Tag Archives: MtF

The Systematic Erasure of Lesbians

I know that I am not the only Lesbian who is not just sick and tired of our erasure, but so enraged by it, I can barely sit here and write this. Just thinking about all of the ways we are being appropriated AND erased makes me want to fucking scream!

I keep reading in my various Facebook groups about how surprised women are that even though the L in LGBT is first, we are actually considered last and we have to adjust the most to what the GBT want. This isn’t shocking. I mean, gay men (as a class, don’t individualize this) don’t really like lesbians and they tend to run over us and do what they want without considering our thoughts, ideas, or feelings. Just look at a “gay magazine” and you will see that almost all of the people running and participating in that magazine are men. Go to any LGBT event and you will see the same.

Add to that the fact that “queer” no longer belongs to LGB people, it belong to heterosexuals who consider themselves quirky, different, maybe even deviants (a common stereotype for homosexuals). I’ve seen heterosexual couples claim to be non-binary and therefore queer. I’ve seen gender non-conforming men who wear makeup and dresses call themselves queer, instead of the obvious: cross-dressers. I’ve seen women who sometimes kiss their friends in order to make their boyfriends happy and horny call themselves queer. Queer used to be synonymous with homosexual, but after decades of torture and abuse under that term when it was a slur and decades when homosexuals re-claimed the word to take away its power, now the word has been taken away from us as straight people use it to seem cool and edgy. It’s fucking ridiculous.

Also, consider this: out of all of the financial resources obtained by the LGB(T)+ last year, only 2% were used for Lesbians. 2-fucking-%. Lesbians have “taken care of,” marched for, and stood by gay men for decades and this is how they repay our loyalty to the LGB? We have almost zero consideration and representation in gay organizations, publications, medical centers, etc. If gay men are not the ones that are taking over homosexual organizations, then you can bet that heterosexual men who call themselves women and therefore Lesbians are.

The onslaught of TIMs (trans identified males or trans “women”) telling us Lesbians that if we do not sleep with them and their penises (which almost all of them retain by the way, there aren’t a ton of surgeries going on out there), then that means we are bigots or transphobic or the slur, “TERF” (this is known as the “cotton ceiling”). It isn’t enough that these men continue to appropriate our language, our culture, and our lives. No, they are erasing Lesbians by calling themselves and their (bisexual or heterosexual female) girlfriends and wives Lesbians. These are heterosexual men, claiming to not only be women, but also Lesbians. They take up Lesbian spaces and use Lesbian resources. I was invited to a dance this past weekend and I couldn’t attend because of a snow storm that hit central Illinois. Not only was there a TIM in attendance, he was actually filming the whole room with his phone camera (probably in order to try to doxx the women – the Lesbians – there).

See, that’s the transgender stuff the mainstream doesn’t get to see. Most people in the mainstream don’t even know what the “cotton ceiling” is. They also have no idea how few TIMs actually have the surgeries for their penises to be inverted and turned into something that Frankenstein might call a vagina. Not that the surgeries could actually make a man into a woman, but in the PC world of liberal feminism, even if they do not have the surgeries, they are still considered (not seen as, considered) women, because feels, and can therefore call themselves Lesbians.

I’ve written about this before in Another Sister Lost to the Madness, but it breaks my heart how many young butch Lesbians we are losing to the trans cult as adult male transgenders (TIMs) talk our young sisters into believing that they are men because they appear masculine or they like to rebuild cars or they are not nurturing and do not want to have kids. Whatever the reason these men are talking young lesbians into transitioning and believing themselves to be men. Many are de-transitioning, but too many of them are buying what the TIMs are selling.

This are also, of course, older Lesbians who mistakenly think they are men and transition later in life. A lot of these butches are deluded into thinking they are men by heterosexual women posing as femme Lesbians who do not want to date men. Well, they do not wish to date Lesbians either, but if their girlfriend is called a boyfriend and if that boyfriend thinks and behaves as a male sexually, then those “femme Lesbians” get the best of both worlds without having to actually be Lesbians; because once they partner with a TIF – trans identified female or trans “man,” they can call themselves straight again, like magic.

See, transgenders like to build themselves as being non gender-conforming or non-binary. They claim to be bucking gender and all of the sexist stereotypes that it comprises. The opposite is the truth here. Transgenders adhere very strictly to the sexist stereotypes that make up gender. They believe strongly that if a boy likes pink, Barbie dolls, and dresses, then he must be a girl; and that if a girl likes blue, trucks, and “boy” haircuts and clothes, then they must be a boy. Somehow, over the course of a couple of decades (since the free flowing 70s), this society has become entrenched in rigid, sexist norms for girls/women and boys/men. If anyone deviates from those rigid norms, then they are considered to be the opposite sex.

This is especially true if one believes that one or one’s child is a homosexual. Transitioning is the new gay conversion therapy. Parents would much rather have a child pretending to be the opposite sex than a homosexual child. Hell, even in some countries, it is illegal to be gay but perfectly legal to be transgender. It doesn’t even seem to bother these parents that they are pumping their kids full of poisons, in the form of puberty blockers, and later hormones of the opposite sex. As long as their kid isn’t gay….

These are just two facets that comprise the erasure of Lesbians, not just in the US, but worldwide. Don’t forget about heterosexual women and men. I touched a little on how heterosexuals have appropriated Lesbian and gay culture and how they have erased us from the new meaning of the word queer. But they erase us in other ways as well. Take heterosexual (I include bisexual women here as well) women, for instance. Heterosexual women, even – or especially – in radical feminist groups on Facebook, are notorious for not just being bad allies, but down right hating Lesbians and wanting nothing to do with us.

It happens a lot on Facebook, this Lesbophobia from heterosexual women, even radical feminists. It’s especially bothersome to be coming from radical feminists because we are all supposed to be sisters fighting together for the liberation of all women, but Lesbians are so underrepresented in that arena as well. Even though Lesbians have played integral parts, throughout history, in helping women to move forward in a world that would hold us back, we are still considered by most heterosexual women to be the man-hating Lavender Menace. We are threatening to heterosexual women because we don’t need men in or out of the bedroom. A lot of Lesbians, me included, are even separatists. Even in societies where that is near impossible, Lesbians try to carve out space just for women and Lesbians and do their best to avoid contact with men. This, too, is somehow threatening to heterosexual women, as they accuse us of hating and excluding their Nigels and Nigel Jrs. from events that should be female only. We are accused of hating the “nice guys,” the ones who are feminist allies, even though that is so rare, it is laughable to even suggest it. It is these lesbophobic women who try to erase Lesbians from radical feminism, for it is these women who are still centering men.

Speaking of men: of course heterosexual men want to fuck feminine looking Lesbians and beat, rape, &/or kill gender non-conforming or butch Lesbians, like me. Those men that don’t call themselves women and Lesbians, that is, they are a different threat. But it is not just butch Lesbians that heterosexual men was to suffer and die. So many Lesbians each year are dying by the hands of men, some of these men are even family members. Male violence against Lesbians is a real and horrific thing. They want to erase us for one simple reason: we do not need or want them in our lives.

Lesbian erasure is ramping up all over the world. Lesbians everywhere are in real physical danger from men, they are not always supported by heterosexual women, they are talked into thinking they are men, their lives and culture are appropriated, and they are forced into having sex with men claiming to be women and Lesbians. Something drastic needs to happen to stop all of this.

Lesbians like me are trying to make ourselves more visible to Lesbians who think that transitioning is what they are supposed to do. Showing them that there are many types of women and that all of us *are* women, no matter what we do or what we wear. That we can accept our bodies and live happy, healthy lives. We are also making ourselves know in radical feminist circles, trying to show our straight sisters that while we don’t need or want men around us, we are still right there, side-by-side, fighting with and for them. We are trying to make atrocities against Lesbians more visible, since the mainstream and even LGB press do not care to cover our murders. We are especially trying to talk more about Lesbian erasure so that more Lesbians can hear us and come forward to help, not just to stop the erasure of us, but to reverse it and bring Lesbians to the forefront. Showing society that it doesn’t need to fear us, that it can and should, once and for all, embrace and celebrate Lesbians everywhere.

 

Vlog Post 4: Lesbian Erasure

Good afternoon, sisters! This is my 4th vlog post at youtube.

Here I talk about Lesbian Erasure.

Oh & you get to meet my 4th dog: Sallybear, my other Taiwan Mountain dog. I changed her name from Ming Li, which is what the Animal Rescue Team Taiwan (ARTT) named her when they rescued her. I think Sally suits her better. 😉

If you like my videos, would you mind voting them up at youtube? I am getting down votes & have no trouble imagining transgenders & other members of their cult voting my videos down, en masse! :o/

I hope you like this one! Let me hear from you, sisters!

Vlog Post 2: Here, I Talk About “Misgendering”

Good afternoon, sisters! This is my next vlog post at youtube. It’s on “misgendering,” which, honestly, isn’t even a real thing, much less suicide-inducing!

If you like my videos, would you mind voting them up at youtube? I am getting down votes & have no trouble imagining transgenders & other members of their cult voting my videos down, en masse! :o/

I hope you like this one! Let me hear from you, sisters!

