Monthly Archives: October 2013

The Truth About Why Transgenders Are Really Angry At Women Like Me

I touched on this briefly in my post before last: how so many of the responses, discussions, complaints, and trolling that I have read concerning my post, “Another Sister Lost to the Madness” were so interesting to me because of all of the misconceptions surrounding me and my posts, what these individuals believe I am saying, how they are interpreting my posts, etc. When you write something and you have a very clear intent with that writing and you make every effort to make that intent clear to your reader, you can tell when someone isn’t really reading what you are writing, they are merely reading what they think you are saying based on their own mis- or preconceptions.

A lot of that has happened over the last week or so as the above mentioned post made its way to a few communities and web pages or female transgenders, which reminds me that I wanted to bring something up really quickly before it also gets pulled apart, misconstrued, etc. Since both FtM and MtF are misnomers, in that no female can magically turn into a male and conversely, no male can magically turn into a female, as both are biologically impossible; and since using the terms transman and transwoman seem to bring about the need of these individuals to “other” the rest of us by insisting on using the slur, “cis,” I have been looking for better descriptors when speaking about these individuals.

I have come to like the terms female transgenders for women who attempt to transition into some facsimile of “men” and male transgenders for men who attempt to transition into some facsimile of “women.” I also like the terms, F2Tg and M2Tg, which would mean female to transgender and male to transgender, respectively. Both have the same meaning, neither should be considered transphobic since they are more accurate depictions of what transgenders are actually doing with their bodies, and both sets of terms satisfy the need to move away from the idea that one’s biology can be somehow changed with medication and surgery.

So, after reading some of the comments, complaints, discussions, and trolling, I really feel that I must point out some things; and I will number them so I can make sure I cover everything I mean to cover:

(1) Just because I have an opinion that differs from yours, just because I point out the reality of biology and transitioning, and just because I bring up the homophobic and misogynistic parts of transgenderism, this does not equal hate speech and this is not transphobia. I am not advocating violence against transgenders, I am not trying to get transgenders fired, evicted, or jailed, I am not trying to bring laws about to make transgenderism illegal. Nothing about what I am saying is hate speech or transphobia and all that you do when you accuse me of that is prove that you have no actual valid points, so you must deflect, deflect, deflect.

(2) Along with the above, just because I have these opinions, this does not make me this or that poster under a different name. Believe it or not, a LOT of women hold these same opinions. Some of us cannot be vocal with their opinions because the trans trolls are so violent and so relentless in their harassment; some of us can only be anonymously vocal, voicing our opinions while trying to keep the violence from being directed at us; and some of us are out there for all the world to see and taking all the shit that comes with voicing these opinions.

Just because I share the same opinions as some other women, this does not make me these women; and to be honest, the fact that people seem to think that this is true and/or that it is ok to attribute these opinions to one women who has hundreds of sock puppets is frighteningly misogynistic because it assumes that we women cannot think for ourselves and that we are all not allowed to have supporting opinions. So whoever it is that you think I am, dear reader, odds are very good that I am not her; and honestly? Who I am shouldn’t even matter. The message is the same, regardless of who I am.

(3) Do you know that saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger”? That is part of what seems to be happening here. Of the angry transgenders that are reading my posts, instead of actually reading the whole of each post or instead of actually reading what I am saying, they are reading what they think I am saying. Or rather, they are reading what they want to hear so that their level of delusion and martyrdom can continue. So when I pointed out that a young woman is made to believe that because she dresses in male clothing and loves women and likes to tinker with cars or whatever else it is that society has deemed “man things,” then she feels she should transition, that isn’t me telling someone how to identify themselves and it isn’t me telling someone what clothes to wear or who to love, etc.

These readers are confusing me with this patriarchal society. It is society that tells little girls, “Oh, you can’t do that, only little boys can do that.” It is society that tells little boys, “Oh, you can’t do that, only little girls do that.” Carrying that forward then, transgenders go forth believing that, well, if I like to wear these clothes, do these things, love these people, then I must be the opposite sex trapped in this horrible body. I am not saying these things and making transgenders feel this way, society is.

What I am saying is: fuck the patriarchy and homophobia. Little girls should be allowed to wear what they want, roll around in the mud, play sports, play with “boys’ toys,” and dream about growing up to marry the princess and save her from the evil witch, all while still being little girls who aren’t conditioned to believe that the only way they can live these lives of which they dream is by “becoming” little boys.

What I am saying is fuck the patriarchy and homophobia. Little boys should be allowed to wear dresses and make-up and high heels, have tea parties, play with their Barbie Dream House, and dream about growing up and being rescued from the evil witch by their prince charming, all while still being little boys who aren’t conditioned to believe that the only way they can live these lives of which they dream is by “becoming” little girls.

It is society that convinces people that gender is innate and not a social construct designed to enforce sexual stereotypes that keep male/men/masculine above everything female/women/feminine. To give in to this conditioning doesn’t make you a non-conformist, it makes you the biggest sheep on the planet because you are helping the patriarchy to enforce these woman-hating sexual stereotypes called gender.

So while I understand being angry at someone showing you the truth, if you are going to be angry and disagree with me, disagree with me for the right reasons. Don’t disagree with me because you haven’t read what I said and just think you know what I am about to say. Don’t disagree with me because you have misunderstood what I said. Don’t disagree with me because I am pointing out that the patriarchy has sold you a bill of goods. I didn’t create the patriarchy, ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t tell you that you needed to transition in order to “feel whole.” You told yourself that because that is the kind of fucked up society in which we live. We have the kind of society that has taught you from birth that you cannot live the kind of life you want to live unless you are the opposite sex.

I am not the one judging you, dear transgender reader, I am not telling you how to identify yourself or even telling you how to live. That is the patriarchy telling you all of that. That is homophobia telling you all of that. That is male privilege telling you all of that. That is this male dominated society shoving all of its collective stereotypical bullshit down your throat while calling it gender identity so it can get you to swallow it without choking.

I am simply one of the many pointing it out to you. 

Transgenders: I’m Rejectin’ Your Deflections

Here’s the thing. People who have no support for their argument deflect in an effort to keep you from realizing they have no valid argument. It’s very common and even more so on-line where people feel incredibly and increasingly confident in arguing for or against something of which they know very little. When they are backed into a corner, they lash out and deflect.

We women see it all the time. Transgenders have created words that are then used as slurs in an effort to deflect and silence. Say that a transwoman isn’t a woman and we are called bigots and transphobes; or the made up words, “cissexist” or “transmisogynist.” Admit that we are not trans and we become cis scum. Hell, I don’t even have to do either of those things, all I have to do is write about lesbophobia and I become an “exterminatist.”

 

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The deflections happen all the time. A woman puts forth the very logical notion of biology 101 and states that a male can never become a female or vice versa and the first thing she hears is “Bigot!” and/or “Transphobe!” Those are deflections. Using those words in an effort to silence and shame the woman putting forth her own opinions and ideas when there is no real argument against what she is saying.

There is also the classic, “well what about intersex people?!?!” This is, of course, a red herring. Talking about gender and biology and saying that females are females and males are males when suddenly someone screams about intersex people. That is bringing up something that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Intersex people are not transgender, so to bring them up when speaking about transgenderism is a way to deflect the conversation.

As for my being called an “exterminatist,” that is a special kind of deflection and it happens all the time when women like me speak up about the problems surrounding transgenderism. It’s called a strawman argument and it is when my words, thoughts, and ideas are misrepresented, then exaggerated and put forth as real.

