Cristan Williams's Open Salon Blog

As you may know, most of the TS Separatist leaders have moved on with their lives and the ones who are left seem to be the Ashley Love/Just Jennifers of the world who regularly make absurd and demonstrably false claims. I will continue to both confront and make evidence-based corrections when folks like Love attempt to pass off fiction as fact. Having said that, now that the historical record seems to have been set right on coinage myths, I can’t say that I have any significant issues with folks like Dana Taylor or Suzan Cooke. I’ve had friendly correspondence with some of the folks I used to butt heads with and I’m glad to see that everyone seems to be moving forward.

After the radfems attacked the transgender community, over the last several months, I have been doing some soul searching and one thing I told myself is that I do NOT want to look like them. I was disgusted by what I saw and am grief-stricken by my part in some of this war. I actually helped hurt some of my sisters and I am paying for it in my own heart. I think now is a time for solidarity. – Dana Lane Taylor

I think for a long time, RadFems have watched us go at each other while they mocked us from the sidelines. It seemed like RadFems cozied up to some TS Separatists so that instead of correctly blaming RadFems for the destruction of trans healthcare, Separatists blamed non-True Transsexuals^TM for transsexualism-related health care costs being excluded from health care coverage (and/or tax deductions). While H-BSer Separatists were busy blaming non-H-BSers for the stigmatized view many began taking of all trans people over the past 3 decades, RadFems, of course, never clued them in that it was the RadFems themselves who were fanning the flames of transphobia so that even a trans Stonewall hero like Silvia Revera was beaten for daring to speak out at a queer gathering¹.

It seems that we’re coming to a point where we’re beginning to see we share a common enemy:

7/12/2012: From ex anti-trans RadFem, Julie Bendel

While RadFems kicked back and mocked us as transpoodles and pretendbians and worked against trans equality we, in our arguing, seemed to forgot the toll anti-trans RadFems took upon the lives of folks like Filisa Vistima. We forgot that RadFems have a history of going as far at to work with racist religious fundamentalists if it means harming trans folk. We seemed to forget that it was the RadFems who shaped many of the original and enduring anti-trans memes that affect the lives of countless trans folk to this day.

Unity Not Uniformity

The tide is (finally) turning… against our shared enemies: anti-trans RadFems.

At one time, the anti-trans lesbian feminist Julie Bendel, the TS Sepritist Dana Taylor, the radical post-transsexual Suzan Cooke and I would have been at each other’s throats arguing theory, rhetoric and history. It seems that day has past.

Today, all of us agree that transwomen are female women, that lesbian transwomen are actual lesbians, that calling one’s self “transgender” is fine, that calling one’s self “transsexual” is fine and none of us are arguing over who coined transgender. Do we agree on every-fucking-thing? Nope. But that’s not the point. The point is unity, not uniformity.

Today, I get to live in a world that is becoming more and more aware of just how shamelessly, willfully and wantonly harmful anti-trans RadFems have been over the past 4 decades.

RadFem opinion leader and attorney Catherine (Cathy) Brennan, Partner at Hudson Cook LLP

Today, I get to live in a world of allies which is more unified, more respectful of our differences and more focused on confronting what has been a hidden tumor poisoning practically all aspects of the queer community for decades. Which means, I think, checkmate.

Notes:

The featured image comes from http://radfemscorpion.tumblr.com check them out. Now.

1.) Before RadFem influence:

“In the beginning, we were the vanguard of the gay movement…We were very well respected for the first four years” – Sylvia Rivera

After RadFem influence:

Women in the GLF were uncomfortable referring to Rivera—who insisted in using women’s bathrooms, even in City hall—as “she.” Pressure mounted. The year 1973 witnessed clash that would take Rivera out of the movement for the next two decades. Her lifelong friend and fellow Stonewall Veteran Bob Kohler recalled, “Sylvia left the movement because after the first three or four years, she was denied a right to speak.” It was during the Pride rally in Washington Square Park after the Christopher Street Liberation Day March.

