Tag Archives: Trans

#TransgenderAlternativeFacts Surrounding Stonewall & The LGB Riots

Hello and Happy GAY Pride my sisters!! 

Let’s talk about Stonewall, shall we? The bar in New York that sparked the LGB Civil Rights Movement!

I saw this in my Tumblr feed this afternoon and it made my blood boil a bit because we lesbians have been fighting the re-written HIStory for several years now.

Ugh – Transgenders continuing the lie that they were the ones who started the riots at Stonewall, kicking off the Gay Liberation and LGB civil rights movement, when it was actually a butch lesbian woman (Stormé DeLarverie)* & a drag queen (Sylvia Rivera)**. Hell, you could almost say that the butch dyke started the whole thing because as she was being abused by the police & started fighting back, she engaged the crowd by asking if anyone was going to do anything. That’s when the crowd got into it with the police and a revolution started. In Rivera’s own words (interview below), he talks about it all happening around him; not that he started it all.

We have to keep fighting against these lies or a whole new generation will believe them & pass them on, forgetting the actual truth, the actual history!!  

*Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) was a butchlesbian whose purported scuffle with police, many eyewitnesses recount, was the defining moment that incited the Stonewall riots, spurring the crowd to action.[1] She was born in New Orleans, to an African American mother and a white father.[2][3] She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who graced the stages of the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall.[1] She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard and volunteer street patrol worker, the “guardian of lesbians in the Village.”[3]

She is known as “the Rosa Parks of the gay community.”[1][4][5][6][7][8][a]

Read more here: Stormé DeLarverie on Wikipedia 

**Silvia Rivera: “The early 60s was not a good time for drag queens, effeminate boys or boys that wore makeup like we did. Back then we were beat up by the police, by everybody. I didn’t really come out as a drag queen until the late 60s.When drag queens were arrested, what degradation there was. I remember the first time I got arrested, I wasn’t even in full drag. I was walking down the street and the cops just snatched me.”

Read more of his interview here: Silvia Rivera interview 

 

See, here’s the thing: transgenders want everyone to believe that the Gay Liberation and the LGB Civil Rights Movement was started by them and that we owe them our thanks. They have been peddling this lie for almost a decade and some – mostly youth, other transgenders, and libfem handmaidens – actually believe these #TransgenderAlternativeFacts. We have to deal with this every single year and it is tiresome; but as I said, we have to keep fighting, keep telling the truth, keep reminding everyone that is was not transgenders at Stonewall, it was a butch dyke and a drag queen.

Share this information with the lesbian & gay youth, the straight people, and even the transgenders that you know. Spread the word so that these #TransgenderAlternativeFacts can become the memory, instead of the actual truth!

 

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!

Male Transgender Violence Against Women Is A REAL Thing

Transgender propaganda states that no woman has ever been harmed by a transgender in the women’s bathroom or in any other women’s private spaces, e.g., locker/dressing rooms, homeless and battered woman shelters, jails/prisons, etc. But if people would actually LOOK, instead of relying on transgender alternative facts, they would see that the stories are there, numbering in the dozens, at least, of women being assaulted, raped, and killed both by male transgenders and males who are not transgender, but pretend to be in order to gain access to women’s private spaces, because male violence is a real thing.

There is one sorta recent story that was barely touched by mainstream media and completely ignored by LGB media (except for @PinkNews who reported the male transgender as a woman and neglected to report on his motive) because it flies in the face of transgender propaganda, which says that men who claim to be women are not violent. That somehow, either because they have “female brains” or because they are on estrogen (there are those alternative facts again!), they are not violent. Even with proof positive through news stories reporting their violent behavior and from violent conviction reports from the UN that state that male transgenders are just as violent as males who are not transgender, straight women, gay men, straight men, and sadly, even lesbians still churn out the bullshit party line that these men are sensitive little bunnies who never do any harm to anyone.

The story I am talking about, of course, is the one of the male transactivist, Dana Rivers who violently murdered a Lesbian couple and their son in Oakland this past November by shooting and stabbing them, setting the house on fire, and then trying to flee the scene, covered in blood, using one of the Lesbians’ motorcycle.

You want to know why that male transgender killed the lesbian couple & their son?

There are two reasons: the LESBIANS refused his sexual advances (because, hello, Lesbians do not fuck men!) and they refused to see him as a lesbian.

I blame transgender propaganda on their murders.