Take, for instance, the female transgender who re-blogged my “Let’s Talk About Lesbophobia” post and commented with:

“How do you reason with someone who believes that mtf women transition just to victimize other women, and ftm men transition because of internalized misogyny and to obtain male privilege?”

Now, anyone who has read “Let’s Talk About Lesbophobia” or any of my blog posts would know that the above assertion is a complete fabrication. Not only did I not say those things in my lesbophobia post, I haven’t said any of those things in any of my posts. But instead of arguing against my lesbophobia post, hell, instead of actually reading my lesbophobia post, this person decided to just put forth some extreme statements and incorrectly attribute them to me in an effort to discredit and silence me, as well as deflect from the fact that they had no valid argument.

Going back to the “exterminatist” comment, since I have never said anything about wanting to exterminate transgenders and have, in fact stated the opposite (that I support laws that protect all people from discrimination and violence), then the person who called me that was clearly deflecting by misrepresenting my thoughts and views and painting me as someone who wants other people dead.

An even better example of a strawman argument would be from this blog: “Radical Feminism is a Danger to Women.”

When I first read this blog post, I thought this person was transgender. They were so passionate on speaking about transgenderism and what it’s like to be transgender, that the logical conclusion was that they themselves were trans. But when I looked at some other posts, I saw that they describe themselves as a “cisgendered lesbian,” which we all know is just the convoluted way of saying “lesbian.”

This person not only acts like they are an authority on everything trans related, they also claim to be an authority on radical feminists, or radfems; except they got everything about radfems wrong. I am pretty sure it was intentional and done with malice; trying to deflect and hide the fact that this person has no real argument against radfems except to say, “omg they’re SO bad!11!!”

Radfems don’t hate men. They put women first. Notice the distinction? Radfems are not so rooted in males and male supremacy that everything needs to be framed according to men. The framing is around women. Women, women’s issues, women’s health, women’s safety: all top priorities for radfems. Radfems also don’t want to oppress men. This, again, frames things around men. What radfems really want is to liberate women and deconstruct the patriarchy. Again, see the distinction? It isn’t about men, it is about women. Putting forth the idea that radfems center everything around men is a deflection, a strawman argument. Not to mention how derailing the title of the blog post is; since radfems put women first, they cannot and are not a “danger to women.”

So Rayne, in an effort to shame and silence radfems while also discrediting them, created this very long post that has fallacy after fallacy after fallacy because they could not come up with an actual argument against radical feminism, which is, simply: to liberate women. I mean, seriously, regardless of your politics, your class, your race, your sexual orientation, etc., how can you argue with that?

Rayne could not; and it was easier to just make stuff up and pass it off as truth like they worked for Fox news or something. Of course, Rayne also deflected when arguing with @TerriStrange about male violence. Rayne wanted to frame it as violence against women while Terri wanted to frame it as male violence. Calling it violence against women puts everything on women when it comes to the violence done against them; but framing it as male violence puts the responsibility where it belongs: on men.

Instead of an actual argument against saying one over the other, Rayne decided to deflect the conversation by insinuating that lesbian on lesbian violence was so prevalent that to call male violence what it is (male violence) is to make domestic violence between women invisible. But when the vast majority of violence against women, against homosexuals, against children, and yes, against transgenders and transsexuals is perpetrated by men, calling it male violence is not only appropriate, it is necessary to keep the focus where it belongs.

Using a small percentage of male rape victims (most of whom are raped by other men, btw) and a small percentage of woman on woman violence to deflect from the very real and credible threat against women (men) is what the patriarchy wants. Like it is saying, here, keep looking at what my left hand is doing while my right hand kills off your sisters systematically.

Deflection. Don’t let it derail you from the very valid points you are making, dear reader. Remember: the next time you are having a discussion or an argument with a transgender or a trans ally (who also claims to be a feminist) and they deflect by using a strawman argument, violent threats and name calling, a red herring, or any other tactic, don’t get sucked into their derail. Walk away.

 We have a long road and a hard fight ahead of us, so save your sanity. Walk away.

Let’s Talk About Lesbophobia

The word is considered a joke by many and is never really taken seriously. Why? Because (a) it concerns women and (b) it concerns women who have no need or desire for men, or their penises. I see a lot of people throw around words like bigot, homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia. Sometimes these words are being used correctly and there is some hatred going on where the words are being used. But most of the time, these words are being used as a silencing tactic to keep some women from speaking critically about things like transgenderism, the patriarchy, rape culture, misogyny, etc. Moreover, lesbophobia is rarely used and when it is, it is never taken seriously. So let’s talk about it for a minute because as much as men (including male transgenders) try to dismiss it and laugh it off, this is a real thing and it is silencing, harming, and even killing lesbians.

The responses to my post, “Another Sister Lost to the Madness” have been interesting for a variety of reasons. First, I need to make note that a LOT of misconceptions about me and my writing have surfaced; and while they didn’t start with this particular post, seeing the discussions and claims surrounding me and my intentions with this specific post are at the forefront of my mind tonight. I have seen people misread what I say, misrepresent what I write, and even claim that I am someone they know under another name. I will address these things in another post because, while they are important to discuss, what I discovered as I started writing this is that I have something else to talk about first.

I have noticed that with all of the comments, complaints, and down right trolling over my “Another Sister Lost to the Madness” post, for once, not ONE male transgender has commented, been upset about, or otherwise had any kind of reaction to one of my posts. Interesting, yes? This is important to notice and call out because it says something to me and it should say a lot to women everywhere, including those who wish to transition into some facsimile of a “man.” These men don’t care one iota about women, women’s rights, women’s needs, etc. Since that post was about female transgenders and not male transgenders, the men didn’t  so much as peep about it, because they are narcissists who only care about themselves and their needs, which means, sisters, that THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT WOMEN.

You should note that when I make a post about male transgenders, women come out to support them; straight women, bisexual women, female transgenders, even some misguided lesbians, all kinds of women come out in support of these poor, helpless men who just want to live their lives as “women.” Women support these men. Women stand up for these men. Women fight for these men. But when a post pops up that doesn’t directly concern them and instead focuses on female transgenders, where are the men? Oh yeah. They are over there –> trying to figure out how to make the “cotton ceiling” sound like a good thing so lesbians will finally have hot “lesbian” sex with them without pointing out how the whole idea just adds to the rape culture of our society that women have to deal with every single day.

The same thing happens in the gay community. Lesbians have gone out of our way to be supportive of, stand up with, and fight for our gay brothers. We were there at the Stonewall Riots. We were there during all of the AIDS walks and AIDS awareness projects. We have been there with them, side-by-side through every crisis, every equal rights march, every bashing, every death. But we and our wants, needs, rights, etc. are often ignored by gay men. If it’s not about them and their lives (read: penises), they don’t want to hear about it, much less be bothered to stand with us and fight for it.

When the world at large says the word, “gay,” they are almost always talking about men. When the media talks about gay slurs, you never hear them talking about the words “dyke” or “bulldyke,” only about the words “fag” or “faggot.” Whenever discussing gay rights, it is almost always about men, unless of course, they can parade an old lesbian couple around for the “cuteness” manipulation effect. When you read a gay magazine, there is almost always nothing about lesbians in it, unless it is making fun of us. Hell, when you check the inside cover to see who works at the magazine, the list is almost, if not all male, so is it any wonder they have no clue what it is like to be a lesbian today?

