Today I read such bile.
Of course I read bile every day. Most of it from hateful Christian extremists, Tea-Partiers, Republicans, trans-hating redfems, etc. spouting their various hate-which-isn't-REALLY-hate-honest! crap we all know and loathe. THAT bile particularly bothered me. The author of that piece of tripe is a post-op transsexual woman with a very clear high-horse complex and very strong mad-on for and trans status that is not identical to her own. Sadly, this is very common.
There are a lot of post-op trans women who are intensely and vehemently bigoted against trans women who still have their penises. Any trans woman who has not yet gotten the Lopitoffame is in their eyes still not yet a real woman. This belief is held with a complete black hole of obliviousness to the irony of radfems who say the same thing about post-ops.
This hatred of pre-ops is ESPECIALLY vehement in the case of non-ops. non-ops are trans-woman who, either by personal choice or by medical reasoning cannot or will not get the final operation.
Women like "Josephine" revel in misgendering non-ops and belittling them in the same way much of society does to them. To post-ops of "Josephine's" type, and woman with a penis who cannot or will not get SRS is just a transvestite, a crossdresser, a fetishist. Trust me, the is a WORLD of difference between tv/cd's and non-op transsexuals.
Now there are plenty of post-op women who have absolutely no issues whatsoever with non-ops. Kate Bornstein and Gwendolyn Anne-Smith for example, two women I'm proud to call friends of mine, not only do NOT hate on non-ops, they publicly speak out in favor of full equality and acceptance of gender variance. Women like "Josephine" however have this bitter bigotry towards Non-ops, and I honestly believe it's because they're externalizing their own still-existing deep seeded repression that they thought SRS would magically fix.
A lot of transsexuals focus WAY to much on SRS as what it is NOT instead of what it IS. SRS is a STEP on the path of a trans woman's life. For those who need it to feel more comfortable in their bodies, it's an important and invaluable step, but still only a step. It doesn't change your chromasomes or give you a womb so to many people you're no more a woman than you were before it. Life continues past SRS with many more new challenges to overcome, ups and downs, losses and wins, angels and ends, yadda yadda. For those who do need SRS, passing that milestone certainly helps them find the strength to continue down their path in life. Life doesn't end with SRS.
What SRS is NOT is a magic cure all for everything that's wrong with you. If you had clinical depression before SRS, chances are you'll still have it afterwards. If you were sexually repressed before it, you likely won't be much less so after. If you had low self-esteem beforehand, well, you'd be surprised how little SRS actually dents that.
Women like Josephine are the ones who treated SRS as that magic cure all, that holy grail that would magically fix everything wrong in their lives. The ones who thought having a vagina would make everyone accept them as a real woman, and that they'd stop receiving transphobic bigotry. They can't accept that SRS didn't make EVERYTHING perfect, something else must be wrong.
So they turn their own insecure failings they thought SRS would chase away and turn it against those they see as lesser. They forget that when they were pre-op they felt every bit as much a woman as they do post-op, and they basically misgender and invalidate their own life history by insisting anyone who hasn't gotten srs yet is less real than they are. It's a classic feel-good-at-the-expense-of-others tactic.
It also has to do with sex. A LOT of Trans women buy into the rad fem bullshit that if you're trans, you're not allowed to enjoy sex if you're pre-op. Because in their backwards logic, real women don't enjoy sex unless they're sluts, and since sluts are subhuman in the eyes of radfems, any trans woman who likes sex is a slut by default and therefore represents only the "worst degrading stereotypes of what a real woman is". Well I'm sorry but fuck that. My wife is a cis woman who loves sex and is certainly no slut since I'm her only sex partner right now, but really, a slut is a name tight-assed people give to people they're jealous of. A slut is someone who is happier than they are doing something they deny themselves.
My friend Danielle Foxxx is Post-op. She loved sex when she was pre-op and she loves it now. The only thing SRS changed for her was it made her feel more comfortable with her body image and it changed the technical aspects of how she fucks.
Some non-ops like me, (Granted I'm an intersexed femal, with female chromosomes and a uterus, but to most people since I have a penis I may as well be trans), are non-op only because something medical prevents surgey. In my case a blood disorder means invasive surgery will kill me. Women like me then have to learn to make peace with the bodies we have in conjunction with who we are as women, a traumatizing journey made all the more difficult by the shallow post-ops joining the chorus of hate telling us we'll NEVER count.
