having some quite jolly debates with them, in street encounters. That was probably the source of the stuff on transition.
If you read Jeffreys' work you'll find things are just as nasty. They are strongly against assistance for children, and against anything but psychotherapy at any age. Jeffreys got banned from a London conference venue this year for her efforts. The efforts by the London Guardian against transsexual treatment partially comes from having Bindel as a columnist.
The attacks on transgenders is just going for the low-hanging fruit, so to speak.
@oatc
I would never have seen it because I was not involved in the lesbian community nor was I an activist feminist. I respect your activism but I just worked and lived as a woman so radfem is not something I deal with or dealt with ever.
I know what they did to you since we have talked about it and it was egregious Through a friend I was at charity functions multiple times where both Helen Gurley Brown and Gloria Steinem were present and Brown was a pleasant and kind woman and when I think back Steinem reminded me of a current pompous asshole and that would be Al Gore our former Vice President and presidential candidate.
They were both so full of themselves if they accidentally were pricked by a pin they would have exploded like a party balloon.
In the US transgender rules and transsexuals are told to shut up and stay out of what the men are planning since most of the TG are heterosexual men.
I am kind of glad I am not in lesbian circles because what they did or tried to do to you sounds more male than female.
Dearest Elizabeth, your bias against lesbians gets worse and worse. That was not in any lesbian movement, that was the whole women's movement. Yes the RadFems should have really called themselves Radical Lesbian Separatists, but they mostly denied they were lesbian, instead saying they were "political lesbians". The idea was that real feminism could only be achieved in the absence of men, or something like that. This happened throughout magazines, parliamentary lobby groups, local government women's committees, unions women's sections, at fundraisers, in art galleries, publishing houses...
Anyway, the point was not to give you another excuse to slag off lesbians, but to point out that the RadFems are not accidentally mistaking us for transgenders who are their main target. We are their main target.
@oatc
So I am biased against lesbians am I? So very typical of the Liberal elite who believe their personal shit and the shit of all their political elite pals does not stink and if anyone disagrees or makes a comment not pre-approved by the liberal elite then they are your enemy.
Take you head out of your asshole, open up a window, get off the dole, and smell some fresh air but then that might screw up your self important view of your beliefs which are only important to you.
So if I or anyone else disagrees with your point of view on anything whatsoever then we are anti-lesbian and homophobic. You sound very much like both the radfems and the transgender crowd.
Congratulations you have gone over to the dark side and are now no different than them you pompous asshole!!!
Oh yes a little clue dipshit. Nobody really gives a rats ass about your magazines, parliamentary lobby groups, local government women's committees, unions women's sections, at fundraisers, in art galleries, publishing houses... because the next time they have a relevant idea will be the first time one of you liberal socialist nitwits has had one.
Just look around. Your country and Europe are both screwed.
You call another woman a "dipshit"?
Why don't you "get off the dole"? We are both pensioners.
Get medication.
@oatc
Yes I do call you a dipshit when you accuse me of being something I am not which is against lesbians and homophobic and one can be a dipshit even if one is a woman like you.
What's the matter. Don't like being accused of something you are not like "on the Dole"????
I thought you were a friend at one time. Guess not but then live and learn.
my friend transitioned mtf--i hadn't seen 'him' in 15 years and was surprised to see how 'he' was now representing himself as a woman -hormones and castration were (are)'his' chosen methods of female facilitation-we have a solid good friendship but lately i have been questioning the integrity of the relationship and how it looks to others-- when i am in public with 'him' i introduce him to friends of mine we meet on our outings using the female name 'he' chose, 'he' dresses as a woman and has big breasts, carries a purse and and imitates female gestures with body language- but, 'his' posturing is not at all feminine, he walks like a man trying not to look like one and his balance is off-'he' has fallen several times tripping over 'himself' and sustained moderate injuries; tall with hands and feet size large-clothing is moderate but lo-cut tee shirts reveal massive cleavage-- wears too many rings, gaudy earrings and necklaces--'his' voice cracks and sounds strained-not a great first impression--my friends are polite when introduced and go along but later they let me know by e-mail or phone call that they aren't fooled by his presentation,saying 'he's' a fraud- fashioned as a female-they judge me for hanging out with 'him' and letting 'him' be around my children. letting me know that being seen with 'him' is jeopardizing my social status in the community- i am realizing 'he' is a social liability-'his' crossover gender attempt is an embarrassing failure-the perception 'he' has of 'himself'; that he is passing as a woman is just a delusional fantasy-'he' thinks like a man, walks like a man and basically is a man-like almost every other mtf transgender cosmetic enhancements merely serve as optical illusions-being raised and living in the city (san francisco,i have seen and met many many mtf crossovers-but never have i mistaken those men wearing feminine costuming as anything other than just another "chick with a dick"-hetero guys seem to get fooled by the optical illusion though and i feel like i am promoting such fraud by not telling 'him' he looks like a pathetic freak whose health is probably suffering from too many years of synthetic hormones and that he has fetish-ized his body out of balance. 'he' says he is more comfortable this way while i remain very uncomfortable in his presence-any suggestions, please don't know how to handle this. thanks -m.s.
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