Unless it directly affects them and their lives (penises), men couldn’t care less about not just women, but especially lesbians. So it wasn’t really a shock for me to open up my email and see comment after comment made by “male identified butches” and female transgenders who were unhappy with (and mostly misreading) my post. By the way, as a side note, I even got some mail about trans butches. There is no such thing. You’re either trans or you’re butch but you don’t get to be both. Pick one and move on with your life and stop co-opting another person’s identity.

But does any of the above clue you in, dear sister readers? Do you ever wonder where the men are when it is time to discuss rape and rape culture (and note here that I am talking about men in the plural, as in the men of this male-dominated society; not one specific man)? Do you ever wonder where the men are when a lesbian or lesbian couple are bashed, raped, even killed? Do you ever wonder why popular culture focuses so heavily on gay men and if they decide to focus on a lesbian, she needs to be feminized so she doesn’t offend the male viewers? Do you ever notice that the gay magazines rarely cover anything relevant to you? Or how about the gay bars; ever wonder why they are so heavy with gay men and their hags and never really care about whether or not the lesbians even show up to have a drink there?

If you have never wondered about any of the above, I challenge you to do so now. Think about it. Think about all of the times lesbians have been pushed aside in this society as an anomaly or as women who just need a good man or some “good dick” to become better or “real” women. Think about all the slurs we endure day-in and day-out that no one even bats an eye at because they are so accepted. Think about all the times one of our sisters is bashed, raped, and/or killed and it barely makes a blip on the gay media, let alone the main stream media. Think about all the times your opinions and ideas are dismissed by both the gay and straight communities, only for you to find out later when a man or straight person has the same idea, and it is applauded.

While we are at it, we could be discussing why some of those angry female transgenders aren’t thinking about how dismissed they are. We keep hearing about male transgenders getting caught, literally, with their pants down in women’s restrooms, dressing rooms, showers, etc., and all anyone seems to care about are the poor men who just want to use the lady’s restroom and damn the women who don’t want to be in a close, private space, in the nude, with a naked man. But what about all of the female transgenders who get booted out of the male restrooms or worse, get the shit kicked out of them for daring to both look masculine and be in the men’s restroom? You don’t hear about female transgenders demanding to have their naked bodies in the men’s dressing room or shower with other men because hell, they are just one of the guys. True, this has more to do with male privilege than lesbophobia, it has to do with men feeling like they own every single space and are entitled to everything they can see; but it is all rooted in the same pile of bullshit: the patriarchy.

It all boils down to this: we lesbians are dismissed, we are ignored, we are laughed at and not taken seriously, we are even bashed, raped, and killed. Why? Because we all dare to be women who do not need or want men or their penises and that, sisters, is one of the most dangerous ways to live.

It’s time for women to start standing up for women.

My Blog, My Rules

So here’s the thing. This is my blog. These are my thoughts and my opinions based on my  lived experience as someone who was born a female, socialized and conditioned into this patriarchal society, and lives as a non-gender-conforming woman, without apology or hatred for who I am.

Originally, when I created this blog, I had every intention of allowing anyone and everyone to “have their say” when responding to my posts. But I draw the line at trolls. I have enough people seeking me out on Twitter for the sole purpose of trolling, calling me names, wishing violence on me etc., and when it happens there, I block the person and move on with my Tweeting. 

Someone came into my blog the other night and made a passive aggressive comment in an effort to shame me for having my own opinion and I handed her her ass, which caused her friends to pop on by and troll. So the same thing that I do on Twitter will be happening here because, as I said, this is my blog. 

Don’t like it? Not my problem. Go make your own blog with your own opinions or create a Tumblr account, a Twitter, or rail about it on Facebook, I really don’t care. What you don’t get to do is troll me in my own house. The same goes for my Tumblr account. I chose the set-up I did so that in order to reply to a post, you must also re-blog it. This was done on purpose and I am glad I did it; and I have zero problems in addressing those whose comments I find make my point or allow me to make another, just as I have zero problems putting the trolls on ignore. See how that works? My choice. Not yours.

I put lesbians and women first here and this is my space to put down my own thoughts, ideas, and opinions based on my own personal lived experience. Other women have been and will continue to be coming here to share their own thoughts, ideas, and opinions based on their own lived (and sometimes our shared) experience. I will not allow trolls and jackasses to take over my space, just as they try to take over every single other space both on and off line.

Transgenderism is first and foremost about narcissism. If we are not paying 100% complete attention to these individuals and agreeing with their every whim about who they are at any given moment, allowing them into all of our spaces, and giving them full reign over all of our words and history, we are called named and subjected to trolling and violence.

But you (men, their het female sheep, and transgenders) don’t get this space and you don’t get to silence this woman or the other women who come in here to comment. 

My blog, my rules.

RE-BLOG — A Statement from Gender Identity Watch

No matter if we are gay, straight, or bi, we women really need to start standing together and standing up for one another in this.

So transgenders and transsexuals deserve to be protected under the law from discrimination and violence? Of course! But where a line needs to be drawn is: not at the expense of women. For people born male and socialized with male privilege to DEMAND entry into women’s private spaces, it is not just disrespectful, it is misogynistic.

If you are male bodied and you truly want to call yourself a woman, then do what we women do for each other: respect women, put women first, listen to women’s lived experiences, support women.

When you can do THAT, then we can talk.

RE-BLOG — Feminists are not responsible for educating men

This is a re-blog from http://feministcurrent.com

I actually just ran into this situation yesterday while dealing with several (at least 5-6) men on Twitter who decided to jump into a conversation I was having with two other women. They started out mansplaining and demanding us to show proof of violence towards men but after a while, they, and consequently more friends of theirs, just started trolling, trying to exact responses out of me by calling me a “sick fuck” (several times, actually, that was his favorite phrase for me) for suggesting male violence occurs and that women should be able to have safe and private women-only spaces, such as women’s bathrooms, dressing rooms, showers, etc. I was even accused of beating my children when I suggested that little girls didn’t belong in the men’s bathroom.

These are men who are completely and utterly filled with their own male privilege. These are men who will always stick up for men (even trans “women”) before they will ever hear or take a woman seriously. These are men who had several women talking to them about the reasons needed for private female-only space and all they could do was demand proof and demand to be educated.

Unfortunately, these are also the same men who would never read, much less listen to a blog post like the one I am re-blogging below. But, hopefully, a few women may see it and they might start to feel differently about “well meaning men” who butt into their conversations and lives in order to demand some basic education because they refuse to do the work themselves.

I will add 3 snippets of it here to my blog and link to it at the bottom so you can go read the rest and view the comments, adding your own to the author, should you wish to do so. it’s a good read. I sincerely recommend it.

-BBB

 

—–

 

Feminists are not responsible for educating men

As a vocal feminist with many intelligent, lovely male friends, I’m often met with indignance when I choose not to engage with them about feminism. Surely if I reallycared about changing our culture of discrimination and inequality, I should be trying to educate men? Isn’t that an activist’s job? Shouldn’t feminists be grateful when men want to bounce questions off us, because it shows that they are at least trying to understand?

It’s both exhausting and diversionary being expected to hash out the basics with men who haven’t bothered to think about their own privilege before. Men are not entitled to expect feminists to educate them. Real change will only happen when men accept that the burden of education is on them, not on women.

……….

It goes without saying that there is nothing wrong with having basic questions about feminism. Unpacking something as complex and insidious as patriarchy, particularly when it requires an examination of your own privilege, isn’t easy. Where it becomes problematic is when you are so confident that your questions are SUPER! IMPORTANT! that you try and co-opt feminist discussions to have them heard.