Others however, CHOOSE to be non-op for various reasons. Some don't have the obsession with genitals that "Josephine" does. They don't link bodyparts to identity with the same narrow paintbrush that others do, where what's in your panties is the sole condition to determining what you ARE. These non-ops Are comfortable enough in their identity that they don't need SRS to "prove" anything. They look at it clinically and weigh what SRS gains them compared to what it takes away and they make the difficult choice to live as women with a penis. others simply don't accept gender as a rigid two-sided construct that must never stray from either/or.
The main problem for post-ops like "Josephine" is that they want to hide, to blend in, to just be a woman and forget/bury/ignore all the hardships they survived to get where they are. They hate that all these lesser people who DARE to be *gasp* HAPPY with what they are and comfortable with themselves physically, emotionally and sexually, keeping drawing uncomfortable attention to trans issues by being uppity little bitches telling people about trans issues! How dare they???
So any grief they get for being trans as post-op women is the fault of all these lippy mouth men in dresses, because they're really real women now, why would anyone have a problem with them?
I dearly wish all post-ops could be like Kate or Gwen or Danielle. Sadly I've met WAY too many Josephines. If you actually know Gwen, ask her about Dianne some day. OHHHH has Gwen got stories for you!
Post-op does not make you any more or less a woman than any cis woman or pre-op trans-women. Nor do the clothes you wear. The ONLY thing that makes you a woman is your mind and heart and soul. Some people need surgeries to be more at peace with the BODY, but womanhood is in the soul. Don't step on those who found peace on a different path than yours.
If we all found peace on the exact same path it'd be a goddamned crowded picnic, and I can't afford to bring enough beer to get you drunk enough to stop hating yourself so much you need to shit on me.
Hun, this article was very powerful and soulful and I felt as though you embodied the essence of drala when writing this article. Having said that, I have to say as a post-op woman, I feel ashamed at the lack of empathy that many of my post-op sisters feel. I feel that's what the real problem is in not seeing what pre-ops and some non-ops having to go through.
ReplyDeleteThere's a sign just in the staircase of the Shambhala Meditation Centre in Boulder which says something like "All dharmas are gifts". I believe that this could be extrapolated a bit. Being pre-op and non-op does not make you any less of a woman. Granted, it does cause issue with the legal establishment but that's a problem with the legal establishment, not the woman.
It takes courage to come out, to transition. There is a very telling thing about a woman's character after she goes post-op. If she still supports her fellow sisters, then she has a great deal of empathy and a willingness to understand. She is willing to sit with her conflicting thoughts and opinions and invite them to tea. The women who run back into the closet, adopt pseudonyms and attack pre-op and non-op women are cowards. The ones who stand with the pre-op and non-op women and exclaim that regardless of their operative status, they are women - these are the warriors.
Jessica said more or less what I had to say, and probably more eloquently... but yeah. what in the butt is this BS?
ReplyDeleteWow, Shaman. You sure do manage to ferret out some of the juiciest cuts of our sprawling trans culture's carcass. Firstly, thanks for your eloquence and passion. It's a satisfying kick-ass response to the soul-less vitriol spewed by Miss Josephine, who believes she is more of a "real" woman and a better transperson than YOU.
ReplyDeleteBut heck, there are still a LOT of people in the world who think that Hispanic, African-American, and Asian people are not "real" people like Caucasians. Those scary racial bigots use *science* to justify their claims. Well that's what I think you've unmasked here, oh far-seeing Shaman: a trans sub-culture that uses science to "prove" their ultimately self-directed bigotry. Here's their mission statement:
"TS-SI is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society."
I've been checking out http://ts-si.org/ It's a website for people who believe there's a both a biological imperative and a cultural classist mandate. It follows, they say, that the only good trannies—the better ones, anyway, for the TS-SI mindset holds as self-evident that we're all diseased—are the trannies who comply with both the biological and classist imperatives.
And their website is SMART. There's all sorts of political ramifications to the science they believe in. In fact, it's so smart that I bet ya can't read all the words in the headlines of their home page without using a dictionary. Smart = educated = well-monied = so much more to lose = more frantic to defend the ground they stand on.
So it's boiling down to class again. Poor things. No, I mean it. They haven't been able to find the sustaining joy of breaking free of biological and classist imperatives. They've opted for the security of class superiority.
