Not Ready for Prime Time

 

or How the TG civil rights movement went insane by talking only to themselves.

by Cathryn Platine

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Let me begin by placing myself on the identity politics scale so you understand the perspective I write from.  First I am a woman followed by a feminist then one born intersexed and lastly a surgically constructed (at birth) transsexual.  This colours my point of view just as those who identify as some brand of trans come from an entirely different point of view.  I see the world through the eyes of a feminist woman who has studied history and is also a pagan theologian.  I live within the greater world where the dominate viewpoint of gender is a strictly bi-gendered one where most people's understanding of gender is limited to there are men and women and if slightly more enlightened, some people are born intersexed and some are born transsexual but both these groups get put in either the male or female bin.  Joe Sixpack, Helen Homemaker and Larry Legislator all can understand transsexuality within this worldview and are often willing with just a little prompting, to understand transsexuals are actually women or men rather than the sex assigned at birth.  This is easy enough to understand that even Pat Robertson got it.  My lobbying experience taught me that republicans have no problem understanding this either once you explain it in simple terms.  So why can't we get basic civil rights?  The answer is this point of view has been viciously silenced by the trans-activists of the past ten years to be replaced with trying to sell an idea of feminine penises.

When I first became involved in the trans communities, I assumed that the womanhood of a transsexual woman and the manhood of a transsexual man were the backbone ideals of the movement.  I was completely mistaken in this.  The trans community has become all about gender deconstruction and the idea that women and men of transsexual history can never be "real" women and men.  While I have no problem with someone deconstructing their own gender, I have a major problem with someone deconstructing my own but this is exactly what the trans community demands.  Think I'm full of it?  Think again.  Recently on the Bilerico Project a woman of transsexual history was told by a prominent transgender blogger and loud voice in TG activism that:

"You want to get technical Sue? In the strictest definition, you're not female. The distinction between the "sexes" is that a female has the ability to produce ova, and the male has the ability to produce produces sperm. Your "sex" isn't based on an organ but on your reproductive ability. For that matter, your neo-vagina isn't even an "organ." An organ is tissue or a group of tissues that constitute a morphologically and functionally distinct part of an organism. Your "vagina" isn't a social construct, it's a surgical construct. And an incomplete construct at that! Go find your bartholin glands...."

Woah! read that again because what it is saying is this woman is not a woman at all.  And this is not aberration but the actual position of the majority voices in Transland today. It is the exact same point of view of the most rabid of the religious right.  The irony is this is a viewpoint that demands TG entry to women only space (male only space is rarely much of a problem for FtMs)  Now as a feminist woman I cannot understand why women should be expected to welcome people who come to them not as women but as trans-something to women only space but this is exactly what is demanded.  Frankly it stinks of male privilege and sounds like exactly the sort of thing that the old radical lesbian separatists complained about.  Some twelve years of observation of both feminist and lesbian space has demonstrated to me the truth of this because it is almost always a third genderist "I'll never be a 'real' woman" transperson who pushes for entry.  I literally have never seen a woman of transsexual history do this.  And the life experience of most of the women of transsexual history seems to be similar to my own......if you come to women's space as a woman, you will be welcomed without any real opposition.  This would seem to me a no brainer.  That those who silence the voices of women of transsexual history, attempt to erase them from view and then claim to represent them as part of some unified "transgendered community" strike me as almost as pure examples of patriarchal thinking as you can get.  I even coined a term to cover this denial of post-operative women's womanhood, neo-gynophobia.  That these same people demand recognition as "women" (this rarely comes from the FtM side) when they actively deny it at the same time to women who's bodies reflect their womanhood through surgical correction almost defies the imagination.  From outside the insular world of the "transgender community" it frankly appears downright insane.

One thing most transgendered people seem to do is insist on talking about their genitals.  Often it's the first information they offer.  Please note that I do not use the word transgender in the redefined umbrella sense but separate from intersexed and transsexual.  I use the term transsexual in the classical sense meaning someone driven to bring their body into congruence with their gender.  In this usage there is no such thing as a non-op transsexual by choice, only by circumstance.  Now this verbal flashing would not be a problem if it was confined to trans discussion groups, gender theory and trans education presentations but this is not the case.  Rather than take the common sense approach in gaining civil rights of using the fact that most people can understand transsexuality fairly easily and that the poor state of surgical options for female to male transsexuals can be used to defuse requirements for full surgery and limit those requirements, if needed, to hormonal or surgical removal of reproductive function.......rather than this, trans activists insist on talking about the "rights" of people with penises to enter women's space!  Now I have to tell you again, viewed from outside Transland, this just plain looks insane to those who live in a bi-gendered world.  It's an almost impossible sell and the major reason no headway at all has been made in Federal protections and why these protections probably won't come about for a long long time.

What has happened is that actual civil rights that in a practical sense would cover transgenders as well as people of transsexual history and those in transsexual transition have taken a back seat to the agenda of deconstruction of gender for all.  Only within a group that talks only among themselves can this be seen as sane.  A small minority is tilting at windmills if they think they can overturn the majorities worldview.  Maybe it can be done eventually........but isn't the goal supposed to be civil rights first?  Pardon me, but I don't give a damn about deconstruction of gender but I do about having basic civil rights.  When you live in the real world these practical matters trump some theory every time.  And by the way, I'm a woman and live a woman's life regardless of the opinions of some trans-theorist.