To borrow the analogy of another woman:

It’s as if you have walked into a postgraduate mathematics seminar, yelling: “Hey, how can you even use imaginary numbers anyway if they’re not real?” When someone rather distractedly points you to a first-year text-book in the corner, you leaf through the first couple of pages half-heartedly for a few seconds and say:  “I don’t agree with some of the definitions in here – and anyway you haven’t answered my question. Doesn’t anyone want to have a discussion with me?!!”

……….

To paraphrase Audre Lorde:

When people of colour are expected to educate white people as to their humanity, when women are expected to educate men, lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world, the oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions.

If you are in a group that has the structural advantage of wages, safety, health and education – when you’ve basically already won the life lottery just by showing up – it is your responsibility to educate yourself. And really, don’t tell women to be nice. We’re angry. We have every reason to be. Frankly, you should be too.

—–

Read the whole post here: http://feministcurrent.com/8098/feminists-are-not-responsible-for-educating-men/

Trans “Man” Upset On Tumblr

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I found this response interesting because of how very sad it is. Here is a person who accuses me of calling trans people names when in fact they are the one insulting me; and the very belief that a stranger’s opinion on the internet can, literally, hurt you? How sad is that? Heartbreaking, really.

Hello divot-longridge,

I see you have made a few erroneous assumptions here:

(a) I am not accusing anyone of anything other than what they are giving me themselves, e.g., I have not called anyone stupid; but you, on the other hand, have insulted me, so I can see why you would naturally assume I would insult you. We usually judge others by how we ourselves act.

(b) I am not trying to, nor am I harming anyone with my opinions. If a trans person can be hurt by my opinion, if my opinion can hurt their belief in themselves and what they are doing, how telling -is- that? A stranger’s opinion can, literally, hurt you? That’s unfortunate and speaks volumes about your decision to transition, doesn’t it. 

(c) I actually -am- reaching people with my tags and posts. You are just not seeing them pop up here in public. Oh, and I am using “reaching” instead of “enlighten” because I am not a narcissistic personality who is arrogant enough to believe I can “enlighten” anyone. I find it interesting that you, however, would use that term.

Thanks for your quite obvious attempt at silencing me, as well as your attempt at trying to provoke an emotional response by insulting me (trolling); but you see, the neat thing about this is that I can use whatever tag(s) I wish and have whatever opinion(s) I wish.

Swag, The “Transman” Troll

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I found this response to my post, Another Sister Lost To The Madness on my Tumblr interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, it is clearly a troll account as the person describes her blog as something she uses to “comment on bullshit tags.” So she clearly isn’t really interested in anything I have to say, she just wants to play the oppression Olympics and prove that she has it worse off then everyone else, which is common with people suffering from a trans delusion.

Secondly, while she starts off saying that she would like my opinion on certain things, she spends the rest of her post trying to shame me for my very valid opinions based on a lot of years of lived experience as a butch lesbian.

The rest of her post is filled with a lot of things trans people say to me when trying to “make me see the error of my ways” in my opinion about transgenderism. She complains about how trans people are treated while completely ignoring what gay people go through because, with trans people, it really is all about them.

She also inaccurately calls transgenderism a medical condition when in reality, it is a mental condition. There is no such thing as “being born (or trapped) in the wrong body,” there is only the belief that one’s life would be easier and one would be happier if one could transform oneself into the opposite sex. This is not a medical condition, this is a mental condition that requires therapy, not hormones and surgery.

Of course, the rest of her post is the typical narcissism that we see with trans people, the accusations that I am speaking for all people, the assertion that I have no sympathy or empathy for trans people, the complaints about how we lesbians just don’t get it and have such easier lives, the assumptions of what it is I think when I never said anything of the sort, etc.

Here’s the thing, Swag. From your post, it sounds like you are a young straight woman who is unhappy with her life. I would venture to guess that you have been subjected to a lot of sexism in your young life and were under the belief that living as a man would make things easier for you but you are now faced with a very harsh reality that giving up on the woman that you are means you gave up the power you had inside of you to deal with said sexism. Or perhaps you thought being trans would make you “special” or unique and now you are feeling the opposite of that and are struggling.

Either way, I feel very badly for you and wish that you could see that conforming to the binary and trying to “be a man” was just a cop out for you. You have a lot of choices and this one, it’s a really bad one.

Yes, being trans is about society, it is about the patriarchy, it is about conforming. Gender is nothing more than a social construct based on the sexual stereotypes put forth by this patriarchal, misogynistic society; and you, my friend, have bought into that, hook, line, and sinker. When a person gets so completely caught in the gender shell game of biological stereotypes, they assume that to dress this way or to enjoy these things, etc. then they must be the opposite sex. This is a sham. 

Swag, I can understand a hatred of one’s self and I can even understand the homophobia or lesbophobia, given what you may have faced in your life, but what I would seriously recommend is being seen by a therapist to help you with your contradictions: the self hate coupled with the narcissism. You are a wonderful and beautiful woman who doesn’t need hormones, surgeries, or to hate lesbians to live a healthy life.

I wish you much luck; and if you ever need to chat, shoot me an email.

 

Another Sister Lost To The Madness

I was at the store the other day when I heard one of the most heartbreaking things that a dyke can hear one of her sisters say. It was a convenience store, so when we all stood in line and were then waited on, we were all side-by-side facing the 2 clerks behind the counter. When I got up to the counter, this young butch dyke who was helping me was talking to a young gay man (customer) next to me. I would guess they were both around 20 years old. The young dyke was saying that she didn’t know how to tell her mom something, which being gay, made my ears perk because hey, we’ve all been there, right?

Then she says that her mom already knows she is a “lesbian” (she used air quotes there), but that she wasn’t a lesbian, she was “trans” and “wanted to live her life as a man;” and she didn’t know how to tell her mom this.

As I said, this was sincerely heartbreaking; to see and hear a young butch dyke talk about transitioning and living her life “as a man.” I wanted to reach across the counter and shake her like a mom who just caught her child running across the street without looking, consequently almost getting hit. It was sad to see this young woman, a sister to me in many ways, speak about transitioning; and I have to say, she didn’t seem happy about it either. She seemed resigned, like it was something she had to do, not something she wanted to do.

I wanted to tell her not to drink the trans kool-aid. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to take drugs or have surgeries and mutilate a perfectly healthy female body. I wanted to tell her to not give in to the binary and conform into societal demands. I wanted to tell her that it’s ok to be any kind of woman you want to be, patriarchy be damned.

I wanted to say all of that and more, because it sickens me to see the kind of pressure young women like this deal with on a daily basis. I dealt with it as well. I was so masculine looking, I was “passing” in high school, even with long hair. In my early 20s when I came out, people still thought I was a man, but it was made worse because I was a lesbian and to so many people, a masculine looking lesbian “wants to be a man.”

Forget that I didn’t want to be a man. Forget that I loved being a woman. Forget that I loved my body. Forget that I was ok with the non-conforming woman that I was. I received so much pressure to transition, I almost did. I figured I was supposed to transition, that it was something everyone expected me to do, so I should just do it.

I am thankful everyday that I decided against it.

But not every young lesbian is that lucky. So many of them feel so much pressure from society and from the trans community that they should transition, they end up making the biggest mistake of their young lives. Sometimes, that mistake is irreversible.

I was reading some comments yesterday from straight men and women and it was pretty astonishing to see not only how little they know about lesbians and trans people, but also how little they really actually care about lesbians. Here is this blog, created and written by a butch lesbian about her lived experiences and her opinions based on those lived experiences and these straight women and men were commenting about how there is no such pressure to conform, there is no such pressure to transition. Hell, they even commented on how harmless the cotton ceiling is and how it doesn’t attempt shame lesbians into having sex with men who call themselves women.