OK, so the class argument for "real" gender can easily be torn apart by compassion. But I still don't get the science argument. Really, not being snarky here. Aren't all our different organs and body structures based in the same bio-goo? Sure, the bio-goo shifts and recombines over time into mostly male and mostly female, but it's still the same goo. It's like the argument about when is a fetus a human being. Well, you can start measuring life at any time. Ditto biological gender.
I think the important thing to keep in mind is that while yes, of course there are two major biological genders, that life itself goes well beyond just that—and it's life itself that has yet to be respected by the majority of people on the planet.
Once again, Shaman, I bow to your wisdom, passion, and eloquence.
kiss kiss
Your Doting Aunt Kate (who begs you to forgive her for using the t-word. I just had to, I was on a rant.)
Brilliant piece. Should be required reading for everyone.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely beautifully expressed! I have seen this attitude far too often, and it's disheartening. there are similar attitudes in the FTM community as well. i wish that everyone felt the way that you do!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this. It was beautifully written and I personally think all person should have to read this. It is sad that in this day and age we still face judgement within our own circles.
ReplyDeleteEchoing a lot of what was said already: simply beautiful. It is so frustrating to here it, in the MtF, FtM, as well as how often the gay male and lesbian communities treat bisexuals, pansexuals, etc. Not just frustrating, incredibly saddening...
ReplyDeleteMy last comment on the original T-Si blog piece was censored. Supposedly for a TOS violation. Which I'm confidant I did not even come close to. I DID however thoroughly trump all oif Josephine and Evangelina's arguments by pointing out how eerily like Peter LaBarbera they sound when using the "My bigotry isn't really bigotry because I'm only attacking the sin, not the homosexual" type of argument. The supposedly offending comment was also nowhere NEAR the level of crass, aggressive, swearing-laced or blatantly derogatory as many of the comments that remain uncensored. I can only assume the Site owner realized that I had made a point they could not defend against, and had to censor me or admit that she violated HER OWN Terms of service by allowing that bile to be published on her site to begin with. Tsk tsk. I don't censor comments I don't like. Proof is as easy to find as simply reading most of the comments Jezebel left on my blog on certain entries. Only a coward who knows their position is indefensible censors those who outargue them rather than let the winning argument be seen.
ReplyDeleteMy only quibble is with "To post-ops of "Josephine's" type, and woman with a penis who cannot or will not get SRS is just a transvestite, a crossdresser, a fetishist. Trust me, the is a WORLD of difference between tv/cd's and non-op transsexuals." To me, it demeaned a different group of people. FWIW, my great uncle (RIP) was a crossdresser. Who knows whether he felt like me? ANd even if he didn't, it doesn't make him any less a person.
ReplyDeleteI never said it made him less a person hon. I just pointed out that there IS a huge difference between "Man who dresses like a woman for fun" and "Woman with a penis". I meant no more or less by it. If it seemed as if I was suggesting Crossdressers are less human, I truly apologise, my intent was only to draw a distinction between the brain identity most often stated by both groups, in that NNon-ops uniformly identify as female, while the majority of transvestites/crossdressers only DRESS female but still identify as male, barring of course the small percentage of crossdressers who eventually realize they are in fact trans and go full-time. Does that clear up any misunderstanding hon?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely clears it up!
ReplyDeleteTo me (and, I suspect, some others), "just a" implies "less than":
"What I thought was a jackpot was just a $2 winning lottery ticket"
"We thought he was a leader, but he was just a scam artist"
"That's not a transsexual, just a transvestite"
So when I see "just a", I have a tendency to jump on the phrase. At least I called it "a quibble" rather than my usual knee-jerk attack, so I'm getting better.
I've known so many post-op, pre-op, non-op, bigendered, transvestite, crossdresing, femiphile, drag, genderqueer, intersex, and other people that I have trouble figuring out where the boundaries are anymore.
WOW! Amazing read. I am very touched by this because I have experienced this before. I would have to agree with Kate when she says
ReplyDelete" They haven't been able to find the sustaining joy of breaking free of biological and classist imperatives. They've opted for the security of class superiority. "
But here is my take on it. In my field or in my area of the " community " there is so much self hate and girls attacking their kind. I have tried to be an example as a person, and not as a woman or man.
I am proud to say that I am EVERYTHING! I am special, I am beyond gender.