 

Jenner’s, “Hardest Part About Being A Woman”

As you may or may not know … wait, who are we kidding? He’s all over the news, he has completely immersed himself into the media because he gets off on all of the attention. So you have most likely already seen the BuzzFeed interview of Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner, entitled “Caitlyn Jenner on The Moment She Felt Most Proud to be a Woman” (sic). In this bit of his interview, he also discusses what he feels is the hardest part of being a woman. He said this:

Jenner - Hardest Part About Being a Woman

There you go folks! The hardest part of being a woman all comes down to: what to wear. 

Of course a man would think the hardest part of being a woman would boil down to clothes. In his autogynephile mind, all a woman is, is her clothing, because that’s what gets him off: dressing as a woman and, of course being seen as a woman.

We are all a part of his pornographic fantasy, nothing more.

This was posted in a group I belong to on Facebook, one that discusses gener critically; and here are what a couple of the womyn there had to say:

First Feminist:

“I was so furious. I posted to my page with this comment…

Woman of the year… The hardest thing about being a woman is what to wear…

Call me when your cramps hurt so bad you can’t walk.
Call me when you have a pregnancy scare.
Call me when men honk at you and make lewd gestures at you at twelve years old.
Call me when you don’t get paid adequately for your increasingly difficult labor, and you go home only to find more labor dictated by gender roles.
Call me when you are force married.
Call me when you are sold by a pimp and then blamed for being “in the business.”
Call me when your entire life’s choices are limited by decades of belittling and social conditioning, to the point where you self limit and call it a choice.

Call me when you stop being a stereotype of what the world wants from me.

The hardest part of my day is NEVER figuring out what to wear.  I defy roles you exalt. Bye.”

Second Feminist:

“It’s unbelievable! Out of all the issues that make being a woman difficult!? Doesn’t this just scream to everyone that this is what he truly believes: that to become a woman, one merely dresses in a certain way. Of course this is the most essential aspect to being a woman for Jenner; playing dressup is the aspect that gives him the greatest (erotic) thrill…despite its oh so many challenges! (eyeroll)…what a burden.”

It is inconceivable to me that anyone can take this man, or transgenderism itself, seriously. I mean, here is this group of people who could have been gender non-conforming people, brave warriors standing along side their gender non-conforming sisters and brothers in the lesbian and gay man communities. Instead, they choose to conform to strict gender roles, uncompromisingly adhered to stereotypes of the opposite sex. These completely gender CONFORMING people, transgenders, all believe that to be the opposite sex, one must only have to dress as the opposite sex and then to either drastically shorten or lengthen their hair, depending on which sex they wish to “identify as.”

Transgenders cannot live as they are, they cannot be their true authentic selves in the body they were born into for fear of retribution, so they wear the clothing that society has decided is only for the opposite sex, then they buzz off or grow out their hair (or, in the case of male transgenders, just wear a wig and you’re good!) and voila! They are the opposite sex!

Or in the case of about 80% of male transgenders, they wear the clothing that society has decided is for the opposite sex because they are autogynephiles. They, literally, get off on wearing “women’s clothing.” They also get off on being seen and treated as women. Going into the women’s bathroom, changing room, etc., also gets them off!

This is all so crazy, I cannot stand it! A man is voted Woman of the Year, taking the award away from women who are ground breakers like, Venus Williams, who has amassed 43 championship titles, won 3 Olympic Gold medals and has the fastest serve on record today. Or how about Tony award winning, Viola Davis, the first African American woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Then, of course there is the first woman to become an Army Ranger, Capt. Kristen Griest, who overcame such incredible adversity and against all odds, surpassed both men and women who could not make it and she became the first female Army Ranger, opening the door for other women to not only become Army Rangers, but also Navy Seals!

There are incredible women out there and it is insulting to all of them, to all of us, when women’s magazines and organizations name a MAN to be their Woman of the Year!

This madness has to stop. Women need to rise up together and with one voice, demand that actual women get awarded for this and other awards. It is our time now, sisters! Rise Up!

“TERFs” Do Not Actually Exist, Fellows

I honestly cannot believe that we have to continue to discuss this over and over and over again; but I guess when you are dealing with juvenile young men with male privilege who have yet to have fully developed brains and older men with male privilege going through midlife crisis, not to mention all of the women who, for some disturbed reason, support all of these men, then I guess womyn just have to continue to calmly stay on point and tell these men and the women who support them, again, that they are wrong. In so many ways, yes, but I am focusing on this for a minute.

I am not sure how this has come about, but “TERF” is not an identity. “TERFs” do not actually exist. They are not a community of womyn within the larger LGB community. “TERFs” are not a group of womyn working and plotting against transgenders. They are certainly not working together to exterminate transgenders, something of which I have been accused.

“TERF” is, once again, a slur. This slur is used to silence womyn. None of us actually “identify” as “TERFs.” This slur is actually thrust upon us and shoved down our throats by men who are so upset over the fact that there are womyn out there who are not falling to our knees in our utter devotion to porn sick, cross dressing, autogynephile men who claim to be women, but expect to still be treated and adored as men, with their male privilege, and their penises, intact.

“TERF” may have been created by two heterosexual women trying to give a name to radical feminists who do not wish to have males in their private spaces, but just every other slur in the world, its meaning has changed, morphed into some crazy kind of battle cry for males to use as they attack womyn mercilessly online, threatening to assault, rape, even kill womyn who do not agree with them and who do not fall all over themselves to believe that men (or boys) can be women (or girls).

The slur, “TERF” is a term that includes –all- womyn (and some gay men) who know the truth about biology, all womyn who understand even the most basic science. I am not a radical feminist, but I have been called a “TERF” over and over again, just for stating my opinion, an opinion I am allowed to have and share online or anywhere, an opinion that I share with hundreds of thousands of other womyn (and some men).

I don’t know how much more plainly I can state this, dear reader. “TERF” is not an identity, it is a slur used to silence womyn. We who are labeled as such are not the violent ones here. We do not issue threats of violence. We do not keep lists of male or female transgenders with their contact information so that we may harass them in real life.

Oh yes, dear reader, you didn’t know that? Male transgenders and their female allies keep lists of womyn who they decide are “TERFs.” They say they keep such lists so as to warn other transgenders to steer clear of us, but what they are really doing is targeting women. They keep us and as much personal information about us on a list they call “TERF tracker.” One of the founders of “TERF Tracker” was a woman who aligned herself with the most violent transgenders against womyn. She later tried to align herself with womyn who know the truth about transgenders, but she did so as a ruse, to befriend women (and a few men) so that she could gain information on us. She then turned back to transgenders and now runs a gay and lesbian liberation page that does nothing more than attack womyn like me, womyn who know that men cannot become women and that women cannot become men.

This woman is one of those who makes the assertion that “TERF” is an identity women take on and share with other womyn. She puts forth the idea that a woman who is not a friend to other women is the “leader” of the “TERFs” when there is no such organization of “TERFs,” so there can be no such “leader.”

The other founder of “TERF Tracker” was later found out to be a violent child rapist, He even admitted as much. Just another entitled, cross dressing, porn sick, autogynephile who was later found out to be a child rapist or a rapist of women.

But I digress. I do not wish for my blog to be about these women, one of whom aligns herself with violent transgenders, the other of whom is a woman who enjoys attacking womyn, outing anonymous bloggers such as myself, or that man, that child rapist. They deserve no time or attention on my blog.

No, this post was intended to assert to you, dear reader that “TERF” is not an identity, not a label womyn call themselves, and certainly not a term womyn “reclaim” in an effort to take its power away. Since we never claimed it as ours in the first place, we certainly cannot “reclaim” it now!

No, “TERF” is and has always remained a slur used to silence, threaten, and harass womyn. Make sure to spread this truth around, my sisters, as those who do not know what a “TERF” is are vulnerable to believing the transgenders who call themselves “activists” when they try to assert that “TERF” is an identity we call ourselves. Post about “TERF” being a slur, tweet about “TERF” being a slur, talk to your friends about “TERF” being a slur. Just get out there, sisters, and inform others about this slur!!

Make sure that your friends all know that this label, “TERF,” that is shoved down our throats by transgenders, the very people who claim that self-identification is the most important thing, the people who claim that people who ID them as someone they are not (i.e., “misgender,” which is a misnomer, it should actually be, “missexed”) are actually committing violence against them, the people, mostly men, who claim that “TERF” is an identification that we use to describe ourselves when in reality, they force the label onto us, make sure that your friends know that “TERF” is nothing more than a slur used against women, to silence us and to threaten violence against us.

I call upon all of you, dear readers, to tell, post, tweet, text, whatever you need to do, to make sure that people know that “TERF” is not an ID, it is a slur!

The Thing About Third Sex, Cis, and TERF

Here’s the thing. Do you know how I know that transgenders do not really believe there are more than two sexes and that they are somehow another, third sex? Men who claim to be women aren’t out there trying to garner donations and support for healthcare on behalf of a third sex. They are not creating new medical spaces, shelters, prison wards, etc. for a third sex. They are not trying to create spaces where this third sex can go to get away from the oppressive men who threaten them, beat them, rape them, and kill them. Nope. What are these men doing? They are trying to take away spaces from women. They are trying to take away medical services from women. They are trying to take over spaces designated for women like bathrooms, changing rooms, prisons, shelters, etc.