Instead of believing a woman who has lived these experiences and knows about them first hand, these straight people also drank the trans kool-aid and believed the rhetoric spewed forth by the trans community. Instead of listening to what I had to say about lesbians, butches, and trans people, these women and men decided that I was just another silly woman screaming about how awful the menz are and that they shouldn’t take me seriously.

So it shouldn’t be surprising to see young butch dykes out there who are subjected to the trans propaganda, feel like they should transition. It shouldn’t be surprising that young dykes out there who are confronted daily by a society that ignores, ridicules, and even tries to exterminate butch lesbians, feel like they should transition. I shouldn’t be surprising that young dykes out there who hear from the straight community all of the homophobic, lesbophobic, and misogynistic crap they say about lesbians and women, while praising trans for “being brave,” feel like they should transition.

It isn’t surprising to those of us who felt, and still feel that kind of pressure from the straight, trans, and sometimes even gay communities. but it is heartbreaking. When you are a woman who doesn’t conform to what society believes a woman should be and then you thumb your nose at society again by not conforming to the man they believe you should transition into because of how you look, dress, or act, life isn’t just hard, it can sometimes be down right unbearable.

Life as a non-conforming lesbian can be especially difficult when faced with women from your own group, such as other lesbians or feminists, who are so conditioned by the patriarchy that instead of celebrating the kind of non-conforming woman that you are, they also disbelieve your lived experiences, they also feel that you should just transition already, and they also put your needs as a woman on the back burner for the sake of men.

No, it isn’t surprising that this young woman was resigned to her fate. It isn’t surprising  that she was ready to stop being a lesbian and conform to what people everywhere shove down non-conforming women’s throats about transitioning. It isn’t surprising that she was ready to live life “as a man.” It’s heartbreaking, because I, like so many other women out there who refuse to conform to this patriarchal society’s demands, have been there; and sometimes, it’s just easier to go with the flow of those around you and do what is expected.

Someone on my Twitter joked about staging an intervention for this young woman; and I really wish we could. I wish a group of us could sit her down and tell her that she is beautiful and handsome and wonderful just the way she is, that she is part of a community filled with a rich and amazing history, that she is loved and cherished for the non-conforming woman that she is. Our intervention could even consist of women who I keep meeting through my blog, women who went through the transition stages in their attempts to become men and who, years later, regretted that decision and are on their way back to the women they always were.

I could tell her what I told myself so many years ago when faced with the pressure to transition: Fuck society. Fuck the patriarchy. Fuck conforming. I like the woman that I am and I refuse to become something I am not, nor would I ever want to be in order to satisfy the world’s misogynistic view of woman.

Lesbians, Dykes, and Butches: The Real Gender Non-Conformists

Let’s talk about public bathrooms. And airport security. And dressing rooms. And all of the other places that lesbians who don’t conform to the patriarchy’s ideal of what a woman should look like go where we are incorrectly identified as not being women. Places where we are accosted, detained, assaulted, barred from entering, humiliated, mocked, abused, beaten, and even raped; all because we dare to thumb our noses at the binary and proudly remain the women that we are, the women we choose to be, regardless of what the patriarchy demands.

You can even include all of those places where we go for doctor’s appointments, job interviews, etc. Places where our name is called and when we respond, the person calling our name is confused and unable to reconcile the woman’s name on their form with the person in front of them because of how the patriarchy conditions all of us to view women.

A lot of lesbians, dykes, and especially butches don’t fit that perception. We never have. We have always done woman in our own way without a care in the world about how society sees us, while refusing to change who we are when society tries to change us through shame and violence.

We all have the stories, you know the ones. I am walking towards the woman’s bathroom when an older woman walks out the door and then stands there, trying to keep me from entering while telling me this is the ladies restroom, as if I cannot read or see the small female figure in a skirt on the door. Or the times, so many times, I lost count of when I am finishing up in the woman’s restroom, washing my hands when a woman opens the door, looks at me, pauses, looks at the sign on the door, looks at me again, and then just stands there frozen. Or even those times when they don’t stand frozen, but feign confusion asking if this is the ladies room.

We butches, as well as non-conforming dykes and lesbians, we all have stories like these, with varying degrees of danger and humiliation. I have butch friends who flat out refuse to use the woman’s restroom unless a femme friend or lover accompanies them to keep the stares, and the violence, to a minimum. Other butch friends won’t go to the woman’s restroom, no matter what, because they have dealt with such humiliation and violence before that to even consider using a woman’s public bathroom gives them an anxiety attack.

There are other stories, of course: being denied entry into the woman’s dressing room at a clothing store, the stares and murmurs, and even some women moving to another area, while we are changing in a woman’s dressing room at the YMCA, having to go through airport security more than once or, worse, being detained because the people at security look at us and see: men.

These stories go on and on and on for all of us, so it really wasn’t a shock to see news reports online of a woman, Susan Ho, who was using the woman’s restroom at a casino where she was entered in a bowling tournament, only to be unlawfully detained and assaulted when she tried to exit the bathroom and was accused of being a man in the woman’s restroom. At one point, the people detaining her even went so far as to discuss the possibility of removing Susan’s shirt to see if she was actually a woman, as she said. Read the full article here: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/10/08/61853.htm

I say I am not shocked when I see this sort of thing in the news, but it doesn’t make reading about it any less disheartening. As I said before, some lesbians and dykes and especially we butches don’t fit the patriarchal view of what women “should” look like.  When people see me in my jeans, t-shirt, and hat, they make a snap judgment and see what their conditioning tells them to see: a man.

See, we are the real gender non-conformists. I know that transgenders and their apologists and allies love to make the false claim that trans men and trans woman are gender non-conformists, but that is all smoke and mirrors to hide what is actually happening. Trans people are the very opposite of gender non-conformists. They do everything they possibly can to completely and utterly conform to the binary.

Look at trans men. When on T, what is the first thing trans men do? Go out of their way to grow facial hair because, to them, facial hair is one of the biggest defining factors of maleness, of being men. Forget the fact that there are women out there who have no choice but to shave their faces because for one medical reason or another (this differs woman to woman), they have facial hair.

Then look at trans women. They are one hundred percent about presentation; and that presentation is driven by male desire, by the patriarchy, by what they, as men, find attractive in women. They must dress and act in extremes with the long hair, tons of make up, and dresses all the time because when men think about women, this is how they see women in their minds’ eyes: as a completely vamped up, stylized version of woman.

Both trans men and trans women go out of their way to be as “manly” or as “womanly” (respectively) as they can be because that is what the patriarchy, what the binary demands. Pick one or the other, the patriarchy says. If you wear men’s clothing, you must be a man; and if you wear women’s clothing, you must be a woman. If you are going to be a man or a woman, make sure to be the most über man or woman you can be so that we are positive that that is what you are. It is this same line of thinking that has parents turning tomboys into little trans men and feminine boys into little trans women. In the parents’ eyes, they are doing their child a favor but what they are really doing is forcing their child into the binary box.

Butches, as well as non-conforming lesbians and dykes on the other hand, are who they are while still being women, the patriarchy be damned. Instead of conforming, we, literally, stand out and are the most visible women in the lesbian community. We take a lot of heat for that, yes, but we love our bodies, we love being women, and we are not going to “transition” into some variation of men simply to please the patriarchal binary system.