To the dismay of Lesbian Feminist Liberation drag queens were scheduled to perform. As they passed out flyers outlining their opposition to the “female impersonators,” Rivera wrestled for the microphone held by emcee Vitto Russo, before getting hit with it herself. Rivera explained, “I had to battle my way up on stage, and literally get beaten up and punched around by people I thought were my comrades, to get to that microphone. I got to the microphone and I said my piece.” Rivera complained that the middle-class crowd cared little to nothing about the continued harassment and arrests of street drag queens. Bleeding, Rivera sang, “You Gotta Have Friends,” screamed “Revolution Now!” and led the crowd in a chant of “Give me a G, Give me an A, Give me a Y…What does it spell?” Barely audible, her voice breaking, “GAY POWER,” she groaned. - Benjamin Shepard, “Sylvia and Sylvia’s Children: The Battle for a Queer Public Space,” That’s Revolting! (ed. Matt Bernstein Sycamore)

Gender Orientation, Identity and Expression

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:07:43 -0400

I’ve seen so many arguments and misunderstandings pop up over the conflation of these THREE dimensions of what we collectively refer to as gender:

Gender Orientation: One’s subjective experience of one’s own physical sex.
Gender Identity: One’s culturally influenced identification of one’s sex within the context of a social grouping.
Gender Expression: One’s situational expression of cultural ques which communicate gender identity.

Note that gender identity and expression are absolutely culturally influenced. However, stick me on a deserted island, I am still going to have a subjective experience of my physical sex. It’s through culture that I label my gender orientation and situationally express/repress it. Just because someone’s gender orientation is female does not automatically mean that the person’s gender identity and expression will also be female. So-called reparative/curative therapies focus on controlling one’s gender identity and expression in an attempt to change one’s gender orientation. Ironically, this approach reveals the reality of a fixed gender orientation:

I had become addicted to certain forms of behavior in order to nurture that fantasy. I had chosen to abandon my manhood, one of God’s good gifts to me… Eventually I could see that abandoning that behavior was best for my life. Daily I continued to yield my life’s choices to Christ in the pursuit of personal wholeness… My own reflection in the window pane is different now. It’s no longer a stylish woman, waiting for the receptionist’s announcement. Now I see the man God created me to be. No longer must I be seen as Jennifer. My real identity is contained in the name I proudly answer to: Jerry. – Reality Resources, Jennifer or Jerry?, p.23

The individual in the above narrative is attempting to change their gender orientation through a perpetual practice of ritualized rejection which involves demeaning their orientation while taking on male identity and expression. The foundational falsehood of this strategy is immediately apparent to those who understand that gender is more than a cultural modalities for if there is no innate subjective experience of one’s own sex, the “ex-transsexual” would not require a daily ritualized practice of denial and repression.

This strategy is again employed in the following religious “healing” narrative:

He could see that I was processed of this thing, which only now, I realize was demonic. I knelt on the study floor, in tears, I was choking, forces were telling me not to do it, to walk out; freedom as a woman awaited me, after all, I had made such progress. I fought back, I cried aloud, I repented, I rebuked what had gone on in my life… All this happened 18 months ago… I gave them my suitcases of dresses, clothes, make up etc. It made me feel sick, and it was a major thing for me to do. I had to get rid of all that had held me before. They disposed of the stuff. I stopped having manicures, and cut my nails short, I grew a small beard. I threw all the [hormone] tablets away, and turned away from anything that had to do with my desires. I asked my Pastor for a verse that I could look at every day and enjoy my new freedom as a man, a father and a husband. I put a piece of paper next to my bed, with encouraging verses, which I read every morning when I got out of bed. I knew that the woman inside was dead. The power of Christ had destroyed her, and all she stood for. Eighteen months on, the devil still tries to persuade me, but he knows that I will not go down that path, as the consequences for my family would be immense. I am accountable to several people, and I am enjoying my manhood. – Sam’s Story

Again, the strategy is to change one’s orientation by assuming an identity and expression in opposition to their orientation. The failure of this approach is apparent in their need to engage a daily ritualized practice of denial and repression. RadFems make the same mistake that anti-trans religious apologists make when they conflate gender identity and expression with gender orientation:

My main conclusion is that transsexualism is basically a social problem whose cause cannot be explained except in relation to the sex role and identities that a patriarchal society generates. Through hormonal and surgical means, transsexuals reject their “native” bodies, especially their sexual organs, in favor of the body and the sexual organs of the opposite sex. They do this mainly because the body and the genitalia, especially, come to incarnate the essence of their rejected masculinity and desired femininity. Thus transsexualism is the result of socially prescribed definitions of masculinity and femininity, one of which the transsexual rejects in order to gravitate towards the other.