Do you know how I know that “cis” is nothing more than a slur? Just listen to them when they try to explain why we should all be embracing “cis.” Listen to them as they tell us, with straight faces, that we are all comfortable with our bodies, comfortable with our sexes and the sexual stereotypes that go with them, and comfortable with our “gender presentations,” whatever they are. While they are saying all of that out of one side of their face, they are spitting the term at us with phrases like, “Die Cis Scum!” This was a term created to other women because some straight white men with a fetish for being seen as women felt othered when they were called trans women and not simply, women. So they, being men, had to take their frustrations out on women and coined the term “cis” in order to other everyone else, so they could feel special and dominant again.

Do you know how I know that “TERF” is simply a slur against women? Well, aside from the fact that many transactivists have admitted that it is a slur, I mean. Well, I actually wrote a whole post on this, but it boils down to this: when you create a term to describe me and you center that term around yourself, you are doing it wrong. My life is not centered on you. I am not trans-centered. I am woman-centered. I am Pro-Woman. So creating a label that you are now going to force down my throat while crying about how I had better not label you in any way but that which you deem appropriate or else you will set me on fire or whatever, you are using that label as a slur.

I keep hearing about how if we take away their ability to use “cis” and “TERF,” then we are crippling trans people in how they interact with, well, people in general. This is simply not true. I am a woman. Period. That’s it. I am not “cis” anything and I am certainly not a “TERF;” but those two labels keep being forced onto me by a group of people who only want to self-label and damn everyone who don’t give them that right. Anyone else see the irony here?

I don’t understand why this is so hard for transgenders to understand. “Cis” doesn’t describe us, “woman” does; and “TERF” is a hateful slur designed to silence women, which I guess is why they keep using it. But, even though we keep telling them that and keep telling them we are offended by these terms (because with these professional victims, you have to use victim language to get them to understand), they disrespect us by continually using it and then get mad when we won’t use “proper” pronouns!

So that’s how I know these things, dear reader. There is nothing about their own safety, their own healthcare, their own spaces because they want what women have; and they keep using “cis” and “TERF” quite simply because they are slurs that they can use to silence and gaslight women. They want to self-label and still have the control to label us. They want to take our spaces because, right now, they don’t can can’t have them.

Put simply, men want what they don’t or can’t have and they want to have the right to continue to control women even when they call themselves women.

 

My Line In The Sand

I was reading a thread in a Michfest Facebook group the other day when I saw a woman shame and scold a friend of mine for calling a trans woman a man. This woman said she understood the anger, but not the hate of calling trans women men. In other words, she was trying to shame my friend, another woman, into silence, which is a tactic men have been using for years, especially the men who call themselves women and trans “activists.” They use shaming techniques to trick liberal feminists into siding with them and they save most of their violence for the rest of us, those of us who see past their delusions and to the reality of it all.

But I understood where my friend was coming from: it wasn’t rage or hatred or even anger, it was truth. That was her line in the sand and so it is mine as well. My line in the sand is biology. If I may geek out on your for a moment, dear reader, as Captain Picard said when he was speaking of the Borg invading their space, he said each time the Borg advance, we fall back and fall back and fall back. “Not again,” he said. “The line must be drawn here. This far. No farther.” That’s how I feel about these men who call themselves women, these men who, to fulfill their fetishistic desires, take “woman” as they see her through their male privileged, sexist, misogynistic eyes and they emulate her while declaring they are a better woman than most of us who were born females in this male dominated society.

They want us to use female pronouns. They want us to redefine woman so they can be called a woman in every instance, not trans women, but women. They want our spaces, our bathrooms, our dressing rooms. They want to be housed with women in jails when they commit acts of violence against, you guessed it, women, so they can further their abuse. They don’t want a compromise, they want total domination. They want a total submission. They want nothing less than total surrender.

I feel the same way about the women who call themselves men or the butches who simply need to be considered male while still claiming to be butches, using male pronouns, etc. They don’t want a compromise any more than the men do. They want it all. They demand they be seen the way they want to be seen and not based on any kind of reality or truth in this or any other universe. To this, I say, “No!”

Like my friend in that Michfest Facebook group, I draw my line here, at biology. The trans “women” were born male and no matter how many surgeries they have or how many hormones they take, if they even have or take any, which a lot do not, they are and always will be male. The women who call themselves men are the same: they were born female and no amount of hormones or surgeries will ever change that. Ever. Their biology will always remain the same. Males born males will always be males and females born females will always be females. These are immutable facts. I have put up with the shenanigans of transgenders for so long now, with the hate, the trolling, and the violent threats that my line in the sand is drawn here and I will not move back any farther. I will not concede an inch!

My line in the sand isn’t built on anger, rage, or hate. My line in the sand is built on biology. Biology and reality will win out over delusion and narcissism. Biology is the truth and eventually, when more and more women see the violence, see the narcissism, see the demands for not just a few but ALL of our spaces, these women will also rise up and say, “No more!”

I can feel that time coming. Can you?

 

 

 

The Real Goal of Male Transgenders or Trans “Women”

Here’s the thing. The real goal of male transgenders, or trans “women,” if you will is not to be or become women, it is not to be safe from other men, it is not to join women in the fight against the patriarchy. It is simply: to control women.

I was approached on Twitter the other day (accosted really, since he bombarded my feed with tweets even after it was clear I had him blocked) by a male transgender who, after reading my post about the term “TERF” being a slur, had nothing to say about the term “TERF” nor had he any remorse for using a word that a woman (actually, women, plural) was telling him was a slur. He also stated quite emphatically that men were not the problem; because in my post, I mentioned how women feeling safe was a main issue of wanting to have our own spaces and when I mentioned how some male transgenders argue for the same safe spaces, I said that they should create their own spaces because men were their problem as much as ours and we should not bear the brunt of their needs for safe spaces by losing our own.

No, this man was not concerned about using a slur or especially about no longer using it (a perusal of his Twitter after blocking him showed me that he continued to use it as a slur), nor was he concerned about safety from men. His main and, well, only concern was that women see him as a woman. That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it? Male transgenders don’t want to change the violent ways of men, especially since so many male transgenders are, themselves, violent men. They don’t want protection from said violent men and they of course would never advocate for women to be safe from violent men. No what they want, what they have always wanted is to control women, to make us call them by the names and pronouns that they choose while they force us to be called the names that we do not choose (read: they are hypocrites). These men want to force lesbians to have sex with them by shaming us into accepting the penis as a female body part and that we are bigots if we do not fuck them. These men want to force us to give up our personal and private spaces so that they can have them instead; not for their own safety, but simply because they want them. These men want to force women to see them as women even though our own common sense, science, and biology, hell our own eyes tell us differently. The goal of these men has not been to be safe from violence and share spaces under that common need, it is and always has been to control women. Period.

Here’s the thing, dear reader: if these male transgenders really believed they were women, they would not need confirmation from women. They would not need confirmation from anyone because they would know they are women. Does it piss me off when people see me as a man and don’t see the woman that I am? Of course! It makes me feel invisible as a woman. But I am still a woman, regardless of what others see. Their inability to see that at first glance does not negate the fact that I am a woman. I do not need other people to confirm that fact for me.

Another thing: I am a woman who is very woman-centric; and no, I do not believe that is because I am a lesbian, as I think any woman can be woman centric, regardless of her sexual and/or intimate partners. By woman-centric, I mean I put women first. I advocate for female causes, I donate to women’s shelters, I fight for women’s rights to have women-only spaces, etc. I even buy books by women authors, try to shop at women owned businesses when I can, and even hired a woman when I need to get things done on my property. You don’t see this with male transgenders. They are all still male centric. Even their name for us, “TERF,” is male centric because is supposes that we are centering our wanting to be around other females as an anti-trans thing. The very term is flawed not just because it is a slur used to silence women and not just because not all of us are radical feminists. No, this term is flawed for the very simple reason that it centers us around transgenders when we are not. We are women-centered.

But we all know that male transgenders were born male, socialized as male, and have male privilege, whether external (recognized as male by society), internal (the feelings of privilege they hold), or both. When I say they are male-centric, I mean that they center everything on being male. They come at women instead of to women, they try to dominate women, conversations, and situations, they don’t respect women, female causes or issues, and they could care less about women’s rights.

We even see this kind of behavior and worse from some of the men who have had surgeries to create some sort of facsimile of a woman out of their bodies. They still need outside confirmation. They still act like the men they were socialized to be from birth. They still treat women the same. Look at Janet Mock. Here is a man who is held up as the ideal trans “woman,” who other male transgenders consider the end of the rainbow, where they want to be themselves, who, we all assume, had the surgeries to make him into a Frankenstein-esque version of a woman; but he is still a sexist, misogynistic asshole who clearly has no respect for and, in fact, hates women. That is the man he was socialized to become and a few hormones and surgeries didn’t take those misogynistic feelings away, nor did they change how badly he treats women.

So here’s what I don’t understand, dear reader. Why do women keep falling for this? I mean, intellectually I can understand that women are socialized, conditioned to believe that men are more important, their opinions, wants, needs, etc. matter more than our own. But I still have a hard time grasping how so many women can be so blind to what these men are really doing. In my opinion, it isn’t that they can’t see it, but that they won’t see it. They refuse to see it because they are so conditioned and socialized to clear the way for men that they refuse to see what these men are really doing: trying to control women from the inside.