Transgenderism is, at its very core, conformity. That is the number one goal of transgenderism: conforming to the binary. Butches and non-conforming dykes and lesbians want the very opposite.

Transgenders try to co-opt our words by claiming to be women and even lesbians. They try to co-opt our spaces by forcing their way into women’s restrooms, dressing rooms, and other woman-only spaces. They try to control our bodies by shaming us into having sex with them or else be labeled bigots and transphobes. They even try to steal our histories by turning women like Teena Brandon into a trans man, by claiming the butch and drag queen who started the Stonewall riots were actually a trans man and trans woman, etc.

They do all of this under the guise that they are gender non-conformists, when the truth of the matter is simply this: if trans people were truly non-conformists, there would be no transgenderism. Women would be women and men would be men, regardless of how they dressed or acted; and there would be no back lash, no mocking or shaming, no violence toward them, towards all of us, for being who we are.

No, the true non-conformists are butches, lesbians, and dykes. A professor once told me in college, “You are a genderfuck.” He was right; and I am damn proud of it.

 

Extremist or Realist?

Here’s the thing. We all have our own filters, be they the filter of white privilege, class privilege, male privilege, living as an oppressed POC or, especially, WOC, female, male, gay, straight, bi, etc. The list goes on and on because there are as many filters through which to view the world as there are people in the world.

So I see the comments, the tweets, the discussions, and the arguments about my blog and the posts contained therein. I also see the accusations: transphobe, extremist, vile, vitriol; and those are just a few from the last couple of days.

I have been on-line for a number of years and I have learned that words are very very important. I try very hard to choose my words carefully and while sometimes I leave out the word, “some” when speaking about a group of people, such as trans women, I have never used the word, “all” when speaking about any group of people. If someone reading my blog sees the word, “all,” then that is their own filters through which they are viewing my blog and I cannot (a) be accountable for that or (b) find my way to being offended by it.

I think it says a lot about the reader who sees, “all trans women” or “all bisexuals” or “all” anything in my blog and then gets so angry that they must argue and spew forth accusations like transphobia, hatred, extremist, etc. It is very telling to me to see these kinds of responses to my blog. It tells me that (a) these people see themselves in the mirror I am holding up and this bothers them to the point of wanting to smash said mirror, and/or it tells me that (b) they are so conditioned by the patriarchy and the binary system of being that they cannot fathom a different way, a different system, and anything that contradicts what they have been conditioned to believe must be destroyed.

So let me lay it out for you, dear reader. I am not a transphobe. I do not hate trans people. I do not believe anyone should face discrimination, beatings, or death simply for being who they are. What I do “hate” is that this patriarchal binary system that is currently in place in our society makes some people think their only option is transgenderism. Because let’s be clear, transgenderism is a strict adherence of the binary system. It is not non-conforming, it is conforming to such a degree that drugs and surgery are needed in order to complete the necessary steps to conform absolutely to what society expects to see.

See, instead of letting girls and women be whomever they choose to be, they are being encouraged and conditioned to believe they are boys and men. That tomboy down the street? Her parents, her school, and the media has convinced her she is a boy. Instead of boys and men being allowed to be whomever they want to be, even if that means going through life wearing dresses and make-up, they are conditioned to believe they have to transition into a facsimile of a woman. That little boy who likes to wear mommy’s dresses? His parents, his school, and the media have convinced him that he should be a girl. That is what this patriarchal binary system has created: the need to be one or the other and to never deviate from either unless you are “switching” from one to the other.

But in reality, there is no “switching.” Sex is not gender is not sex. Sex is biology. With few exceptions, human beings are born either female or male. Girls and women are female children and female adults, respectively; just as boys and men are male children and male adults, respectively. This is basic science, biology 101. No matter how many drugs or how many surgeries, females cannot become males and males cannot become females; therefore women cannot become men and men cannot become women.

The very idea that a person has to be one or the other, female or male, is insulting and damaging to the gay community. Lesbians everywhere, this butch included, are non-conforming to the binary. So many different lesbians, refusing to adhere to the binary and thumbing their nose at the patriarchy as they, as we live as woman on our own terms. There are also gay men everywhere who do not conform to the binary, we see this with gay men who are deemed by society to be feminine and we also see this with drag queens, just to name two.

For transgenders to claim that they are “two-spirits” is insulting to the gay Native Americans who actually are two spirits. For them to claim that they are the ones who are non-conforming to the binary is insulting to hundreds of thousands of lesbians and gay men over generations who spent their entire lives not conforming to society’s rules and expectations. For transgenders to also re-write history so that drag queens and butches of the past suddenly become trans women and trans men, respectively erases our identities and our very histories. If I “hate” anything at all, reader, I “hate” that and will fight against it with every fiber of my being.

What I also “hate” is that a great majority of trans women want to co-opt women’s spaces, women’s words, and yes, women’s bodies. Whether certain feminists wish to believe lesbians or not, this is our lived and shared reality. The “cotton ceiling” exists and it is an affront to lesbians everywhere. Lesbians are shamed and guilted into having sex with male-bodied people who call themselves women and are told that if they do not comply, they are bigots for not accepting trans women as women.

Trans women’s whole state of being rests on how they are perceived. When that is threatened by lesbians who, by the very definition of a lesbian, do not wish to have sex with men, these trans women become so enraged at the very thought that we are denying them that they threaten us with rape, bodily harm, and even death at (a) being “misgendered,” and (b) our refusal to see past their penis and their being male long enough to have sex with them. This is not conjecture or rhetoric. This is reality. This is the “cotton ceiling.”

As a side note for those who do not know and who do not care to use Google, the “cotton ceiling” is a phrase that was created to describe the barrier trans women face when trying to date and have sex with lesbians. See, our panties are that barrier and the “cotton ceiling” represents the attitude that we simply need to be “educated” to accept trans women as women and then we will be willing to date and have sex with them. The very concept is so misogynistic and supports a rape culture that is so prevalent not just in this country, but world wide.

I do understand that even after having read this post, some will still insist that since I do not see trans women as women, then I am a transphobe and filled with hate. That is simply not true. What I am is someone who can see past the rhetoric, past the conditioning so ingrained in all of us, and see that while sex is a biological constant, gender is a social construct that can change with each person who tries to define what it is.

I also understand, and have been subjected to, men who do not even bother to read the entirety of my posts, but still have so much to tell me about what I am thinking and feeling, what I mean, and why I am such a bigot. These are men who feel so entitled, they don’t even feel they need to be informed before dressing a woman down for her words that they didn’t even be bothered to read. This does not hurt my feelings, I simply cannot and do not take these men seriously.

And, for the record, I do not hate men, not even the men who call me names and threaten me and my sisters with rape, violence, and death. What I do “hate” is that because of male privilege, men feel so entitled as to think they can take over women’s spaces, take over women’s words, and take over women’s bodies. Do “all” men feel this way? Maybe. Maybe not. But I can tell you that ALL men are conditioned from birth. ALL men are instilled with male privilege and even if society may see them as women based on their dress and actions in strict adherence to the binary, they still hold those privileged attitudes within themselves. It is that privilege that makes them believe that there is no space they cannot be in, no words they cannot co-opt, and no woman they cannot have.

That is what I “hate.”

Trans “Women” Hope Butches Become a Thing of the Past

Astonishingly, and I say that sarcastically, since this does not surprise me in the least, trans women actually hate women. It isn’t just about men controlling women, this is flat-out misogyny at work here.