See, here’s the thing. Transgenders insist that women, and especially lesbians, “misgendering” them (which isn’t really a thing), refusing to see them as the opposite sex, and refusing to fuck them, kills transgenders because it fosters an atmosphere of violence towards transgenders…. which, of course, it doesn’t. In any way whatsoever. That’s just the bullshit transgenders sell to people who wish to be politically correct and seen as supportive of transgenders’ delusions. We all know who actually attack and kill these men: other men!

But what that transgender propaganda actually does is foster an atmosphere of violence against WOMEN. It works like this: transgenders and their sheeple feel that their violence against women is justified, that it is in direct response to our fictitious violence, aka, “misgendering,” that it is “self-defense.” This gives them the freedom to make violent threats online, stalk and cyber stalk women, dox women, harass women both on and offline, as well as actually assaulting and killing women who will not share in the transgender delusions that gender is real and biology is not.

What stories like the one mentioned above show is that transgender propaganda like the “cotton ceiling,” which says that lesbians should give male transgenders access to their bodies or they are bigots, is not just steeped in male privilege, it’s not just rape culture, it definitely fosters an atmosphere of violence against women. That man felt so entitled to those lesbians’ bodies and his male privilege allowed him to believe so sincerely that those women should have recognized him as a lesbian, that he killed them and their son and he felt justified in doing so.

The thing that gets me here is the sheer number of women who still believe the trans bullshit! I mean, I expect other men, both gay and straight, to buy into it because most of the transgender propaganda is MRA 101! But women….. just, damn.

I know, I know, we are conditioned to put men first, to believe everything men tell us, and to consider men’s opinions to matter more than our own, I understand that. But I guess….. I guess it’s kinda like that Matrix movie (the first one, I treat the other two as if they don’t exist, lol): the vast majority of the human population is stuck in the matrix while their actual bodies are cocooned in contraptions that keep them alive so that they can be used as a power source for the machines.

But some people have come to realize the truth of their situation. They realize that what they believed was real all of their lives isn’t really real at all. The truth comes painfully and slowly, because it is hard to break from what you have believed for so long.

That’s how it is for gender critical feminists (and I know that there are radical feminists who don’t agree with the term “gender critical,” but please bear with me). A lot of gender critical feminists started out all nice and accepting of the transgender narrative, accepting men as women, assuming they had discarded their male privilege and were now sister. Then things start not making sense and they have questions, but they cannot ask them for fear of being called a bigot, or worse, the slur “TERF.” So they keep quiet. But as time rolls on and male transgenders reveal themselves to be narcissists with all the male privilege they were born with, the future gender critical feminists start looking in other places for information, to answer their questions.

They start reading transgender critical and radical feminist blogs and they realize that they are NOT crazy, that other women have the same questions and feel the same about the transgender narrative as they do. Right about then something happens that makes them hit what we call, “peak trans.” Something a male transgender says or does is just the last straw for these women and they either become gender critical feminists or radical feminists.

This is when they really start reading: blogs, Facebook groups and pages, and books about feminism. They realize, either here at this point or at their peak trans moment, that male transgenders have the same propensity to violence as men who are not transgenders. They see and read the news stories on sites like AllisonsLaw.wordpress.com* that show story after story violence against women perpetrated by male transgenders, cross dressers who may or may not be transgenders, “men in dresses” who may or may not be transgender, and men who are not transgender but claim to be so they can enter women’s private spaces.

It happens a LOT more then you might think, dear reader; and we must work together to make more and more women aware of this so that they know for whom they are advocating. Then more and more women will hit peak trans. They will come to us with questions, looking for information and comradery. So when you see these women in real life or online, help direct them to feminist blogs, feminists’ published works, and links like radfem.org, which has radical feminist works in .pdf files for women to read, for free.

It just boils down to this: some men are violent, so it stands to reason that some male transgenders are violent. That was even concluded in a 30 year long study of transsexuals/transgenders.

So let’s work together to not only combat these men, but to speak to the women around them. When you comment to violent male transgenders or other men, make sure you remember who your audience is: the women supporting them. Try hard to not lose your temper and just keep on writing to these women. Try not to let the narcissists gaslight you or confuse you by trying to turn things on you, just “keep calm and carry on” my sisters! Some of those women are listening to you!