Thus I will argue, in Chapter III, that the First Cause of transsexualism is a gender-defined society whose norms of masculinity and femininity generate the desire to be transsexed…. I believe that the primary cause of transsexualism cannot be derived from intrapsyic attitudes and/or behaviors, or even from family conditioning processes. One must begin with the roles of a gender-defined society, as the First Cause of transsexualism (that which, in the Aristotelian sense, sets all other causes in motion.)

- Janice Raymond (1979), The Transsexual Empire, page 16

There you have it: framing the transsexual experience in terms of gender identity and expression. Raymond asserts a belief that the transsexual’s subjective experience of their own physical sex is cause by (and can therefore can be cured by) modifying the cultural gender modalities available within the context of a partiality society. After asserting her views of transsexualsim with all the hubris of the religious fanatic, a year later Raymond wrote the brief that the Reagan Administration used to justify excluding trans health care from care plans:

While there are many who feel that morality must be built into law, I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it and by other legislation that lessens the support given to sex-role stereotyping, which generated the problem to begin with. Any legislation should be aimed at the social conditions that initiate and promote the surgery as well as the growth of the medical-institutional complex that translates these stereotypes into flesh and blood. More generally, the education of children is one case in point here. Images of sex roles continue to be reinforced, at public expense, in school textbooks. Children learn to role play at an early age. - Raymond (1980), Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery

Here again we see the RadFem narrative mirroring the religious fundamentalist narrative by asserting that the issue transsexuals face is one of identity and expression. Nowhere in Raymond’s burbelings does she recognize that each of us has a subjective experiences of our own physical sex.

To be clear: The issue for the MTF transsexual isn’t that we are a culturally constructed woman trapped in the physical body of a man; rather, a MTF transsexual’s subjective experience of their physical sex is female. When I assert that my subjective experience of my body has been always female, I mean exactly that. I only acquired a pervasive horror about my body shape when I learned around the age of 5 that, my body shape was different from other girls. That particular horror is called dysphoria… as in, Gender Dysphoria. My issue wasn’t that I wanted to necessarily wear certain clothes or act a certain way; of course I wanted to be treated and identified as any other little girl in my culture, but my by dysphoria wasn’t primarily situated around this secondary issue. I went to bed praying to have a god fix my body or allow me to die in my sleep not because my gender identity and expression wasn’t feminine; I began praying to die around the age of 5 because my body betrayed me.

While RadFems and religious fundamentalists seem particularly invested in asserting that the issue of gender orientation for transsexuals is simply a question of cultural modality, all one need do to test the efficacy of their fact assertion is to look at the suicide rate among transsexuals living within systems which attempt to modulate gender orientation through controlling their gender identity and expression (BTW, in a study of 6,400 trans folks, the rate of attempted suicide was 41% as compared to 1.6% in cis folks). While transsexuals generally point to our innate gender orientation at an age long before we’ve developed a sophisticated vocabulary to describe our experience, RadFems and religious fundamentalists seem perpetually poised to focus on, describe, critique and literally demonize the finger with which we point. Our issue only becomes defined by gender identity and expression when people like RadFems and religious fundamentalists use gender identity and expression to “cure” our innate gender orientation.

Nonsexist counseling is another direction for change that should be explored. The kind of counseling to “pass” successfully as masculine or feminine that now reigns in gender identity clinics only reinforces the problem of transsexualism. It does nothing to develop critical awareness, and makes transsexuals dependent upon medical-technical solutions. What I am advocating is a counseling that explores the social origins of the transsexual problem and the consequences of the medicaltechnical solution. - Raymond (1980), Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery

And here you have it, Raymond herself advocating for the development of a curative therapy model focused on gender identity and expression as a way to readjust gender orientation. If you want to know what happens to a someone who is forced to adopt a female identity and expression even though his orientation was male, I suggest you read up on the cautionary story of David Reimer.