It's like the hood was pulled off my face and I can finally see the world, and experience my body and soul as one.
My sexual experiences are on a deeper level and why would I feel the need to deny myself those experiences by going back in the closet?
That would be denying myself and those who look forward to being one day where I am.
I love to hear that I have touched other's lives with my ability to be proud of myself. This makes life gratifying when those times come when we all question ourselves.
Thank you for sharing this
Thank you for this article.
ReplyDeleteWe are powerful when we tell our stories; you've empowered yourself, and you no doubt inspire other.
Axiom four of Roz Kaveney's Six Axioms of Trans Activism seems to apply:
Be creative, be smart, be ourselves, and don't let anybody tell us who we are and what we do.
Amen to that!
Thank you Autumn, and keep fighting. Even when I occasionally disagree with you I still respect you and support you. You have done and will still do FAR more for equality than the holier-than-thou anonymous cowards like "Josephine" will EVER accomplish slinging hate behind juvenile fake names.
ReplyDeleteOf course "The Shaman of Hedon" isn't a bit of a fake name, really it isn't. excuse me while I laugh at you and MR Sandeen both; what silly fools you are. People who assume they belong to some fake religion have a real problem with reality and probably menatl issues too.
ReplyDeleteI do notice you delated my last posting so you do even more than what you accuse the editors of Ts-Si of doing; how two faced, I bet you lie about other stuff too.
Oh joy, the TS-SI brigade is out in force.
ReplyDeleteShaman, may your cluestick be long enough to reach the most distant, and hard enough to get through the thickest skulls.
@Anonymous-Coward - Um.... Nice try but, you fail on three fronts with that attempt to deflect from you being a chicken-shit.
ReplyDelete1) My name, Penny Sautereau-Fife, is how EVERY comment I posted on TS-Si was signed.
2) That same name is clearly visible in the sidebar to your right, and several of my blogs include it clearly
3) I AM the Shaman of Hedon. The Trinity of Hedon is my faith, and I am a Shaman of it. It isn't just somer cutesy nickname made up to hide my identity on the net, it's WHAT I BELIEVE.
Unlike you Anonymous-Coward, I will PUBLICLY stand by everything I say and never fear what clearly hate-fuelled plebians like you may say about me, because I know I'm right to stand up against bigotry like yours, and I know YOUR cowardice and verbal bile will usually make my point stronger by comparison.
But you keep reaching for that brass ring and tell yourself whatever lies you need to to convince yourself that you even so much as dented me with your petty trolling. I still stand by my statements.
Also, again @Anonymous-Coward, I have never and WILL never delete ANY comment posted on my blog no matter how childish and dishonest, so either Google screwed up posting some of your bile or you're just lying through your teeth. The fact that your comment here and on the post about TS-Si censoring me prove that well enough. I don't believe in censorship. I believe in teaching people not to hate so that boneheaded idiots like you are heavily outnumbered by people who AREN'T hatemongering twits.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your words. I was so FURIOUS after reading Josephine's post earlier, and found the link to your writing here in the comments. I try to avoid reading the blogs of these bigoted individuals, but I know Autumn, and needed to read what was being said. It takes a lot of inner strength on my part not to harbor hate for the group of hateful post-op bigots.
ReplyDeleteMost comments I've EVER gotten. I must've touched a nerve.
ReplyDeleteHey; I'm sorry you have to go through the ordeals as an intersexed woman born with a penis, though I am very glad that you've turned that into a positive thing.
ReplyDeleteThe people at TS-Si would like to have you believe otherwise, that you're some weird freak.
(and wow, Kate Bornstein!? that woman's everywhere!)
Well that's annoying. Blogspot ate my post. I will have to try and summarize for this second try.
ReplyDeleteI am tired of the gender wars. I'm even more tired of the gender wars within feminist circles. I am repulsed by the gender wars along the TS/TG spectrum. Are we crows squabbling over the corpse of a culture which is sick to death with its own alienation from its sexuality?
In cultures where the gender boundary is understood to be more porous, those who cross over or dwell in the middle zones are honored for their wisdom about human nature and service to the wider community. It's just not about fighting for "rights", but about serving our families, friends and neighbors with love.
There may or may not be a masculine/feminine dynamic there, feel free to make your own judgements. I am quite sure, however, that resistance begets more resistance, and love begets more love.