We saw the same kinds of things in the LGB movement for years and years: lesbians standing up with gay men for male causes, but when it came time to step up for women’s causes, there were no gay men to be seen. Even though we were lesbians and therefore had no need for men in our lives, we were still women and therefore socialized to put men and men’s needs first and foremost.

I do have hope though. I mean, more lesbians have opened their eyes over the years to see that the gay rights movement has actually been the gay male rights movement, so I have hope that more and more women will open their eyes and see that these men are not and cannot become women. These are men still trying to control, dominate, harass, and violate women. They are just doing it under the disguise of “being” women.

Make No Mistake, “TERF” Is A Slur

I find it difficult to believe that we women have to keep saying this and writing about it, but I guess we do because men’s voices are the only ones people want to listen to, not ours’; but make no mistake, “TERF” is a slur created by men to silence and even shame women. I was reading a post by GallusMag the other day where she talked about a man who claimed to be a woman who works for Twitter and who is accused of rape. In the comments section, GallusMag (who was locked out of her WordPress blog because of that post, which is WordPress’s way of telling women that if you write about their friends and colleagues, they will shut you down and fast) posted a pic of a news agency, The Daily Dot, actually using the word “TERF” as if it is a normal, accepted word by everyone and not a word made up by men in their ongoing effort to silence women in the issue of transgenderism. It made me incredibly angry because this was supposed to be a news organization, or at least, that is what I am lead to believe. Maybe they are a trash-rag that doesn’t really report the news so much as they report gossip and innuendo?

So let’s talk about this slur for a minute. A lot of transgenders and their allies like to keep saying that it is simply a description of radical feminists who are “trans-exclusionary.” But let’s get real here, ok? This slur may have started out as a simply description by a man who felt slighted by some women who feel that men, even in dresses, should not be allowed in certain spaces that are for women, spaces like restrooms, changing rooms, showers, dressing rooms, etc.; but the word went way beyond a description and into slur territory within a few minute of it being created.

First, there is no “TIRF” or trans-inclusionary radical feminist. There is, in fact, no term that is opposite of “TERF” that is used, ever. There is only “TERF”; and that term is used to silence, to bash, to put down, to shame, etc. not just radical feminists, but all women who see biology as a real thing and gender as a social construct. It is used against women, especially women who disagree with men who claim to be women, in any way.

Second, the term is not just hurled at radical feminists. I as just called a “TERF” this evening and I have never purported to be a radical feminist, not in any of my tweets or writings’ but there I was, having  label thrust upon me against my will, a label that by its very “definition” shouldn’t include me. But as I said, this slur isn’t just for radical feminists, it is for all women who disagree with men, especially men claiming to be women, i.e., trans “women” or male transgenders.

Let’s think about that for a minute. Let’s think about how (metaphorically) rape-y that is to have a label such as “TERF” or “trans-exclusionist” or “trans-exterminist” thrust upon a woman against her will. Slurs that she has never claimed, never called herself, never acknowledged, but slurs that are forced upon her, whether she likes it or not. That is a part of rape culture, is it not? To force something onto a woman that she does not want? Something that she has not given you permission to do. Especially when this comes from a group of people who want to self-label and do not want others to label them. How hypocritical of them to then force women to accept a term that they all know well and good is a slur meant to silence women.

Third, the only time women can even seem “trans-exclusionary” is when we want to have women-only spaces, like restrooms, dressing rooms, social gatherings, rape crisis centers, shelters, etc. But that is no more “trans-exclusionary” than it is for POC to be “white-person-exclusionary” when they desire POC-only spaces. Just like POC should be able to gather without white people so they don’t have to watch what they say around white people or cater to white people or have white people take over everything, we women should be allowed to have our own spaces without men, without having to worry about what we are saying around men or that they men will take over. Just like POC whould be able to gather and discuss what it is like to be a POC in this white-dominated world, we women should be allowed to gather as sisters and discuss what it is like to be females in a male-dominated world. We should not be slurred with “trans-exclusionary” simply because we wish to gather with other women in female-only spaces.

We should also be allowed to feel safe. We should be allowed to have penis-free restrooms, dressing rooms, shelters, jails, rape crisis centers, etc. so that we can feel safe. For thousands of years, the penis has been used as a weapon, as a weapon to control women, to hurt women, to exert power over women. It has been used as a weapon and we are seeing more and more how trans “women” are accused of or convicted of the rape and murder of women but they continue to be allowed to be placed in female prisons even if they still have their penises. This is so wrong on so many levels but in today’s PC culture of not wanting to offend these men, they are not placed where they are supposed to be: with other men. Instead, the rights and the safety of women are circumvented for the rights and safety of men who claim to be women because they are afraid of, you got it: men.

Before someone jumps into the fray and says that trans “women” have the right to feel safe as well, to that, I say two things: (1) of course, (2) but women are not a threat to trans “women,” men are. Men are dangerous and men do almost all of the damage to women, transgenders, and every other group out there. Women should not have to forgo their own safety to guarantee the safety of men from other men. If trans “women” wish to truly feel safe while respecting women’s need for safety and privacy, why don’t they create their own space, their own restrooms, their own rape crisis centers and shelters, their own changing rooms, etc.? The answer is clear: because (a) they don’t respect women and (b) they don’t want to be safe from men, they want what women have, they want to take over everything that woman is and that women have.

Finally, most women care about other women. There are some women who are so conditioned by the patriarchy that they believe the misogynistic bullshit that men and rape-culture spews down all of our throats. But most women want other women to be safe, they want us all to have our own private spaces, away from men and their penises. As I said, the penis has been used as a weapon against women for thousands of years and most women would agree that not allowing men and their penises, even if under dresses, into our private spaces where we are half naked and vulnerable or where we are running away from abusive men or where we are going for help and treatment after having been raped is something that all women should have without being called “TERFs” or “trans-exclusionary” in any way.

I know this because, as a butch woman, I have received the “look” from women in restrooms or changing rooms when they think I am a man. There have been women who say things to me in an effort to get me to leave the restroom or changing room; and in one instance, there was even a woman who physically tried to keep me out of a restroom, thinking I was a man and shouldn’t be in the women’s restroom. So I know that most women care about other women and other women’s safety; but men are trying so hard to shame these women into hating the rest of us for wanting our own space and using the slur “TERF” is one of the ways that they do this.

They threaten all woman with “TERF” if they don’t allow all men into all women’s private spaces and that is how “TERF” is used as a slur. It is used to control women by using shame to get them to see men in dresses as women and treat them as women when they are not. It is time for women to stop fighting against other women and fight with us. Stop allowing men who claim to be women walk all over you and demand that you see them in a certain way when common sense and science tells you to see them as they are; and stop allowing men to create and use slurs like “TERF” to silence your sisters who do see them as they are: men trying to re-define woman and abolish what the word really means so they can take over all of our spaces, once and for all.

Shared Girlhood Is Important

Here’s the thing. Shared girlhood is so damned important!

I saw this brilliant hashtag pop up on Twitter a few weeks ago: #sharedgirlhood; and holy hell, did it start up a shit storm from the men out there who call themselves women. Women everywhere know why this happened: men and their male privilege believe that they own everything, including women and all that we hold dear. So when a group of women get together and start talking about what it meant to grow up girls in a patriarchal society, these men and their narcissistic points of view went, well, insane.

See, we live in a society where boys are taught that (a) girls and women belong to them and (b) they can be anything they want. Two examples:

1. Rape Culture. Yes, we keep hearing these words and then so many of us tune out because we are still taught that rape is the woman’s fault or only strangers hiding in the bushes rape women, etc. But in reality, we are teaching our boys that they can have any girl or woman they want, any way that they want, and by any means they may deem necessary. Take all of the boys in high school who drug girls or get them so drunk they pass out so that these boys can then do whatever they want with the girls, sexually or otherwise. Then when they are caught or she tries to press charges, the boys are protected and the girls are demonized. This teaches boys and men that girls and women not only belong to them, but that we are also expendable, made to be used by them and tossed aside like trash.

2. I saw a video on YouTube the other day where a young man was so intent on becoming something called Super Saiyan and he believed that if he wanted it enough and believed hard enough, then he could become a Super Saiyan. He then had some sort of mental breakdown because he started making fists, throwing his arms out, and screaming. Then at the end, he claimed to have achieved his desire of becoming a Super Saiyan. After watching in disbelief, I had to Google Super Saiyan to see what it was he believed himself to have become and it is a cartoon character. I am not joking. This kid believed he could and did become a part of a race in a cartoon world that are all powerful beings.

If that is not the best example of the trans community, I really don’t know what is. To be so completely engrossed in your own delusion that you believe you can make your body transform from one thing into another, when all the laws of physics and science say otherwise is a very powerful delusion fueled by something clearly broken deep down inside of that person.

In reality, being trans is role-playing. It is like life is a game and they are live action role-playing their way through it. When a person dresses up in an animal costume and believes he is that animal, we all laugh and say that he needs help. When a person gets so addicted to on-line role-playing games like WOW and they begin to believe they ARE that character on the computer monitor, we all laugh and say that they need help.

