Snowflake Especial

Submission from a reader: re Bruce Jenner and sexual abuse

Sorry for not using your ask box, I’m just super uncomfortable doing this with my blog name attached because I don’t want to get any unwanted messages or attention. 

Don’t get me wrong, the whole story of Caitlin Jenner stealing her daughter’s clothing is gross and definitely shouldn’t be played off as some cute, funny story. But the assumption she was doing it for sexual gratification and calling it “sexual abuse” rubs me the wrong way. Was it a violation of boundaries? Yes. But as someone who was sexually abused growing up, I feel like calling it that is somewhat belittling to sexual abuse victims.

And while it could be autogynephilic, that doesn’t seem like a label to attach to someone unless they outright admit that they get sexual gratification from “dressing like a woman” (I use quotes because there’s no such thing) or whatever.

The only case I would consider this to be sexual abuse is if she stole her daughter’s underwear/bra, which doesn’t seem to be the case. While stealing regular clothing is creepy and weird, it’s not really sexual in nature inherently. I feel like the label sexual abuse should be used more carefully than that.

Cheers!

Dear reader, thanks for your note. I am very sorry about what was done to you. I hope your healing goes well!

The last thing I want to do on this blog is use language in a way which minimizes the very real damage of sexual abuse and rape. However, I have to politely disagree with your analysis here.

Men, pre-transition trans women, and transitioning trans women who secretly try on their female partner’s, roommate’s, children’s, or mother’s clothes almost always do so for sexual reasons. If the reason wasn’t sexual, they would much more likely just play “dress up” with the woman in question. Seriously!

If you think Bruce wasn’t trying on his daughter’s panties (and possibly bras, though even now most 10 year olds don’t wear bras that I know of), sorry but you’re just not facing reality. Read about Richard Sharpe. (Note: his daughters accused him in court of masturbating in their underwear. That’s where I got that fact from.)

And if you’re still uncertain about this, talk to some trans women who are able to be candid about thing. Or, read the voices of trans women that are archived here. Or here. Or here.

Best wishes.

thisoneshade asked: Sorry if this has been asked already but what do you mean by "assimilated transexual"?

Hi! Here’s how I answered this ask a year and a half ago. I mostly agree with what I wrote there, except that I have become a lot more dubious about the existence of “resocialization” in the interim. I used to think it was really uncommon, but possible. Now, I don’t think it’s possible. I think some trans people (certainly not the majority, but a minority who are able to pass over extended periods) are able to publicly appear to have been resocialized as the opposite sex, in some contexts. But I think when I initially wrote about this, I underestimated the extent to which our formative years literally form us.

A simpler way to put it is, we as trans women may think that living “as women” for a certain amount of time will make us “effectively women”. That’s what I thought when I started my blog. However, I don’t think that way anymore. Not only am I male (always have been, always will be), I am an adult male, hence a man. (Though, a weird kind of man who most people perceive to be a woman.) It’s complicated but I’m ok with that!

Best wishes.

Submission: Thank you!

I do promise to send you a longer message later, but for now I just wanted to say thank you for your wonderful words of wisdom on your ‘lucidity in a sea of absurdity’ blog. I’m a boringly het (but prefer to live alone), kinda radical, kinda socialist, critical of gendered roles (I have no interest in cosmetics, babies and girly things) middle-aged, cat-loving, purple-wearing second-wave feminist (I realise now I also need to identify as ‘woman born woman’!) who is trying to sort through the mire of the trans debates and I have found both sanity and solace in your blog. You write wonderfully and all your points are so on the mark and well-made. Please do keep writing, sister! And I am so happy you have found peace and happiness in the place you are now. Long may it last. Keep well.

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Thanks reader, I’m glad you’ve found something worthwhile in this blog. Who knows, maybe I’ll get back to writing again some time? Best wishes to you. :)

nicetrygiantworms asked: sayyyyy if you could maybe not put your shitty hateful posts about people in their tags (my case in point right now is Laura Jane Grace) that would be great

When Tom Gable stops telling feminists to suck his dick, I’ll stop posting negative things about him. 