Think of it like this: you cannot and will not convert the devoted cult members (transgenders), but you may be able to convert the cult members who are already questioning the cult and its “movement.” Not every woman can be converted out of the cult, but as we convert more and more, they will talk and discuss and convert some on their own, who will convert others and soon, the cult collapses in on itself and women can abolish gender forever!

I believe we can make it happen, my sisters!

 

#ResistGender

#PutWomenFirst

 

*The Allison’s Law site seems to have come down, so give the Facebook group, “This Never Happens” a try to find news stories about TIM violence. -BBB

 

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.

Is Being Gender Critical and Butch Mutually Exclusive?

I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a long time now. Can one consider herself butch, aka, a masculine woman while also being critical of gender? It’s a question I have been thinking about for several months and now is the time for me to put my thoughts down on paper, so to speak, and figure this thing out for myself. Some of you will, of course, disagree and that is cool, but I would be willing to bet that there are a lot more of us out there than we think.

I’ve been an out lesbian for half my life now (over 20 years) and I didn’t consider myself butch (or “a” butch, ymmv) until almost 10 years later. It took me a long, long time to come to the realization that butches were women, we didn’t wish to be men, we were women who just happened to be masculine. Once I came to that realization, I was able to accept my true self: a gender non-conforming, masculine woman, or more simply, a butch lesbian; or even more simply: a butch.

It’s hard to be a butch in this world. Don’t worry, I am not about to play the oppression Olympics here, I completely understand that there is enough discrimination to go around and there are hard times for all of us. But let’s be honest here, I cannot speak for femmes, straight women (even the butch ones), gay men, straight men, or lesbians who are neither butch or femme because I am none of those things. So I will stick to what I know: being a butch lesbian in this patriarchal society.

Before I continue, I wanted to put out there that even though I am not speaking about femme’s experiences here, I welcome their input about this post or their own experiences; especially the anonymous femme who briefly talked with me about the hierarchy of femmes and butches in my last post (Who Gets To Decide What “Lesbian” Means?). I hope she sees this post so she can come back to leave her thoughts on the issue.

So let’s dig in to this complicated subject matter, shall we?

As I was saying before I digressed a bit, being a butch lesbian in this patriarchal world is tough. We have almost no “in real life” role models, very few, if any in the media, and when I was a young dyke, there were even fewer than there are now if you can imagine that. Because this society believes that men own masculinity (and women own femininity), we butches have therefore had no choice but to model ourselves after the men in our lives and go by how the media presents men; and this is nothing if not problematic. Because of this society, because the patriarchy frowns on women wearing “men’s” clothing (and vice versa), and because there are almost no butches in the media, these are two very big reasons why a lot of straight and even gay people assume we all want to emulate, if not actually be men.

The lack of butch role models and having to use men or the media’s idea of men as our guides (well, I don’t, but I did when I was younger because I didn’t know any different and I see it more and more in these young butches today) presents other problems. For those unfamiliar with on-line butch-femme communities, there is a clear hierarchy of “butchness” or masculinity and it discriminates against butches who do not identify as male and it especially celebrates the female transgender, or the trans “man.” In this hierarchy, there are the levels of butchness that I mentioned, such as soft butch, butch, hard butch, male identified butch, and trans “man.” Usually we butches who know what sex is and celebrate the women that we are, are set low on that totem pole, somewhere around soft butch.

You see, even in the (on-line) butch-femme world, a lot of people are conditioned into the patriarchy just enough to believe the bullshit that men/males own masculinity and women/females own femininity, that females cannot be masculine, and that to be masculine, one must either be male identified or they must transition into some facsimile of a man, aka the trans “man.” So even in the butch-femme (on-line) world, female, and therefore feminine is “less than” and most people do not consider a butch to be masculine if she doesn’t deny biology and instead accepts and even celebrates that she is also female. In the comments of my last post, I said this maligned treatment comes from femmes, but I meant some femmes, not all; and to be honest, quite a few male identified butches and trans “men” feel this way as well, that female is less than; or more appropriately, that feminine is less than masculine. Like I said, a lot of this comes from the male identified butches and trans “men,” but it can also come from femmes as well. There are quite a few femmes out there these days who clearly want straight men without actually having to date straight men. They like the analogy that butch = man, that they can have only PIV sex, that they use male pronouns, etc. It is quite frustrating, to say the least. As I said, not all femmes are like this, but more and more of them are coming out of the woodwork as sex becomes more and more conflated with gender and the binary, as dictated by the patriarchy, wins out above all else.