It’s no secret that trans women, being men, believe they not only have the right to use the words woman and lesbian to describe themselves and they not only have the right to women’s spaces, these men also believe they have the absolute right to women’s bodies. This is what the cotton ceiling is all about: men demanding that women who don’t want to have sex with them, have sex with them anyway or be accused of being bigots for not having open enough minds to see these men as women.

Let’s be clear, shaming, guilting, or tricking a woman into having sex with you is rape. Period. Full stop. Women, lesbians, have the right to refuse to have sex with anyone they choose for whatever reason they choose. Why? These are our bodies.

So is it really surprising that these same trans women, who are straight men and sexual deviants, do not support or even care about butch lesbian women and actually want to see us disappear altogether?

I am used to it, of course. Men have always LOVED the idea of lesbians, but only in that they are picturing thin, feminine lesbians who eventually just really want to be with men and don’t really want women at all. The thought of butch lesbians repulses men because, as some ignorant people believe, they think we just want to be men. They also do not find us attractive because we appear masculine. So, of course, those women they find the least attractive should be destroyed, especially those of us who threaten their very existence: we don’t need or want men and women want us.

Taking the ignorance of these men a step further, it isn’t really a shocking revelation to see that since they believe all butches want to be men, then surely we are on our way to becoming men just by being butches and we will eventually all transition, making butch lesbians obsolete and, as I said the other day, extinct.

  

David-Dana-Taylor-butch-tweet

 

So much for the LGBT community, huh? That’s transactivist, David “Dana Lane” Taylor, by the way, under one of his many troll accounts expressing his belief that the way for the “terf menace” (another slur created and propagated by trans women to describe radical feminists and, especially, lesbians) to be gone once and for all is to get rid of butch lesbians; and the way to do that is to have us all transition into “men.”

What these men really want is for all of us butches to just hurry up and transition already so we can be trans men and support these misogynistic sexual deviants in their clear cut efforts to own and possess women.

What these men fail to realize however, is that women who transition into “men” are not butch lesbians who want to be men. There are butches who transition, yes, but almost every instance of that is due to the kind of societal pressure these men are expressing; the whole idea that if we look, act, dress, and talk “like men” then we should just BE men. This stems from the belief that there can only be two ways of being woman/female or man/male; and there is never any kind of overlap or in between.

Little girls, who would have at one time been considered tomboys and been allowed to become whatever kind of woman they wanted to be are now being forced into a trans lifestyle by their parents under the guise of “understanding and support.” Young butch women who are happy being butch are pressured into transitioning by a society that includes lesbians telling them that they should just be men and get it over with already. Young women who are straight but hate their lives as women transition as a way to escape the patriarchy into which they have been born as second class citizens. Those are just some of the reasons why women transition into “men,” but make no mistake, they are not transitioning because they are “men trapped in women’s bodies,” they are transitioning because the binary system tells them they should.

This is why the very idea that the binary system could be a lie, a social construct designed by men, is what scares these men to death. The idea that women can be who they are and not want to be men, not want to transition, is unfathomable to these men. Add that to the idea that there are women out there who honestly do not need or want to be with men, dress or not, and you have a full scale panic on your hands that creates rapist thinking like the cotton ceiling and lesbophobic thinking like the above sentiments Mr. Taylor put forth.

And let’s be honest, the above sentiments are lesbophobic and homophobic. To put forth the idea, the hope that eventually all butch women will transition and thank god, so we don’t have to look at or deal with them any longer is unbelievably homophobic and lesbophobic in that it expresses the desire to exterminate all butch lesbians.

At what point, do you think, will lesbians and women stand up to these men and say, “No more!”? There is going to come a time when lesbians and women realize that these men are just your average everyday men who want to own, possess, and eventually do away with women. The fact that they are using the trans lifestyle to promote their misogynistic and homophobic views should wake women up and make them realize they are fighting for the extinction of their own sisters.

So what are you, dear reader going to do about it? What are you doing to ensure that these men will no longer get to dictate with whom you will have sex or which women are ok and which women need to be exterminated?

 

I Call It Like I See It

This is an older entry (Nov 2012), but is significantly relevant to my posts, “Ass”uming Butches Into Extinction and the follow-up to that post. We women who do not conform to societal standards and the binary system get “misgendered” every single day of our lives. It’s inevitable; and while it can be annoying and even aggravating, we do not contact the press, we do not sue the people who have called us men or trans, and we do NOT threaten anyone with death or rape. This is a clear difference between women and people who are male but call themselves women.

Please also note that this person, Theresa/Thomas is a very violent person who was convicted of aggravated assault (see: http://nametheproblem.com/2013/06/17/teresa-cross/). So when he was kicked out of this store, it most likely was NOT because he was gently “correcting” these women about his “gender.” He was probably acting like the scary violent man that he is; but in a dress.

You think I just don't understand, but I don't believe you.

“Being a woman is not about spending thousands I agree, it is about conviction, courage and standing up to patriarchy and the glass ceiling. It is about finding Leda and the Swan disgusting and hating violations of womankind, or indeed mankind. But, transwomen have to work to attain what non trans women have from birth. For the record, I have never spent thousands, I don’t have it to spend.”

Do you find this disgusting? If so, you are a woman.

A news item from Fort Worth, Texas crossed my inbox recently.  Teresa Cross, a Transgender Woman, attempted to shop at a store.  When Teresa asked if she could use her debit card, the clerk stated that “he” could not. This act bothered Teresa because “she’s a Woman.”

View original post 1,651 more words

Follow-up to “Ass”uming Butches Into Extinction

Since there were, understandably, a lot of questions about how this butch woman, Doffy, responded to her doctor’s gross misjudgment of who she was as a person, I thought I would follow-up with that information.

I would first like to point out that yes, I know this person, she is a real human being, she is a butch lesbian, and she took and posted the pic herself.

Secondly, As you will see in one of my pics that I will post here, I would like to add that Doffy had absolutely no problem with sharing every inch of the picture, including all of her personal information. The decision to redact personal information including her address, phone number, date of birth, and hospital record number, as well as the doctors’ names, and the hospital she visited was mine and mine alone. It is one thing to say, sure I am fine with you posting whatever, but it is an entirely different beast to have every piece of your personal information posted out onto the internet like that. So I decided her name was enough; and while I am in possession of both the original pic and the redacted version, I still feel that way.

Now that those bits of information are out of the way, on to her response.

When Doffy originally posted this information, a mutual friend of ours asked her what a lot of people are asking: “This was outrageous! How did you respond?”

I was quite vocal at the registration desk. I said with a loudish voice…I am NOT trans, I do NOT take drugs to look this handsome and I have fallopian tubes…the secretary looked at me like I had 3 heads and laughed a bit. Said she’d make sure to note it…which she did not…and I said “I am surprised that the medical industry would assume without question! I am taking my drug free fallopian tubes to the waiting area”

Later, she followed up with:

But dont be mad or upset on this account. I made sure to inform the entire registry office and the registry office in the triage AND the 5 doctors and 3 nurses that I am in fact female… that the doctor who wrote the chart was obviously and easily confused. And the fact that she (the doctor who wrote that without questioning me) did not even order an x-ray on a finger cut to the bone and that that very finger is broken…only proved my point of incompetence both medically and physiologically.

When I was thinking about posting about this, our mutual friend asked Doffy for her permission to post the pic of her chart notes and she responded with the following texts:

 

 Doffy-text-1Doffy-text-2

 

As you can see, she was OK with posting the pic containing all of her personal identification and even had a sense of humor about the whole incident; but that’s what we women do, isn’t it? Sure, we get mad in the moment that it happens, but later we laugh it off as someone’s silly mistake. That is part of what makes this so dangerous and why I felt such a need to post about it. We women need to stand up and know that it is OK to be angry in situations like this, that we can be offended about someone catering to the patriarchy like that and it is OK to do so.