Anonymous asked: I'm a big fan of your blog. Your posts display a rare combination of critical insight and common-sense, and also I really like your stories about being a weird nineties kid. Which is why I find your support of people like Cathy Brennan and whoever runs GenderTrender to be kind of sketch. I'm sure they post good things sometimes, but they also mock transsexuals in a way which just makes them seem like garden-variety internet assholes. Trans politics are harmful, but we need better opposition.

bugbrennan-internetsensation:

bugbrennan-internetsensation:

snowflakeespecial:

Hi anon, glad you like my blog.

Here’s the problem: the most vocal trans activists also tend to be early in transition, pre-transition, or can’t pass/don’t pass. Or put another way, the loudest mtf advocates are the same people with the least in common with the experience of the average woman. You have to admit, this makes statements like “trans women ARE women” very suspect, when the standard of being a woman includes being a married heterosexual male who decapitated his wife with a wire (Kosilek), being a mentally ill gun collector who murdered numerous females (Donna Perry), or being an openly misogynist asshole who routinely advocates violence against females (Monica Roberts).

A very wise (female) reader of my blog mentioned that it must be really difficult to be a young transitioner mtf, because as someone in one of society’s most vulnerable categories (young effeminate male), you’re getting “guidance” from some of the most dangerous people - fully-grown adult men who have sexual fetishes related to crossdressing or forced feminization. Either that, or they have residual male entitlement to your body, since you’re effeminate. It’s really true!

I mention this to illustrate the power differential within the mtf community. The loudest voices are most likely to be repeating unreconstructed misogynist messages internalized during the part of the speaker’s life when they lived as a man. Or, like Julia Serrano they make up a bunch of hocus pocus to disguise their hatred of women. Trans women who actually assimilate (ie who fit in with women) get spoken over for obvious reasons!

I agree with you that both Cathy and Gallus Mag cross the line into outright transphobia sometimes. However, Gallus does an invaluable service by pointing out all the sexually predatory, violent, and grossly misogynist behavior that is realistically the mainstream of mtf activism. I don’t always like the way she says things, but I can’t dispute her facts (she ALWAYS links to a primary source). Scratch that - nobody can dispute her facts in an intellectually honest way.

As for Cathy, she has a great sense of humor, and she really cares about women. We have a lot of overlap in our musical taste. And the whole reason I became trans-critical was watching the video of Allyson Clarke yelling at Cathy with her neck veins bulging and clenched fists at the NYC dyke march in 2012. So Cathy’s literally my inspiration. Have you read her personal posts? Especially Oh, Pinocchio? She’s a brilliant writer.

Women have a right to be angry at men. They also have a right to be angry at males who say they’re women but whose actions directly align with misogynistic men. It’s not “transphobic” to say that Taleth and little-runaway-bunny behave like men - and in fact they both currently live as men. That’s just reality.

So, I’m more than happy to let Cathy and Gallus have their anger. I don’t take it personally because the majority of people they complain about are hurting me too. And until enough mtf’s who are actually feminists (in the not hating females sense) organize to change the current woman-hating mtf discourse, I thank God that we at least have GM & CB to bring some reality to this debate.

Please show me where I have mocked transsexuals.

Also, special snowflake, please tell me what “outright transphobia” line I have crossed. Thanks.

Hey! Glad to see you back on tumblr.

I wrote that response a few years ago now. If I were going to write it today, I would probably say something quite different.

I’ve never seen you mock transsexuals. And I can’t give an example of you “crossing the line to outright transphobia” because honestly that is something I haven’t observed either. Same goes for Gallus. Actually, GenderTrender is my favorite active blog! And I really hope you get back to longer-form blogging at some point. So, I take the transphobia accusation back. Sorry!

But, here’s where I think that thought came from. There definitely are commentators on Gender Trender who make it a point to say mean things about trans women - and I’m not talking about the generic “pigs in wigs” comments, or the statements that all trans women are delusional (because real talk: most trans women are). I’m talking more about the “festering fuckhole” comments, the “men in dresses look embarrassing and absurd/sad and pathetic” comments, the personalized body-shaming, and the rest in that vein. Some of it is just intentionally cruel. (This isn’t just my read btw - I have a few radical feminist irl friends who say they can’t read GT because it’s “mean-spirited”. I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the comments, not what Gallus says.)