But when a man pretends to be a woman on-line, as, I have found, is so often the case, as so many of them live their off-line lives as the men they are and only claim to be women on-line; or even dresses up in a dress, a bad wig, some female hormones, and make-up clearly done by someone who has only known women through porn movies, we celebrate that as him being his true self?

What’s sometimes worse for me, as a butch lesbian, is watching other butch lesbians and even the young, confused straight girls who want to escape their lives, putting on “men’s” clothes, cutting their hair, strapping down their breasts (or worse, having them removed completely), stuffing silicone down their pants, and pumping their bodies full of toxic hormones in an attempt to simulate some sort of manhood that only they see when they look in the mirror. What the rest of us see is entirely different and while I have sympathy for these women, I can’t help but wonder what it is that is so broken inside of them that they decided to do this to themselves.

Logically, with women who attempt to become some facsimile of male or men, the answer is pretty clear: growing up girls in the patriarchy, we all learn that boys and men are superior. Of course, it isn’t true, but that is what is shoved down our throats on a daily basis for the entirety of our lives. Breaking away from that conditioning is an everyday struggle. But imagine being one of those young women, seeing everyday how boys are treated better than you are, given more and better opportunities, offered more respect, responsibility, and even love. Wouldn’t it make sense that some of these young women would decide to try to become men in order to escape what this society has decided what their destiny is: lower pay, little to no respect, bodies that are not their own, fear of being raped or killed and not being able to stop it, considered less than on every scale imaginable. Thinking about it in that way, it can sort of make sense how some girls and women would want to jump ship and live their lives as men, doesn’t it?

Men, of course, have different reasons: almost 90% of the men claiming to be women do so because of a sexual fetish. They get off on wearing “women’s” clothing, make-up, wigs, and taking hormones; and don’t get me started on how arousing it is for them to “pass” as women, even if it is barely or badly passing, as is often the case. To have other men desire them as women, to have other women acknowledge them as women, it is all so arousing for these men that are sometimes considered sexual deviants; and let’s not forget all of the men trying to break through the cotton ceiling by trying to shame lesbians into finally having sex with them.

But instead of calling it out, instead of expressing our revulsion at the very notion that these men are getting off on pretending to be and being acknowledged as women, many women celebrate and embrace them, instead shunning those of us who see the truth and try to point it out to them. We have become so “PC” about everything, haven’t we? We don’t want to offend anyone in any way and that is something we can never win because no matter which way we turn as a society, someone will be offended by what is said or done.

Look at young girls, like me, who preferred “boy’s” clothes and toys to “girl’s” clothes and toys. In today’s society, my parents would have assumed I was trans and I would have been put on hormone blockers to keep my breasts from forming and from menstruating. Instead of teaching me and all little girls like me that little girls can wear whatever the hell they want and play with what and whomever they want, the natural inclination now is to change the child instead of changing society.

Instead of teaching boys that it is ok to wear dresses and play with dolls, we shame them into thinking they are somehow less than. Why? because in this society, girls and women are less than, so if a little boy wants to dress in clothing or play with toys society has decided are just for girls, then clearly, that little boy is less than in society’s eyes. Instead of teaching little girls that they can wear, play with, and be anything they want, we shame them into thinking they are freaks or worse, lesbians, which even for all of our advancements, is still a dirty word and an insult.

It isn’t the children and their behavior that needs to be changed, it is society that needs to be changed. Our ideas and attitudes on sex and gender have become so convoluted that I am amazed anyone can rise above the crazy and actually love themselves for themselves.

Shared girlhood IS important, dear reader. It is important for all of us to acknowledge that race, color, religion, class, etc. aside, we women, we females all shared some common histories as girls being born  into and raised in a patriarchal society. We cannot deny those commonalities. We cannot allow men to take those commonalities away from us. We cannot tiptoe around the fact that men have male privilege and men dominate this society in which we live.

We were born girls in a society that favors boys and we have to stop denying that that fact has made a difference in how we were raised, how we see ourselves, and how we see each other. This is why women/female only spaces are so important. Even the most well intentioned male/man will still dominate the conversation and the direction in which it goes. We need to support each other, support our choices, support female-only spaces, support our decisions, support how we choose to live our lives. Because, honestly, this is what men want. To keep women fighting against each other so that they can remain in control. We are more than half of the population of the earth, we bare children, we are the heart of every society and yet we continue to be oppressed by men.

 At what point will you stop supporting men in every single thing they do, even the insane, even the deviant, even when it also harms women? What will you do to help change this society?

 

Musings of the Misunderstood Dyke

Since starting this blog, I have tried to make a concerted effort to both be clear in my writing and to not slip into a defensive posture when I see the extreme responses to what I have written here. That being said, I can’t, for the life of me, understand how anyone could read these entries in my blog and come away with the belief that I wish transgenders didn’t exist or, worse, that I wish for them to be exterminated. A friend of mine posited that people can’t read through what hurts them; and I suppose I can see how that might be a part of it.

I mean, it is clear that a lot of the people who are angry with me truly believe that gender and sex are the same thing, that gender is innate, assigned at birth, and is based on one’s genitals. So when you honestly toss biology and science out of the window and believe with all of your heart that gender and sex are the same thing, I can see how someone telling you that gender is not innate, it is not assigned at birth, and it is not the same as sex could be considered hateful, transphobic, and hostile; but I still don’t understand the extermination thing.

Part of me would really love to sit down with the teenage girl who read my Gender is not “Assigned” at Birth post and decided I was a hateful transphobe who wanted all trans people to disappear. It’s hard though, because I remember being that age, just figuring things out, not just for myself, but figuring out where I belonged in the world; and let me tell you, I knew everything! Right now, she and I are, metaphorically, sitting on opposite sides of the planet and she is positive that she is right. But in a few years, she will probably look back on threads like that one and realize how hypocritical it was to tell a couple of lesbians that they can’t define transphobia or radical feminism while she was defining both transphobia and radical feminism. She may look back and see that simply pointing out that biology not only exists, but is important and that gender is the wool pulled over all of our eyes was not the same as wishing people dead. It would be kinda neat to meet future her to see what she has discovered along this path that she is on today.

But to be honest, what troubled me more than a few queers and transgenders being upset or a young woman misunderstanding my words was the straight, white man who not only spoke up as if he was both gay and transgender, he also tried to force the woman who posted a link to my Transgenders: I’m Rejectin’ Your Deflections post to remove my post. Incidentally, she also ran the page to which he and over 10,000 others belonged, so this was a woman who saw dozens of things on the ‘net each day and would share them on her page. In other words, she was quite capable of making the decision as to whether or not something belonged on her page.

But this man hounded her for several posts. First, he simply didn’t like my post, then he decided I was mocking, then he decided I wanted to exterminate people and therefore, my post should not be on that page. The owner of the page kept telling him that while she may not agree with everything I said, she agreed with the part of my post that she quoted and since so many women and lesbians are being silenced more and more these days, she decided it was important to allow every women to get her point of view across. He argued with her a little more, saying that either I was silencing “transwoman” with my post or that the page owner was silencing “transwoman” by posting it and allowing it to stand, not sure; but after she had one more go with the I am not going to silence any women thing, he finally backed down and took his leave.

I posted about this because I find this phenomenon happening more and more and it is fascinating to watch it unfold. Here was a man, someone who described himself as a straight, white male and someone who most liberal “feminists” would consider a darling to their cause. His page had all kinds of feminist postings on it and he even had an open letter to his old college, condemning them for not being more open and accepting of LGBT students and faculty.

So he seemed to be saying and doing all the “right” things, until a woman posted something with which he did not agree. Then the male privilege he had hidden away so beautifully came roaring back with a vengeance. To be honest, I don’t even think he realized (or even now, realizes) what he was doing: trying to force one woman to silence another because he didn’t like what she had to say. That is what happens when men are allowed to be involved in, and even in charge of, feminism. They decide what is or is not good for women, not to mention gay people, transgenders, people of color, etc.

Anyway, as fascinating as both of those individuals were to watch, I am digressing from my point, which is that I have never once stated or insinuated that I wish for transgenders to disappear or be exterminated. What I –have– posited and what I –do– believe that if we as a society could do away with gender and get rid of sexual stereotypes, there would really be no need for someone to “feel” they are the opposite sex and follow up that feeling with hormones and surgeries. But that is not the same as wishing people dead. I have said, more than once, that I support laws that protect anyone and everyone from discrimination and violence, provided those laws do not also damage one group in its efforts to protect another group; which is why the new laws in CA are problematic: they give one group preferential “protection” over another, but that’s another post.

See, the problem with transgenderism is it addresses a symptom of a larger problem without ever allowing anyone to discuss the larger problem, lest they be deemed transphobic.

I saw an article the other day about how toy catalogs in another country are no longer going to have girls playing with things like Barbies and boys playing with things like cars and trains. Instead, they were going to switch it up by having the boys playing with the Barbies and the girls playing with the trains. Can you imagine? If this kind of thing were to take off and more and more countries and companies decided to smash the sexual stereotypes of girls play with these toys and wear these clothes while boys play with these toys and wear these clothes, there wouldn’t even be a NEED for transgenderism!