Feminists like myself envisage a time beyond gender when there is no correct way to behave according to body shape. In such a world, it would not be possible to conceive of a gender identity clinic. The idea of GID is a living fossil – that is, an idea from the time when there was considered to be a correct behaviour for particular body types. - Sheila Jeffreys

Contrast RadFem/Fundie dogma with what the evidence has born out over the last half century:

In over 80 qualitatively different case studies and reviews from 12 countries, it has been demonstrated during the last 30 years that the treatment that includes the whole process of gender reassignment is effective. Accordingly, all follow-up studies mostly found the desired effects. The most important effect in the patients’ opinion was the lessening of suffering with the added increase of subjective satisfaction. - Pfäfflin F, Junge A. (1998). Sex Reassignment. Thirty Years of International Follow-up Studies After Sex Reassignment Surgery: A Comprehensive Review, 1961-1991 .

Contrast the above demonstrable reality with the apparent schadenfreude RadFems enjoy by conflating gender orientation, identity and expression with sexual orientation, identity and expression:

“because the fact of the matter is that unlike born-women, who have everything (literally, everything) to lose from rape culture, transwomen have at least something (everything?) to gain. to a transwoman, cutting off her dick and turning it (inside out) into a fuckhole between her legs makes her feel better. from transwomens own mouths, we know that these fake fuckholes alleviate transwomens suffering. turning their dicks into extra-large condoms for other men to penetrate (or not, whevs…thats my hat-tip to the internet “lesbian transwomen”) actually tamps down their anxiety, and feelings of dysphoria.” - factcheckme.wordpress.com

In the above purportedly feminist representation of the issues facing transsexuals, the subjective experience of one’s sex is reduced to sexual function. In the above context, my issue at the age of 5 was that I wanted a “fuckhole” so that men and/or women could sexually gratify me. In this version of feminism, it is represented that my 5 year old death wish fueled by anxiety and feelings of dysphoria could have been cured by a man penetrating me.

Either the RadFem/Fundie position mirrors reality or it doesn’t. Either bringing the body into alignment with the transsexual’s subjective experience of their physical sex is demonstrably beneficial or it isn’t. Either the neurology of MTF transsexuals has been shown to be female over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again or it hasn’t. Either controlling gender identity and expression changes one’s gender orientation or it doesn’t. Either the RadFem/Fundie position harms people or it doesn’t.

Since Raymond asserted her belief about gender as it relates to transsexuals, I will take the liberty of doing the same about the RadFem and religious fundamentalist effort to cure gender orientation: I assert that concealed under the hyperbolic anti-trans rhetoric of RadFems and religious fundamentalists is a singular purpose. I assert that this purpose seeks to control gender identity and expression as a means of reparative/curative conditioning. I assert that RadFems and religious fundamentalists have been very clear about voicing this specific purpose. When viewed in this context, their nonstop effort to halt and overturn anti-discrimination protections based on gender identity and expression can be more clearly seen as insidious and cruel.

Chloe Sevigny, Hit & Miss

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:07:47 -0400

I decided to see for myself what all the fuss was about and watched the 6 available episodes. If you like assassin shows, it’s your standard fare. Now, about Sevigny’s portrayal of a pre-op transwoman… It’s good. At times my reaction to her portrayal of gender dysphoria is visceral and may be a trigger for some. At other times, I rolled my eyes at some aspects of the scripted portrayal. Having said that, the good outweighs the bad.

Here are a couple of quotes from Sevigny about having to wear prosthetic genitalia:

“Then looking in the mirror… it was weird. I was lonely and I felt really unattractive. I was confused about my desirability – was I desirable? – in having put that on, and having men see me with that on.”