Anyway, more real talk: engaging with radical feminist thought as a transsexual person can be really tough on the feels. Factcheckme’s “Neovagina? Or Second Asshole?” post feels like an attack when you’ve bought into the lie that having SRS makes you “female”. On the other hand, it’s impossible to disagree with her that rape culture birthed the neovag. So what at first felt “transphobic” now starts to make perfect sense. 

So it’s not just this one post I would write differently if I were starting my blog now, it’s basically all of them. Except, I’m kind of bored with this discussion. Pretty sure you can understand that. :)

venusintransit sorry but I’m not taking the bait. You can rage at me as much as you want. But you are not intersex, and I’m not arguing with you about intersex issues any more. Period. If you wrote your own article giving the gender-critical community a blueprint on how to more respectfully think about intersex issues, I would love to read it! But no thanks on this reactionary raging. You should go outside and get some sunshine! You’ll feel better. I mean that. I’m sick at home today but I’m about to go to the gym yay!

Dear readers: though I have been absent the last few weeks, I’m still here. If you, dear reader, are intersex or have experience with the intersex community, and would like to let me know where I have misstepped on intersex issues on my blog in the past (or just share your perspective), I would love to hear it.

For the record, in response to a pleasant exchange I had with a trans woman who also has Klinefelter, I no longer agree with the statement I previously made that Klinefelter is not an intersex condition. I originally thought that way because I was using a (historically-outmoded) definition of intersex that focused on ambiguous genitalia at birth.

valhalla-bean:

When people said that the first few months of full-time are really awkward, I thought it would just be related to not passing, but it’s more of not knowing how to act in certain situations that I haven’t been in before.

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Anonymous asked: is it true that a trans girl of sixteen was berated and called a "rapist" for hours at michfest? i find it hard to believe but the post that is spreading around does nothing to refute it...was hoping you could shed some light.

antilla-dean:

I just want you to think about that for a second. Does that sound like something anyone would do? These are the same kinds of people who actually asserted that we have bonfires where we pelt an effigy of trans women with bloody tampons and pads. This is the thought process of the people who spread this bullshit.

Lemme say it again. No one is thinking on trans women at fest. No one. Because women are too fucking busy being free. Period. Unless you choose to attend a workshop that deals specifically with trans women, ain’t no one on that. But I digress…

The incident that I am thinking you are talking about is based on was a lesbian avengers (Boston chapter) protest march that occurred in 1997 (?). They came in and marched through the Land and ended up at the main kitchen during mealtime.

Something to know about Fest. Males over five go to a boys camp. The only men on the land deliver the food and suck out the portajanes. That is it. Period. There aren’t even male vocals allowed in the music. We even have a song because when those few men are on the land we beep horns in a particular way as warning to cover up (because so many women don’t wear shirts).

So (and I was standing there because my job at fest had me in the middle of it). The 16 year old girl was completely non-op. There is no way that any woman who didn’t know what was going on could know that that person was trans. It just seemed like an invasion of the space by a male.

There were MANY women who were very pissed about this, because they thought a guy was invading and the history of such invasions has been that males who suddenly appear on the land were there to cause harm. Bet that real fear of attendees just dropped out of the conversation, though, eh?

Everyone was yelling. Tensions were extremely high between the protestors and attendees and attendees who supported the protestors and those who didn’t.

And then, because it was a lesbian feminist space, a community meeting was immediately called and all the parties gathered in a tent for three hours to process and Riki Anne Wilchins and another member of the Boston Avengers came back the next day and held a workshop on trans issues. No one was touched. No violence occurred. Everyone was given an opportunity to speak their mind.

That happened. Such horrible people! Such viscous, violent folks!

All of this is documented on eminism.com. And other places as well.

Basically, there are no truths told about Michigan by certain quarters of transactivists because it goes against a narrative that is necessary to erase female only spaces. Those lies need to be true to justify the colonialism.

If someone was violently attacked (as trans women are) it would be easily found as a truth, no? Yelling about violating a boundary isn’t an attack. It is females standing up for ourselves.

Fascinating.

