One of the falsehoods perpetrated on us by the militant transgender is that we have a common enemy, and common interests. As patently ridiculous as that seems to the post-transition man or woman, it is a powerful threat to those who are beginning their treatment or are in the process, along the way. This sort of fearmongering needs a stern response.
The hard core transgender took the gay brush and tarred everyone with it. They tried to make us a part of their world in the collective consciousness. We did not ask to be turned politically gay by these imposters. If there is confusion it rests solely upon the shoulders of those who took it upon themselves to speak for anyone and everyone they thought they could use for their own ends.
But 20 years later, with the transgender fad fading quickly, their propaganda campaign is a dismal failure. Academics may have succeeded in changing the way people use a term or two, but the underlying concepts remain steadfast in people’s minds. People believe that sex determines who we are, and our physical bodies determine our sex. This bedrock principle will not be moved by pseudo-intellectual spiels, nor will it change due to the rantings of a crazed few on the internet.
The good news for those born with transsexual syndrome is that the public by and large understands your condition. Complete inside and out comprehension is not required for empathy, contrary to the lies spread by the militant TG’s. It is enough that people see and understand the pain you are going through, and the happiness that follows when you are cured. This is the only message that the rest of society needed to hear before they got the idea. This is how all the laws were changed for us in the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Our birth certificates being handled in 48 states before the advent of the transgender fluffery is testament to this fact.
So take heart, and move forward secure in the knowledge that people are not out to get you. There are always going to be small-minded people somewhere who fear what they don’t understand. It would be the height of foolishness to run your life trying to appease an ignorant person that you don’t even know, wouldn’t it? These sorts of things mainly exist in our minds to give form to our own self doubt. But if you are in the process of treating your condition, I probably don’t have to tell you this. Most of us who went through that came to our own conclusions about these things, and moved past them. It is the process of reestablishing self-worth, for those who need it. If you haven’t done so yet, just know that there is a place beyond where you are now. Don’t let others cheat you out of that happy life you deserve.
Time Marches On
The public world of human interaction reflects the private world of our minds in synergy. Just as a person treating their ills moves through a process, so do groups treating social ills. Right now we who were born with transsexual syndrome are in the process of ejecting the transgender invaders from our space. This is a major change from the last two decades of unchecked transgender aggression. We have arrived at a crossroads.
Those who continue to appease an implacable enemy truly are not friends, as Susan has said on her blog. There can be no compromise with the kind of aggression committed against us. Compromise in this case is collaboration, and it benefits the enemy. And make no mistake, those who act against us in the name of transgender do so not out of misguided kindness, or dedication to some grand utopian dream, but for the most selfish reasons imaginable. It is not we who have defined this enemy; they do it themselves through their own actions.
This isn’t about who gets to be the head tranny in charge, or what label to adopt in a continuing trans war. I’ve watched this silliness for some time now and it looks exactly like what the TG’s do. Nobody is interested in the cliquishness of the past, or in raising up yet another petty tyrant in gender country. That world is evaporating even as I write this.
Some people at this crossroads have not decided which path to take, while others have seen the route and have started on their way. Some people have one foot in the past, and the other in the present. Others have one foot in the present and the other stepping toward the future. The two viewpoints are not compatible. But we can all decide for ourselves which way suits us best.
The two paths themselves are quite different. There is a divide a mile wide and a mile deep between them, and the contrast could not be more stark. There is no room to play both sides.
Where do you stand?
September 9, 2009 at 12:25 pm |
The problem with fighting evil is the temptation to use it’s tactics and then become the same.
Susan Taylor and Leigh have adopted the tactics of the worst of the TGs….slams of someone’s religion, sexual orientation etc have zero to do with the fight to separate, once and for all TGs from classic transsexuals.
Two people who have done more than anyone else to gather the scientific evidence in one place, Lisa and Sharon are being called TGs themselves because they allow free discussion on their boards! I’d been fighting on the front lines of this battle for over a decade and suddenly I’m not a trusted ally.
Screw this. When those who engaged in this battle are trashed for doing so by their own side then the whole HBS thing is not much different than Helms and Sandeen show. When any minor disagreement is used to separate it’s time for me to resume my feminism and say a pox on all trans everything. It’s times like this I’m damn glad I discovered I was born intersexed, not transsexed. I can walk away from all of it and I am doing so.
My own womanhood is unquestioned among those the TGs hate the most, radfems so why should I stick around to be trashed by both sides? Taylor and Leigh and JustJennifer have reduced what was a winning war of ideas and facts to one of name calling…..screw that, they just surrendered the high ground I spent a decade defending.