“I cried a lot when they put it on. I don’t know why. I felt like a freak… which is how my character feels, so it was really good for the part and all the rest, but it was tough… “

I got into a discussion yesterday about how hyped H&M had become. The hype has been the reason I’ve ignored the show thus far. I head read her quotes and part of me was like, “Bitch, please. It was a prosthetic that you got to remove when you went home. Did you have to pee through it? Did you have to sleep with it? Did you have to try to navigate being a sexual human being with it? No. So, STFU about it because what you experienced doesn’t scratch the surface of how truly difficult and painful it is.” The fiend I was talking to noted that my bias seemed a bit judgmental (because it is) and I said that it’s a bit like a Vietnam vet who lived through the worst the war had to offer hearing an actor talk about how difficult it was for them to portray a Vietnam vet in a movie. Also, there’s a part of me that’s just tired of seeing trans folk portrayed as predators or murder victims. Another (less judgmental) part of me really empathized with her experience of dysphoria. I should have listened to my less judgmental side and watched the show because, while the show can get cheesy from time to time, Sevigny’s overall portrayal of gender dysphoria is generally very good.

Ashley Love, Quit Colonizing Isis King!

Wed, 4 Jul 2012 17:07:23 -0400

Isis recently modeled political shirts that read, “Legalize Gay” and “Gay is O.K.” and I know what you’re thinking… You’re thinking that it’s cool that an out transgender woman is able to support one of the many political causes she cares about. What would you think if I told you that your reaction is wrong; moreover, what if I told you that you’ve just helped oppress Isis and every transgender woman out there? Furthermore, what if I told you that the only way you can make your thought crime right is to only use the language Ashley Love allows and to turn your back on half of modern transgender history? I know what you’d say because it’s the same thing I say to myself every time I read something Ashley Love has written.

Love’s 1-woman “organization” MAGNET released a McCarthy-like indictment of American Apparel and GLAAD for supposedly duping Isis into calling herself a gay man which is, of course, all part of the ongoing conspiracy against transsexual people. Love asserts that Isis wearing a “Gay is OK” shirt means that Isis is gay man. Yup. That’s right. All you cisgender women out there, don’t wear anything with “legalize gay” on it because doing so means that you too are a gay men. All you heterosexual folks out there, beware; you need to be mindful because supporting gay rights = telling others you’re gay. In Love’s universe, if you engage in political speech which supports full 14th amendment rights for non-heterosexuals, you’re actually calling yourself gay:

[GLAAD] inadvertently went against their mission statement by validating the transphobic misconception that Isis and other women like her are “gay” males, instead of who they really are – women, period. The constant misgendering of women of transsexual experience by GLAAD and other ‘LGBT’ groups derails accurate education on transsexualism and must stop.

Ashley has created a FaceBook group of some of her supporters (and a lot of gawkers) in an attempt to make the unreasoned ad populum argument that American Apparel and GLAAD colluded to make Isis out to be a gay man, that transsexuals as a whole don’t want to be called transgender and that GLAAD is forcing the media to refer to all transsexuals as being transgender (which is a lie). Instead of doing the work of making a reasoned argument, Love hopes that you’ll take her fact assertions on faith alone because others share in her dogma.

In search of more people to believe in the anti-transsexual conspiracy Love believes to be occurring, she recently had a misinformation piece published on the Washington Blade’s website:

It’s unethical to enforce sociopolitical opinions onto another group’s legitimate medical condition, such as how transgender umbrella theorists started doing in the mid-1990s to transsexualism. Our patients’ rights are not a political bargaining chip for gender deconstructionism activists to appropriate.

In theory, the coalition known as LGBTTIQQ is different communities aligning themselves to accomplish a common goal. But what happens when that coalition’s top priority ranks the needs of a particular, more privileged group over the more discriminated against groups? An uprising is what happens. The “Transsexual Spring,” the widespread and growing resistance against misrepresentation, calls for major reform in education concerning our birth challenge. Our health care, medical-based narrative and social well being won’t be compromised or worked against by notions of pro-segregation, malpractice, history revisionism and the tolerance of sex discrimination. We hope our educational campaign will spark dialogue that leads to honesty, healing and harmony. Our much larger goal is promoting media depictions with messages that affirm, rather than misgender.

REALITY CHECK:

Dear Ashley:

You wrote: “Our much larger goal is promoting media depictions with messages that affirm, rather than misgender.”