Is there an written history about the Boston Lesbian Avengers? A lot of my friends were active in LA starting around 1994-1995, but that was mostly kiss-ins at the mall and other actions like that. It seems like LA took a very strange trajectory, especially after it got taken over by a 30-40 year old mtf named Stacey who was just starting transition - though I think that was a bit later, maybe 1998?

I think the rise and fall of Boston LA is actually a really important piece of the history of transanity activism, and it would be really helpful if people who were part of it began to document it.

Anonymous asked: Do you think some males want to be called "they" because they are ashamed to be male?

venusintransit:

whowhomewhy:

radicalfeminisms-blog:

I think they want to be called “they” because they want to avoid unpacking their male privilege and facing the fact that, yes, it is he who contributes to her oppression.

disidentifying with men in this way was openly encouraged during monetizeyourcat’s popularity, myc literally made a post that said “trans is a feel and anyone can know it” and would say that men could choose not to be men and that doing this would absolve them and help women. at one point she said that cis men were better than trans men, because they could potentially be trans women someday, and she would encourage people to look for “girl reasons” when interpreting mens behavior- basically, pretending all men were trans women, which in that community would mean they were incapable of male privilege, male violence, etc.

myc is still relevant because even after she was ousted, anyone linking her politics to her abuse of others was silenced as opportunistic transmisogynists, so her ideological influence was never rooted out and is still coloring conversations for everyone in her original reach on tumblr.

this is a pretty important observation to make. it’s kind of these sorts who “open the floodgates” allowing abuse to happen.

and then you have the earliest mtf theorists on tumblr like radtransfem and ciscritical-not-cisphobic – drawn to radical/lesbian feminism – around whom the baeddel group coalesced and their ideology developed, i.e. “radical transfeminism.” in a sense this is also “don’t identify as a man,” but implicit, and not just minor male guilt. it’s hatred of men, alienation from men, tons of trauma/bullying from men, hating oneself for being a man, thinking all men are evil and should die in combination with severe psychological problems etc etc. and at this point just attracting highly traumatized individuals rather than opportunistic abusers who see a system ripe for abuse.

of course, by investing their emotional energies and trauma into developing an ideology where the reality of their maleness and male socialization can be denied (thus preventing real healing) by weaponizing “cis/dfab privilege,” trans men’s supposed male privilege, “transmisogyny,” “sex is a social construct,” etc. in order to silence females, they produce a powerful ideological structure which can render sex-based oppression and power dynamics invisible, drawing in shrewd opportunistic abusers (exactly what myc invited, basically).

and even earlier, you have Sandy Stone – the original “radical transfeminist” (what Janice Raymond called a “transssexually constructed lesbian-feminist”) who in response to The Transsexual Empire wrote A Posttransexual Manifesto – encouraging anti-assimilationism & collective organization in order to produce a “counterdiscourse” to the radical feminist discourse on transsexualism (i.e. Raymond’s) which basically lead to and manifested as modern transgender activism as we know it.

Can Men Be Women?

saint-genet:

[A conversation between Janet Meyers, Liza Cowan, Alix Dobkin, and Penny House, from “Transsexuals in the Women’s Movement.” DYKE A Quarterly, no. 5. Fall, 1977.]

Janet:  What is so incredible is that a lot of Lesbians seem to be saying to transsexuals, “If this is the way you want to think about yourself, I guess I am obligated to participate in that illusion, because far be it from me to get on anyone’s case, to make a judgment about the self-deception that you are involved in.” That is what is so weird to me, what I find so scary about the way a lot of Lesbians have reacted to the transsexual issue. The attitude seems to be that however someone presents themself, that is the way you are supposed to see them. You are supposed to suspend your perceptions of that person and completely accept, in some kind of mindless way, that person’s evaluation of who they are. It seems to me that this is a very dangerous way of looking at the world. No distinction is made between respecting someone else and suspending your own perceptions. It is always tempting to be passive.

Liza:  It is also very tempting to be generous. I think that a lot of Lesbians say they have gone through such a hard time being accepted as Lesbians and now these poor transsexuals are having such a hard time and here we are in the same boat, both oppressed by the same culture. If we recognize them as our sisters it helps everybody. It is very generous and I appreciate that in women, but it is really shortsighted.