If the little boy who liked to carry around a purse had, instead of being suspended, was accepted simply for being a little boy who likes to carry a purse, what would that say to hundreds of thousands of other little boys who wanted to carry a purse or little girls who wanted to wear ties and baseball caps? Instead of little girls and boys declaring that they are the opposite sex because they enjoy the toys, clothes, etc usually deemed appropriate for the opposite sex, they would just be little girls and boys. There would be no need for hormones or hormone blockers or surgeries to “correct” something that wasn’t wrong with them to begin with because societal norms would no longer dictate the sexual stereotypes and accompanying gender norms.

These kids would then grow up to be healthy adults who could dress in clothes, have hobbies, and love people that society has deemed only appropriate for the opposite sex without the stigma they have now. We could all just be our individual selves without having to adhere to strict social gender norms based on sexual stereotypes and no one would be discriminated against, beaten, raped, or killed for it. It won’t be easy. All it takes is watching a sitcom on TV to see that the stereotypes of men do this and women do this still exist, not to mention all of the homophobia tossed about when two guys touch and one of them flips out; but can you imagine what kind of world we would have if we could do it? If we could abolish gender and smash sexual stereotypes?

Now that is the kind of society I hope for: not one where transgenders are exterminated, one where there is no need for transgenderism to begin with.

Gender Is Not “Assigned” At Birth

Here’s the thing. It is a very serious problem when women, feminists, radfems, the media, etc., or a combination of any of the above use the phrase, “the gender they were assigned at birth.” Why? because it is incorrect wording that, when used repeatedly gains notability and with more use, it gains credibility as people see it as a true statement when, honestly, it is not. Gender is not something that is “assigned” to infants at birth. It’s not a seat assignment that someone gives you when they look between your legs and either see a vulva or a penis. That would be sex. Once again, people are confusing sex with gender.

Nothing is “assigned” to anyone at birth. Sex is determined at birth when the person delivering the baby sees its genitals and declares, “It’s a girl/boy!”; and before some joker wants to come in screaming about intersex people, that is a red herring and we all know it. Intersex people are not trans are not intersex people. Stop trying to muddy the waters. The above determination of sex is not gender being assigned to that child like it is a homework assignment or something. Determination of a child’s sex at birth is basic biology 101 and it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with gender.

The sooner people can stop confusing sex with gender the better; and the sooner people can stop using the phrase, “gender assigned at birth,” the better because then we can all start discussing what gender really is and how harmful it is to women.

Gender is a social construct; and it arrives through socialization. True, this socialization may start just after birth when the child’s parents or the nurses at the hospital or who ever decides to dress little boys in blue and little girls in pink so that people know what sex the child is; because in our society, sex is a class and there is a clear hierarchy, with women being on the bottom and men on the top. The sooner the little boys and little girls are discovered and differentiated, the clearer their future will be to the people around them. But that is not the same thing as being “assigned a gender” and having that child (or adult) suddenly and magically “know” what it is like to be a girl or a boy (or a woman or man).

Gender through socialization happens over a period of time; and this is what women mean when they speak about having shared experiences that are different from men who are born and raised boys then decide later that they wish to declare themselves to be women. When we say this, we are not saying that we all share the same upbringing. Obviously, women of color have different experiences than white women, women brought up in a poor household have different experiences than women brought up in wealthy households, etc.; but the fact that we were all born as little girls and then raised in this patriarchal society is our shared experience.

This next part is hard to describe. I honestly thought it was obvious until I started seeing so many male transgenders (aka “MtFs,” which is a misnomer, since males cannot become females) talk about how they know what it was like to be raised as girls, since they “felt” like girls. This was mind boggling to me and reeked of their own male privilege. How arrogant of men to sit there, as the oppressive class, and dictate to women, the oppressed class, what it is like to be women! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and reading.

As women, we all know what it is like to be born and raised as little girls in this society. It is something that, unless you are a woman, is difficult to describe or understand; and sometimes, the socialization of women is so complete, some women don’t even see it. This is why so many women in today’s “feminism” are so pro-male, why they are ok with so many men taking over feminism, why they are ok with men in the government restricting women’s access to healthcare, and why they are ok with men who role play as women co-opt our experiences, our words, even our very private spaces. We women are socialized or conditioned to put men first, always. Men have no idea what it is like to be conditioned to apologize before asking a question, or apologize for asserting yourself and creating boundaries, or to take up as little space as possible. These are just some of the things women are taught since birth; and I don’t mean taught like consciously in school, I mean a deep subconscious conditioning beginning from infancy and continuing into adulthood.

Side note: before a male transgender tries to speak up about how he does know about those things because he is trans or about how women don’t know about this, that, or the other because they are “cis,” try stopping for a moment and actually listening to a woman instead of making this about you. That is what men do.

Now see, any of the transgenders who actually kept reading my post instead of just stopping after the first paragraph when I said that sex is not gender, just stopped reading. It is impossible for men to magically know what it is like to be a woman, just as it is impossible for women to let go of all of their lifetime of socialization and know what it is like to be a man. Sure, I get treated differently sometimes when someone thinks I am a man vs. when they realize I am a woman, but this isn’t the same as being born a boy and raised as male with all the privilege that goes along with it in a society dominated by the male class.

But male transgenders actually believe that putting on a dress and/or taking some hormones negates everything they have been taught while living as boys and men and they suddenly “know” what it is like to be women. Forget all of the male privilege that has been shoved down their throats for years, they don’t see that that is what makes them think they are allowed to have access to everything and that if they say something is true, then god damnit, it’s true.

And there is where we come to it: how gender harms women. Let me relate a story really quickly. I was reading a blog post of a male trans on Tumblr. This guy was, as he put it, “presenting in women’s clothes” while out with some friends bar hopping. They decided to go to a mostly straight bar in a mostly gay neighborhood and while he was there, he took off his top (he was wearing something leather underneath) and security told him to put it back on.

The interesting thing at this point of the blog is that the man honestly thought he was passing as a woman. He mentioned in his blog how he wasn’t sure if or how security could make any determination that he was trans, so he didn’t think it was about him being trans at that point. He posted a picture of himself at the bar that night and there is no question in anyone’s mind but his own that he is a man dressed in what society has deemed “women’s” clothing.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine a delusion so powerful that what you see in the mirror is the complete opposite of what the rest of the world sees, but you are so determined in your delusion that you dare anyone to contradict you? It’s like people with an eating disorder who look in the mirror and see a very fat person staring back at them but the rest of the world sees the reality: an unbelievably, unhealthy skinny person who is killing themselves. This is how some of these male trans are. In their delusion, they look in the mirror and see a beautiful feminine woman, while the rest of the world sees the reality of what is actually there: a man in what society deems as “women’s” clothing.

Anyway, I digress. Nearing the end of the evening, he decides to use the bathroom before heading home. Now, this bar did everything right: they had a women’s bathroom, a men’s bathroom, and a unisex bathroom. This is the best compromise for male and female transgenders who feel they should not have to use the bathrooms of their own sex out of fear, while also allowing the women in the establishment the privacy and respect they should be given, as well as keeping female transgenders safe from being attacked in the men’s bathroom.

But instead of using the unisex bathroom, this person who was, clearly, a man, decided it was his right to use the women’s bathroom; and when he did so, he was confronted (rightfully) by security. He held his ground and he sat down on the floor of the women’s bathroom and called the police, claiming that he feared for his life. The police were confused as to (a) why he called them and (b) why he was in the women’s restroom. He asked to be escorted out of the bar safely and they did just that. He is currently in the process of making complaints to any lawyer or legal entity he can in an effort to “change” things at this bar, because the compromise of a unisex bathroom wasn’t enough for this guy. He “said” he was a woman so that should be good enough for the rest of the world and damn any woman who wants any kind of privacy or safety of their own.

When you make laws based on something as ambiguous as gender and the law makes it clear that if someone states they are such&such, then they must be recognized as such&such, regardless of the reality of the situation, you open the door to all sorts of privacy and safety issues for women. A male transgender who is, by definition, pre-op and most likely not living as a woman full time should never be allowed into women’s private spaces; but because sex has been overlooked for the sake of gender, women are, yet again, getting thrown under the bus for the sake of men.

If this man had actually be raised as a girl and socialized to live as a woman, he would never have inserted himself into another person’s space like that and then demanded that he be allowed to stay or else he would sue. If he had actually been a woman or even if he had been someone who respected women, he would have known how nervous and uncomfortable women would be in an enclosed private space like that with a male-bodied person and he would have used the unisex bathroom.

For men like this, it is all or nothing. he either gets his way every single time or else people are being transphobic and must be sued or arrested or, if they are radfems, they should be beaten, raped, or killed for their horrible offense of knowing, seeing, the truth.

Sex is not gender, ladies and gentlemen. Sex is a class and women are at the bottom of that class, dominated by men in a patriarchal society that will always put men first. Gender is a social construct that is taught to all of us through socialization and it re-enforces sex stereotypes in an effort to keep the female class on the bottom of the heap.