What Doffy went through can happen to any of us who don’t succumb to societal pressure and conform to the binary way of thinking and being. When I was discussing this last night, a horrible thought occurred to me: what if this butch lesbian had been unconscious or unresponsive when she was brought into the ER and the assumption that she was a trans man had been made? It is clear from the texts, that her doctor didn’t do any kind of checking with Doffy when it came to meds. So, what if she were unconscious and they decided to be “helpful” and prescribe this, in their misinformed opinion, “John Doe” testosterone for the duration of her stay at the hospital?

I realize I am taking this to an extreme, but if something like that is even a possibility, how frightening is that for butch lesbians or for any woman who doesn’t conform?

“Ass”uming Butches Into Extinction

Just yesterday, I wrote about how bisexual women, straight women, and men claiming to be women were co-opting the word lesbian in their effort to twist and distort it until it means nothing; and I wondered if the patriarchy, with the help of the “I hate labels” and the “sexuality is fluid” crowds, would swallow the term whole, taking lesbians’ identity away, once and for all. Of course, that is a hard pill to swallow and the majority of lesbians will fight tooth and nail against people who think they can co-opt our words and spaces, bully us into silence, and shame us into having sex with trans women and their accompanying penises by calling us transphobic and bigots because we do not want to have relationships or sleep with men.

So imagine my horror when I was sent this screen cap of a visit to the doctor recently. A butch lesbian, a woman who does not fit society’s definition of what a woman should look like or how a woman should dress, behave, or present herself went to the ER. She checks in, sees the doctor, and before leaving, takes a peek at her chart to see something so unbelievable, for a second, I thought I was being punked when told about it.

 

Doffy1

Posted with her permission,
including leaving her name visible.

 

This doctor decided that the butch lesbian in front of her was not actually a butch lesbian but a trans man in denial. In the chart, she writes that this butch is a 48 year old trans man but adds that the “chart will say female.” There was no conversation, there were no questions about whether or not this woman believed she was trans, there was nothing but an assumption; and that assumption was based on this butch woman’s appearance.

Instead of inquiring, instead of taking a good look at the person in front of her and seeing the woman inside the butch, instead of accepting that a woman can look and dress in a manner deemed by society to be masculine while still being a woman, the doctor assumed this butch lesbian was a trans man and put forth that assertion into the woman’s chart without even so much as a by your leave.

I can tell you, as a butch, that having something like that happen: the complete erasure of the woman that you are in order to appease a group of people with such a debilitating disorder, they cry “bigot” at the slightest foul, is nothing short of humiliating. In induces a rage that, to be honest, I have no analogy for at the moment. I get irritated when I am mistaken for a man, sure, but when the person hears my voice or takes a more-than-glancing look at me, they realize their mistake, see the woman that I am, and, most of the time, apologize for not paying enough attention to the person in front of them so as to see more than a hat, t-shirt, and pair of jeans that led them to their erroneous assumption in the first place.

This is different; and, no, it isn’t the same thing as a trans person being “misgendered.” That’s silly, actually, when you take into consideration that gender is a social construct that, with so many people, changes with the wind. No this is the obliteration of butch women.

Worse than that, this is a person, a doctor, proclaiming that the patriarchy, that men mean so much to her and her conditioning is so complete, she has decided to, without consent, assign maleness to the woman standing in front of her; and she expects that gross misjudgment to be rewarded with thanks and praise for being such a good sheep in the gender pasture.

This is why we must band together and stop this madness, this trans epidemic, this erasure of women, and this annihilation of butch lesbians. Butch female lesbian visibility is a feminist issue, one that is much more important, and vitally so, to women; more so than prioritizing men’s issues. Lesbians should not be erased for the sake of men’s “delicacy.”  

 Our words are important. Our spaces are important. Our sex is important. Every time we take another step back to readjust the lines that should not be crossed, we get closer and closer to the cliff leading to our extinction.

“Lesbians” Who Aren’t Really Lesbians At All

I saw this blog the other day with a video in it that had women who identify as lesbians saying they have sex with men, but still consider themselves lesbians. I really thought that was the stupidest thing I have seen on these interwebs for a very long time until I saw the corresponding Facebook post linking the video and read the comments from all of the, well, I was going to say LGBT and queer folks, but I have a sneaky suspicion that there were a few straight folks in there chiming in as well.

This has to be one of the most insane notions to hit the LGB community and we all know exactly where it’s really coming from here: men. The patriarchy.

Men have been trying to break in to the lesbian communities ever since there have been men and women who don’t want them. Porn, movies, and TV shows have been built around the premise that all lesbians really need is some good dick, that all lesbians secretly really want dick, but they can’t get it, etc. It’s a notion built by men who cannot even fathom for one second that women could live, love, and have sex without them.

Several of the comments talked about how sex is fluid and all labels suck. Have you ever noticed how people who say they hate labels actually have 10,000 labels to describe themselves? And sexuality is fluid? Come on! Bisexuals have been saying that for years; no one bought it then and no one is buying it now. Sexual fluidity is a myth. It’s something people say when they want to be cool or edgy or are so confused about what they want, they can’t land on any one thing.

And labels only “suck” to those who want to fit into one label but can’t so they either grab a whole bunch of other labels, they try to dismantle the label they want and can’t fit into, or they cry about how bad labels are in the hopes that no one will notice they are trying to cram themselves into something that just doesn’t fit. If they can’t have that label, then no one should have it. It’s the logic of a 3 year old child.

It all really comes down to men. Since the patriarchy can’t seem to change lesbians and since we are becoming more mainstream with more acceptance, the only thing left is to destroy our ID from the inside out by having women who are actually bisexual claim to be lesbians and to have straight men pretend to be women and then pretend to be lesbians on top of that.

It’s the same line of thinking that created the “cotton ceiling,” which calls any lesbian who refuses to have sex with a male claiming to be a woman a bigot because lesbians don’t want to have intimate and sexual relations with men.

That’s what this really boils down to: lesbians are women who have intimate emotional and sexual relationships with other women. Men did not, do not, and will not ever fit into that equation. The thing that most trans and trans apologists get confused about is this isn’t just about genitals, this is about two women connecting in an emotional, sexual, and spiritual way that not only doesn’t include or even require men, men couldn’t even grasp the concept.

To men, it IS all about genitals and about who is having sex with whom. That’s why when trans women started screaming about the “cotton ceiling” and how lesbians who won’t sleep with them and their penises are bigots, all they cared about was the act of fucking. It wasn’t about love, emotions, feelings, etc., just about who we will and will not fuck.

The women in the video and a few of the comments even mentioned how lesbians can be women who love other women but still have sex with men because sex doesn’t matter. This comes back to the male notion that everything is based on sexual intercourse and nothing else. Saying something like the above is akin to cheating on your partner and saying that you didn’t care about the person at all, it was just sex. Well, that’s still cheating and having sex with men still makes you either bisexual or straight.

One woman even phrased bisexuality as being a person who loves both sexes equally and since these women loved women more than men, then they were lesbians. As if there is some sort of scale that measures how much you love one or the other sex or something.

Women who love and have relationships and sex with men are straight. Women who love and have relationships and sex with women are lesbians. Women who love and have relationships and sex with both sexes are bisexuals. Period. End of story. Exit stage left. Close the curtains. Queue the fat lady. The end.