Penny:  It is misguided. The fact is that you have always in life to make distinctions and judgments. It is not in itself destructive to make a judgment, to make distinctions, to have a conception of right and wrong. Not just right and wrong, but to have any kind of values.

Liza:  Especially in the women’s movement, to have an understanding of what is male and what is female seems so basic an issue.

Alix:  And yet some Lesbians accept transsexuals as women.

Janet:  Most Lesbians come to the women’s movement because they understand that there is something intrinsically other about being a woman and that is necessary for women to get together in order to understand what that means. To get from that, which is the basis of your life, the basis of your politics, and say OK, I guess that’s true, but there are these men who have somehow, by osmosis or something, have somehow absorbed what it means to be a woman, even though they have never been women.

Liza:  But they say that hey were born women.

Penny:  The line is, “a woman’s soul in a man’s body.”

Liza:  What galls me so much is that we are just beginning to understand what it means to be a woman, really just beginning to be able to understand that there is something different that we are not fully conscious of yet about what it means to be a woman, and these men say that they are women, meaning that they know what it means to be a woman, and they are it. And now they want to participate in defining and creating women’s culture.

Janet:  I think there is probably something to the point that this is preparatory to dispensing with women entirely. In that sense the transsexual issue concerns me but as far as whether they think they are women or not, or if they should be allowed to have the operation or not, I don’t really care. I think that women, Lesbians, should be very clear about whether we really are willing to say that a man can go to another man, that some sort of technological exchange can go on between them, and then one of them will walk out of the room as a woman. If women are willing to say that these sort of hospital frat parties can produce sisters, I think that is really nuts. I can’t believe that there is that response from Lesbians, even though I understand that it comes out of generous impulses.

Alix:  Plus the unwillingness to make a stink about something, to be unpopular, to make enemies.

Liza:  Very few feminist newspapers or magazines have said anything about it. It seems to be a closed issue. We know there are women all over the country who are very upset about it, but few say anything in public.

Janet:  Men have gotten to the position where they are in the world, and the whole sexual equation that exists, has happened because women have, at least on some level, acquiesced, and have allowed men to control things. Transsexual operations are going to happen, whether women want them to or not, because they are transactions between two men. We have no control over male transactions at this point, but the issue of transsexuals in the Lesbian community exists completely because Lesbians have allowed it to.

Liza:  There are lots of Lesbians who genuinely do not understand why this is a problem. The idea is, who cares? What is the difference if these men want to come in and say they are women? So what, it does not hurt us. It seems to me that the reason it is bad is that then it means you do not have an understanding of what is male and what is female, and you don’t understand that you have the right to be in a group that is all women. If somebody wants to have a friend who is a transsexual, that is her business but if she wants to hold an event for women only and have transsexuals come, then I object.

Alix:  It makes one wonder about their basic assumptions. Maybe they think that women are totally a product of their environment and once women are treated equally we will be the same as men. I guess that’s the analysis.

Liza:  The Olivia analysis is that this man has given up his privileges, has cut off his penis and has a woman’s soul, and so therefore is a woman.

Penny:  But any man can say he has a woman’s soul. There’s no way to prove or disprove it.

Liza:  To my mind the next logical step would be to say that what a woman is, is a man with no privileges and no penis. So where does that leave us but right back to what men tell us, that women are “inferior” men.

Janet:  It is a very liberal idea. It is the accepted, reformist, feminist idea that it is really a question of conditioning.

Liza:  It is also that somebody has renounced something, therefore he is equal to you.

Penny:  He has come down. A man who has come down to a woman’s level. All that prevents women from being men is being given the privilege of being men. If we had the privilege that men have, would we be men? No!

Liza:  One of the reasons Olivia gave for working with Sandy Stone, their transsexual engineer, is that he has renounced his privilege.

Penny:  Because he has renounced being a man.

Liza:  Therefore they trust him as a woman.

Alix:  He has earned his womanhood.

Penny:  By living as an oppressed transsexual he has become a woman.

Liza:  And therefore the definition of a woman is someone who is oppressed. You understand each other through your oppression and that is the sum total of who you are, that you are oppressed. I think that this is very common in the Lesbian movement. You are so oppressed you must be a woman.

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