My hope is that more women stop choking on the kool-aid these men are shoving down their throats and wake up to see that we are the equivalent of the human batteries in the Matrix. We are sold a bill of goods from the moment we hit this world and waking up out of that coma is not only hard, for some women it is almost impossible. But more and more of us are waking up everyday and realizing that sex matters. Our sex matters; and giving up our rights for the sake of men is not something we should be blindly accepting, it is something we should be fighting against tooth and fucking nail.

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. 

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.

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

“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.

Butch Visibility in a Man’s World

I was doing a very normal thing this morning: taking out my trash. I was casually dressed in sweats, a t-shirt because I was outside getting a few things done; and a ball cap because it was sunny outside. As I get to the trash can at the end of my driveway, a truck pulls up and a guy yells out, “Hey Buddy!” I told him I wasn’t his buddy and asked him what he wanted. He got upset, mumbled something about how he wanted to ask me something and that he didn’t know what he did to me but whatever. I ignored him and went back into my house.

Was I a little harsh? Maybe. A lot of people, and I mean a LOT of people judge me based on my clothing, how I walk and stand, how short my hair is, my ball cap, etc and they conclude within 2 seconds of seeing me that I am a man. I won’t lie, it is upsetting for us butches to be mistaken for men like that. It makes us feel invisible and it discounts the fact that we are women, which is something we still are no matter what we do or wear and we are proud of this fact. We are absolutely nothing like men, so to be mistaken for men shows us that the world did and does see us in the black and white of the patriarchal binary system.

Do you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t threaten to kill him or threaten him with rape for his mistake. I said a few words and wasn’t a polite timid woman apologizing to him for HIS mistake, but I didn’t do what so many men who pretend to be women do: I didn’t threaten, harass, or stalk him for mistaking me for a man.

As I said, we are completely different from men. We don’t think or act like men and we sure as hell don’t want to BE men. When people accuse us of this, it is either because they truly don’t understand what and who butches are or because they are trying to humiliate, discredit, and/or silence us.

Butches are at both the forefront and at the back of the LGB community. A butch was right there at Stonewall as one of the people who started the riots that sparked the LGB civil rights movement. Butches are highly visible, which leads to taunts, slurs hurled at us, beatings, rape, and death. We are antagonized for being butch women because we are not, according to society, the “right” kind of women.

At the same time as all of the above, we are also invisible. We are not represented in TV, movies, or other media. When we do happen to end up on TV, it is either as a caricature that is made fun of or we are expected to dress, act, and BE more feminine to please the general audience.

And then you have a group of individuals who are trying to erase butches from the planet completely. They are doing everything in their power to render us extinct. This group is comprised of 2 types of people: (1) the men who claim to be women and then further claim to be butches (see Tobi Hill-Miller, etc.); (2a) the women who feel the right course of action in this patriarchal binary system is to attempt to transition into men, but still call themselves butches (FtM or F2Tg); (2b) the women who are butches, but insist that they are also somehow male by labeling themselves “male-identified” butches.

These people make it almost impossible for young lesbians who are “different,” who are baby butches, but don’t know where they fit in this world to be ok with the women that they are. These young women are encouraged and even brainwashed into transitioning into something similar to men because they are taught that to be a different kind of woman is bad. They are taught that the binary is king and that they must choose: masculine = man and feminine = woman.

To be anything else, a masculine woman or a feminine man would be an abomination in these binary-loving people’s eyes. So they preach and they intimidate and they brainwash and they bully these young women (and sometimes even older women fall into this trap) into taking hormones, having healthy breasts cut off, having healthy uteri and ovaries removed, all in the name of patriarchy.

So we are disappearing. As we watch our sisters try to embrace all that is male in order to be more accepted by the patriarchy and as we watch more and more young women trying to transform their bodies into something more acceptable to this male-dominated society, butches are disappearing and being replaced by fakes who distort who we are.

Something has to be done soon about this trans epidemic or we will eventually end up with the total extinction of butches; and that would be a shame. Transwomen are already bastardizing the very idea of what and who a woman is by trying to claim the one thing men have never really owned: femaleness. We cannot allow women to continue to hurt themselves by trying to change their bodies and delude themselves into thinking that change will make society accept them.

There is a whole generation of wonderful butch voices that needs to be heard. There are butches still out here who could be role models to young lesbians, showing them that it is k do be different, it is ok to love your butch body, it is ok to be women who the patriarchy and this binary system of being will never accept.

Acknowledge our existence.

Acknowledge our experience.

Know there is a better way of being butch in this man’s world.

Male Privilege at Work on Tumblr

I wanted to share this “response” I received to my male privilege post on Tumblr to illustrate male privilege at work. I could not get fiend-and-dreams’ name in his response, so I also capped the snippet I saw on my Tumblr homepage so there would be no confusion as to whom the comments belong. 

fiends-and-dreams-2

fiends-and-dreams

As you can see, in typical male fashion, fiends-and-dreams did not read my post, but had a lot to say to me about how wrong I am. This is typical male behavior that stems from privilege; the thought that I don’t have to listen to you, but you need to listen to me tell you why you are wrong.

He quickly justifies people who may be trying to bully and intimidate me as well as threaten me because male privilege allows him to ignore how often women’s lives are truly in danger from men. He then goes on to mock how women would like to have personal spaces away from males/men because as women, we deal with violence, advancement, harassment, etc. from men every single day. We need to be able to be in safe private spaces away from males, especially those males who see fit to show their genitalia to women and girls as a part of their fetish (which is what most MtF transgenders are: fetishists), but instead of seeing and understanding that, he mocks it.

He also mocks women who would feel uncomfortable in a private space, such as a rest room or changing room with a naked male bodied person. This is clear privilege at work, because only a man could mock women fearing for their safety when statistics show that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime; and most of us believe this number to be higher, especially since it doesn’t attribute women who are assaulted more than once.

Men do not see this threat to women because they do not have to and this man is a perfect example of how male privilege allows men to view women who fear for their safety: that we are being silly and just need to “use (our) damn heads.”

He also mocks women who do not want to have sex with male bodied people because most men seem to believe that every woman in the world just needs a little dick and everything will be ok. The assumption that one would have to be in the throes of passion to figure out that said male bodied person has a penis is (a) insulting to women everywhere because it assumes that we cannot tell a male in a dress from a female, and (b) shows us how devious he would be if the time to disclose that he has a penis would be when the clothes come off and we would be expected to say “no,” which, according to him would be “rude”; the implication being that we should just shut up and have sex with him already.

Finally, he shows us that he has not examined himself or his life at all by ignorantly exclaiming that trans women have no privilege, when in fact, he is proof positive that most, if not all transwomen still carry internalized privilege and the attitudes about women that have been instilled in them since birth. He, once again, mocks women by insisting that male privilege has to be a conscious thought when the rest of his comment shows us how sneaky privilege is. His attitudes towards me and other women come roaring out of his post through his mocking of women who fear for their safety, mocking sexual violence towards women, and mocking women who do not want to have sex with a penis.

The last sentence where he calls me a bitch is just typical male behavior that I see all the time from men who cannot believe I have a mind of my own and do not bow to their whims, desires, and opinions.

Thank you fiends-and-dreams for helping me to make and illustrate my point.

An Incredible Example of Unprovoked Transgender Vitriol

projectz975

This was a response to my blog on male privilege. Usually, I ignore these rants of theirs, especially when it is clear they did not actually read my post, but just decided to turn their rage for the day onto me for being a woman and having my own opinion. But this one was so over the top, so incredible, that I felt I should share it and post about it.

First of all, projectz975, thank you for proving my point by going right to the anger and name calling. The only thing missing, of course, is how I should “die in a fire,” or some other such nonsense.

Secondly, really? THAT’S what you got from my post? Did you even read it or did you just skim a bit and then go off the deep end into a rage that even you can’t explain?

If you would, please tell me where I mention how transwomen have no right to be upset about whatever it is that upsets you on any given day. Then, let me know the passage where I mention chromosomes of any kind. Then, find for me the spot where I mention how you are agry (sic) because you are a sexist man; also, point out where I used the word sexist, at all.

Finally, do me a favor and point out to me where in my post I treated you or anyone else “like shit.” I believe my post was about male privilege and how transwomen still have internalized male privilege, especially when speaking to and dealing with women. I also mentioned that unless transwomen do the work by examining and combating their privilege, things will never change.

Your hatred for women is very clear in your rant, as is your inability to read and comprehend something very simple and straight forward. I find the depth of your rage over something as simple as a woman pointing out that men have male privilege to be somewhat telling and I have to wonder if maybe you should talk this over with your therapist so that the two of you can get to the root of your anger and hatred towards women.

I do thank you for this rant though, projectz975, as it illustrates perfectly exactly what I am talking about in my post and, honestly, the more women that see this kind of extreme behavior brought on without provocation the better.

Male Privilege

I think it’s time we talked about male privilege; because that’s what’s really happening here with MtF transgenders’ violence towards women, attacking women, calling women bigots, etc. They are so filled with their own privilege, they cannot even fathom why women are not cool with allowing these men into their private spaces, seeing them nude, and having sex with them; or why women would have minds and opinions of their own and not take these men’s word as law.

Even for those MtFs who present as and may be viewed by society as women (very strong emphasis on “may”), they might put up with some sexism and see a change in their male privilege outwardly, but inside, they are still the same. Inside they still hold the same attitudes about women and the same view of the world that they did as boys and men. Putting on a dress and make up, even taking hormones doesn’t change the internalized male privilege they still have and display every chance they get.