Misgender? Did you say misgender? I’m really surprised to learn that your goal is to stop the practice of misgendering since you engage in that behavior yourself. Maybe I misunderstood you when you asserted that people like me have male psyche:

For example, this Spring a few self-promoting and self-aggrandizing “transgender” bloggers, authors and “gender outlaw” entertainers (who actually financially and professionally profit by enforcing transgender socio-politics and umbrella-ism theory) are obsessing over how to stop the inevitable transsexual liberation by creating petty drama, speculating, concocting ‘out of this world’ and laughable history revisionism, taking actions and quotes out of context, presuming to know one’s intentions as if they are telepathic, unrobing and degrading the bodies of women born with transsexualism and behaving like unstable, over compulsive and anti-social pesonalites, fueled by their amazing male egos and desire to get attention, although it’s negative attention. - Ashley “I hate citing evidence” Love, May 6, 2012

Unethical? Did you just say, “It’s unethical to enforce sociopolitical opinions onto another group’s legitimate medical condition…“? Oh, you mean like what you’re doing to Isis right now?

Isis King: I even try to stay away from “transsexual” because I still have my own little things with the word.

Janet Mock: What is that? I want to explore that.

Isis King: I just… it’s kinda like the whole “tranny” thing, I just feel like when someone says transsexual, it’s so much negativity that comes with it. So, I just prefer “transgender.”

Janet Mock: Well, yeah. And of course you have the right to self-identify how you choose to self-identify.

Isis King: Yeah…

Janet Mock: I feel like “transsexual” to me makes it only about the body and the transition, whereas “transgender,” I feel, speaks more to the entire essence of what politically what our bodies say.¹

Love, STOP using Isis to promote your deluded² version of reality! Let Isis speak for herself. Stop pretending that you are the arbitrator of self-identity for transsexuals. I am a transsexual who is part of the transgender community. When you refer to me, Isis, Janet or the MAJORITY of transsexuals, you should state that we are either transsexuals who are part of the transgender community or that we are simply transgender and/or trans (with an * if you feel you REALLY need to). That is, unless you want to, by your own standards, be unethical. I’ve never once referred to you as being a transgender person, Love because I – unlike you – will respect the chosen self-identity of trans folk.

Even though you KNOW it’s a lie, I see that you’re still pushing the 1990s as your date for transgender being an umbrella term? Ashley, that makes you a demonstrable you’re a liar. Furthermore, your own hubris has blinded you to the double standards you seem to happily to be blind to:

You’re happy to claim to be victimized by the word “transgender,” but seem all to eager to erase the self-identity of transsexuals who DO identify as being transgender.
You decry trans folk who you claim “speak for you” while in the next breath asserting asserting that YOU (via your bogus front “organization”) speak for transsexual and intersex people.
You resent being associated with other non-cisgender folks while at the exact same time trying to associate yourself with intersex folks regardless of their objections.

Why didn’t you bother to mention the FACT that Isis (like me) self-identifies and being transgender? Would the truth have been a little too inconvenient for deluded reality? Ashley, your so-called “transsexual spring” is a fantasy. Almost all TS Separatist leaders have moved on with their lives, the historical narrative you continue to push has been thoroughly debunked and practically all trans stars (you seem to hope to influence) self-identify as being transgender. The only folks leading your “transsexual spring” are the fringe folks like yourself, Just Jenifer and the folks at Gender Reality. You know, those “ethical” folks who, like yourself, get their jollies by misgendering people in lieu of presenting evidence-based arguments. Look around you because you’re in good company, Love.

Ask the transsexuals, intersex people and other trans folk you were screaming at - LITERALLY SCREAMING AT – (to the point thought several people thought you might become violent) during the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference what they think of you. I couldn’t help but note that you chose to not mention those altercations in your blog account of the conference. Was it because you knew that if you honestly discussed your obdurate behavior people might think less of you?

Consider this a reality check.

Ashley “I’m Colonized” Love: Isis is calling herself a gay man!

NOTES:

1.) These statements were made in a video conversation between Isis King and Janet Mock.

2.) “Delusion” is used in the strict dictionary definition of the word and is not an ad-hom attack:

3.) I’ve used “colonize” in the title of this article in an ironic way. The whole “colonization” meme is, IMHO, trite, overused and seems to have become the hallmark of hyperbole.