To be fair, I don’t have to be a femme to see this coming from the other side of things as well; but even more than the hierarchy of femme, I also see things like how so many butches expect femmes to be like straight women and how a lot of them even toss femmes aside in favor of straight women. I also see the masculine and feminine stereotypes of the heterosexual world playing out in that a lot of both butches and femmes expect the butches to be the dominant ones, or the “tops,” to borrow a BDSM term and they expect the femmes to be the submissive ones or the “bottoms.” This is problematic in so many ways because it relies on society’s assumptions that feminine is always and only for women while masculine is always and only for men, so the above butches and femmes assume the woman (feminine) is always supposed to submit to the man (masculine). That is unbelievably sexist and it is almost always internalized, born of the conditioning we face being born and raised female in this society; and the sickest part, for me, is that all of that sexism is coming from and pointed towards females, women. So because there are not a lot, if any, butch and femme role models, we end up falling into the traps of our own conditioning by believing the bullshit of the binary, by seeing feminine as women and women as feminine, as well as masculine as men and men as masculine. That, dear reader, is where the idea of male identified butches and trans “men” come from: that blind loyalty to the binary and the patriarchy that conditioned us so very well.

I have always held the notion that transgenderism is a fad, a way of being a special snowflake, of distinguishing yourself from the “norm” so that you can be considered “cool.” It’s exactly like the on-line BDSM fad of several years ago in the butch-femme world (the straight and gay men’s world as well, but again, I cannot speak of what I don’t know). Suddenly, there were daddies, babygirls, masters, and mistresses all over the butch-femme on-line communities. Why? Again, it was a way to be different and special, to separate yourself from the “norm” and appear to be “cool.” Transgenderism is the same thing: a fad. I have said before and I will say it again: if society would stop with the preconceived notion that females or women own femininity and males or men own masculinity and instead allowed people to express themselves in any way that they wish, dress as they wish, wear make-up or not, have long, short, or no hair, walk, talk, and act as they wish, all regardless of their sex, then there would be no need for transgenderism and no need to “transition” into anything.

Masculine and feminine, like gender, are socially constructed, but I don’t view them as genders. Masculine and feminine are simply descriptors that do not belong to either sex. This means that that men can be feminine and that there is nothing wrong with that. On the flip side, women can be masculine and there is also nothing wrong with that.

So with that, I think I have come to the end of it, dear reader. It started as a question in my head: whether or not I could consider myself a butch lesbian and gender critical at the same time. While I consider myself a lesbian essentialist, I do not consider myself a butch essentialist. I may have been born a lesbian and was quite the dyke for a long time, but I found butch through exploration and an ultimate discovery of who I was (and am) as a woman.

I was chatting with a friend the other day (at least, I would like to be able to call her a friend) and she said that for her, “lesbian” is a “descriptor that others can understand.” I liked the way that sounded. Oh not for lesbian, but for butch and masculine. For me, butch has always meant and will always mean, masculine woman, but in this society, people get confused by putting those two words together, masculine and woman, so I say butch.

In that context, butch is a descriptor that others can understand, to varying degrees, of course. Like I said, there is the fad of being male identified and/or transgender, neither of which are actually butches, but the premise is the same. I use butch, not as a gender or an identity, but as a descriptor to signify to the world that while I am masculine, I was, am still now, and always will be a woman. I am a masculine woman, a butch.

So the answer is: yes, I can be critical of gender and be a butch lesbian at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive.

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?

 

My Blog, My Rules

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My blog, my rules.

RE-BLOG — Feminists are not responsible for educating men

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

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

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

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

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

-BBB

 

—–

 

Feminists are not responsible for educating men

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

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

……….

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

To borrow the analogy of another woman:

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

……….

To paraphrase Audre Lorde:

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

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

—–

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

Trans “Man” Upset On Tumblr

divot-longridge_10-15-13

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

Hello divot-longridge,

I see you have made a few erroneous assumptions here:

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

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

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

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

Another Sister Lost To The Madness

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am thankful everyday that I decided against it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

 

Follow-up to “Ass”uming Butches Into Extinction

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later, she followed up with:

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

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

 

 Doffy-text-1Doffy-text-2

 

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

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

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

“Ass”uming Butches Into Extinction

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

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

 

Doffy1

Posted with her permission,
including leaving her name visible.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lesbians” Who Aren’t Really Lesbians At All

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.