Male privilege begins at birth. The doctor looks between the infants legs and either declares, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” and from that moment on, our fates are sealed because of how this patriarchal society is set up and how girls and women are viewed vs. boys and men.

From that moment on, men are treated differently than women. Men have all of the advantages, the opportunities, the better jobs, the higher pay. Women grow up being taught that they need a man to take care of them, that they need to be and remain young, thin, and beautiful to get a man, and that the man is always right and just in his actions; and if you think he isn’t, it is you, not him.

Men are taught to take what they want, even through violent means, if necessary. They are taught that women are less than and that using words like bitch and pussy are wonderful put downs for other men. Even the term faggot is rooted in misogyny and male privilege since a fag is considered a feminine man; and femininity in men is frowned upon in this society. If feminine men wasn’t such a stigma, I posit there would be no need for transgenderism at all, but that’s another post altogether.

No one who is born and raised a male in this society can understand what it means to be raised a female in a patriarchal society. They can’t know the fear that comes from knowing that any man on the street can take what he wants or that any date or outing to a club can end in rape; and odds are good that he will get away with it. Putting on a dress does not suddenly take away their male privilege because it is ingrained in them. Their attitudes and the way they conduct themselves and speak at (no to, at) women doesn’t just “go away” with a dress and some hormones.

Women like me see it every single day. The violent rhetoric. Being called transphobic or a bigot for pointing out biology or refusing to have sex with someone who has a penis. Men who purport to be women constantly telling me how I should think, feel, and speak.

Women do not talk at each other like that. Women do not tell each other how to think or feel or what to say. Women don’t react violently when another woman disagrees with them.

These are things that men do. Why? Their internalized male privilege. The attitude that they can do and say anything they want and we women are supposed to accept it as truth without question; and if we question them, then there must be something wrong with us, not them (see “transphobia”).

I wish male privilege could “go away” so easily and magically. I wish that every man who declares himself a woman while wearing a dress and make up and even when taking hormones could know what it is truly like to be a woman in this society. If they could, they might treat us a little differently. They might be less likely to go straight to violence. They might be willing to let us have our spaces as we let them have theirs. They might even be able to see things from our point of view and build a bridge of communication.

Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy. Without examining and combating their male privilege, things will never change. They will always wish to dominate, humiliate, intimidate, bully, and manipulate women.

So, gentlemen, every single time you call me a bigot, every time you come at me with violence, every time you try to tell me what I can think, say, and/or do, you are only showing me that you have not done the work to examine and combat your own internalized male privilege. You are showing me that you still see women as objects that you need to possess and control. You are showing me that you are, indeed, still men.

Definition of Lesbian

The definition of lesbian has been and always will be the romantic and sexual attraction between 2 females. There never has been nor will there ever be a penis in a lesbian relationship.

You can put the penis under a pair of panties and/or under a skirt or a dress. You can even try to convince the ignorant and those without the capacity to think critically that the penis is a female sex organ; but the fact will remain that it is a penis attached to a male body and neither belong in a lesbian relationship.

Shaming, guilting, and/or intimidating lesbians into accepting the penis as a part of their sex life is sexist, misogynistic, and could even be considered sexual assault. Dare I say, some might even consider that action to be lesbophobic.

Lesbians do not want to have sex with males and their penises, that is the very definition of what it is to be a lesbian; and no amount of rhetoric, no amount of screaming about transphobia, no amount of coercion will ever change that fact.

Cis-queerly not yours

So here’s the thing.

There’s a term out there that used to enrage me whenever I saw someone use it. No, scratch that and rewind; it still enrages me whenever I see it being used. Just yesterday, I saw someone using the term and I was filled with so much anger at how popular the term is now and easily it is flung about that I literally had to click the little red x in the upper right hand corner of my screen and just walk away for a few hours.

Mind you, I don’t toss the word “enraged” around a lot. I’ve been through a lot of drama in my time on-line and not a whole helluva lot gets to me so badly that “enraged” is how I would describe it. But when there’s a group of people out there who create a term out of thin air with the sole purpose of othering, bullying, even crucifying another group of people, “enraged” seems to be the best word available to describe how I feel.

Of course, I am talking about “cis.”

I even shook my head and rolled my damn eyes as I typed it out on the screen. Such bullshit.

Yes, I know, I know, cis is an actual word and in Latin means “on the same side as”; but its use has, until recently, been restricted to the scientific communities, chemistry and molecular biology, to be specific. I am not discussing its use in science, however, because my thoughts are on how the transgender community co-opted this tiny little word, a prefix really, and warped it into the pejorative it is today.

In the mid-90s, an FtM literally made the word “cisgender” up one day. To quote this person, “As for the origin, I just made it up. I just kept running into the problem of what to call non-trans people in various discussions, and one day it just hit me: non-trans equals cis. Therefore, cisgendered.”

Side note: there are, of course, varying stories of how this word came to be used on-line. There’s an MtF who claims to have used it first, which is not surprising. A woman claims to have done something and a man comes back and says he did it first? Shocking. But that is a discussion for another time because, honestly? I just don’t care who made it up and/or who started using it first, so I will move on to the rest of my post.

Biologically, or bio female? Not good enough. Bio male? Not good enough. Non-trans? Silly, sure, and still not good enough. No, a phrase had to be invented because a group of people felt so othered by those of us whose sexual organs they covet; or, as in the case of a vast majority of MtF transgenders, by those into whose private spaces and even pants they wish to force themselves. Now it was their turn to do the othering, god damnit, and god help anyone who was bio female and bio male and wanted to stop them. That’s transphobic, don’t you know that?

Again, as I said in another post, for the sarcastically challenged, that was dripping with nothing but pure sarcasm. You’re welcome.

Before I move on, I feel I should note that just as in my other post, when I say woman, I am referring to biologically born and raised females; and it pisses me off that I have to make that distinction. Not just because it sounds like I am describing farm fresh meat or eggs or fish or something, but also because the term woman has also been so warped that one needs to tack on a bunch of qualifiers when using the damn word. But I digress.

So here we are, almost 2 decades later and how is the phrase used? As a pejorative. Go to Twitter and search #fuckcispeople if you don’t believe me. Cisgender and cissexist are practically spit at people who trans people hate and wish to other, humiliate, and vilify. Yes, I said hate. There really is no other word to describe people who would tell a woman to, “die in a fire” or “kill yourself” or that she should be raped as some sort of punishment for disagreeing with said MtF transgender.

Not to mention that I find it ironic that a group of people so hell-bent on not allowing other people to label them are so completely comfortable with labeling others.

And this term has been further warped. It has helped the MtF transgender society in great strides because the vast majority of them are misogynistic. The hate dripping from their words and actions is so palpable, one would have to be a complete idiot not to see it. What’s the best way to combat your group’s own misogyny? Take the word misogyny and warp it so you can then turn around and use it against the very women whom you covet so much, you literally hate them. How does one do this? Why, tack the word “cis” in front of misogyny, of course!

Cismisogyny (sometimes substituted with cissexual) is the new buzz word for MtF transgenders who hate women with such a vengeance, they would do anything humanly possible to cut women down, to shame women, to guilt them, and to further marginalize them by claiming that they (women) hate MtF transgenders who call themselves women.

This especially happens when women deny these MtF transgenders entry into our private spaces, such as a women-only event or a women’s changing room or even when we deny them access to our own bodies. Do a Google search for “cotton ceiling” if you don’t believe me on that one. It’s an unbelievably insane notion that if a lesbian does not want to have sex with a pre-op MtF transgender, then she is now considered a cismisogynist or cissexist and a bigot for not seeing that male as a female and not considering his penis to be of the female variety.

It is honestly as if biology no longer counts, as if women’s biological bodies and their collective experiences have been erased because, in these MtF transgender’s warped minds, a penis can be a male OR female organ! It’s the same as when a FtM claims that the clit with which they were born is now a penis! I literally had to stop typing there and take a moment because it is so mind boggling to me that I can’t believe I live in a society where a group of people put forth this idea and no one refutes it for fear of being labeled transphobic.

It is such an insane notion, I can’t believe people actually take them seriously on this. But they do. There are trans apologists everywhere, using the words cisgender, cissexual, cismisogyny, cissexualism, etc. According to these individuals, we have become a society where biology no longer matters, where gender is not a man-made social construct, but has actually replaced biology in their minds.

It is time for the madness to stop. It is time for men to stop trying to co-op women’s spaces and words. It is time for their misogyny to be revealed, examined, and fought at every instance.

As women, we should no longer be standing idly by as these men take over our spaces, try to take over our bodies, and take the words with which we use to describe ourselves, leaving us with nothing but the scraps they leave for us. If we continue to allow transgenders to other us all by using the term cis for any reason, we will have only ourselves to blame when there are no more words or spaces to call our own, including our bodies.

If these were the old, straight, white men of Congress who are continuing to try to control and regulate women’s bodies, we would be all over them with picket signs and Vagina Monologues performances. We cannot allow these men to guilt or shame us into giving up our spaces, ourselves, and yes, even our words.

 In the immortal words of Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer: “Enough is enough!”