September 9, 2009 at 1:22 pm |
Cathryn;
I think you need to decide what battle you are fighting.
It’s clear what battle Leigh and Susan are fighting. Letting a bunch of middle aged TVs and CDs Define what our birth condition is and supposedly speak for us is patently wrong.
I really don’t care what tactics are used to discredit those people I don’t want to end up being lumped in with the gays. In case anybody here has forgotten our condition is not about sexual orientation or even gender identity, it’s about correcting a physical birth defect, and moving on to live some semblance of a normal life.
September 9, 2009 at 2:14 pm |
No, it’s not at all clear what “battle” Leigh and Susan are fighting because their homophobia and right wing natures trump common sense over and over and they expect me to sign on to any random homophobic remark they make blindly……and that I won’t do. I stayed on the moral high ground at a great personal cost all along and to me, the means are as important as the ends because I like to like the person I see in the mirror each morning.
I totally agree that we should not be linked to the GLB movement in any fashion other than you have to leave room for those who are on our side who are lesbians or bi-sexuals to join that fight as lesbians and bi-sexuals if you want a rational movement that wins over hearts and minds….which we were doing finally before this crap. Ten f*%&ing years I spent changing the dialogue and finally making headway quietly in places I don’t discuss online, places of power and influence only to have these two blow it like six year olds having a temper tantrum.
I know what battle I was fighting, recognition that transsexuality is a neurological natal form of intersexuality totally separate from transgenderism….period. Not a war on gay men and lesbian women, not a loyality oath based on “sisterhood” from being born with a random birth condition…. I stayed out of an interpersonal conflict because I thought both sides were being asses…..that was what set Taylor and Leigh against me. Pretty much exposes what their agenda is.
And if you are who I think you are you blew it too with that stupid nasty email to Bil Browning when I had just about privately won him over.
I am not a homophobe and if playing one blindly is the cost of them joining me in the fight I fought mostly alone all those years, then I’m back to being an army of one. I do not want the association, which was broken by them first…on Susan’s blog for the crime of not blindly defending them being homophobic.
September 9, 2009 at 2:21 pm |
Cat’s essays were among the first on the internet that I read that reflected how I felt about this topic. She has great insight into the situation and spoke the truth when no one else was willing to step forward. What has happened to her at the hands of various TG individuals is horrible, and undeserved.
I don’t believe that the poking fun at sexuality is directed at actual women who have transitioned. What I see in the “TS lesbian” remark is a jab at those crossdressers who pretend to be something they are not. I think it’s important to remember the subject of all the ire, and that is those among the transgender who are doing the identity theft.
There is a trick I’ve seen employed by TG proselytizers. It goes like this: pretend to be something, like a “transbian”. Then start a fight with real transsexual women. Then go running to the GLBT crying “homophobia” and “Nazi”. Rinse and repeat.
I don’t know how much of that experience is leaking into this argument between Susan and Sharon and Lisa. Or just how far the insults are supposed to go. Maybe that will be determined by who people reveal themselves to be through their actions.
What also makes the situation difficult is the constant theme of mistrust that accompanies these discussions, because the specter of transgenderism hangs over every discussion like the pall of death. It’s unnerving. And it’s enough to make anyone paranoid. That’s something people need to find a way to get past at some point.
I hope that these things will be cleared up eventually, as sometimes tempers can flare and things can be said in the heat of the moment. Susan is well capable of speaking for herself, so I’ll wait to hear more from her rather than try to put words in her mouth. I hear she doesn’t like that, lol =)
It’s just something I am wary of every time I hear these accusations. Fighting is often times an unnecessary result of mistrust and misunderstanding. But sometimes fighting is also the only way to bring resolution. Actions have a way of cutting through everything, so we’ll see.
I believe one can have any sexual orientation and still be a woman =) I think Susan has said the same thing on her blog. I don’t think anyone here is interested in starting a new LGBT brandname for submission to the collective either. Given that everyone involved says they are against the TG paradigm, it should be easy to see where everyone stands. Susan has described that line, and I agree with her.
No compromise.
September 9, 2009 at 2:44 pm |
“when you are cured.”
This is in error — acceptable as a self perceptual understanding, but inaccurate.
September 9, 2009 at 2:45 pm |
I’m pissed enough right now to add:
How the hell do you defend in the future against the charges that all HBSers are bigots when two or three of your number are acting like bigots? Religious bigots, homophobic bigots? Taylor used the most vivid possible terms to paint herself a religious bigot against me, not once but over and over. I am supposed to ignore that? Especially when I am right now, this minute, engaged in a legal battle over religious bigotry regarding our religion, it’s legal recognition and rights?
Taylor and Leigh have just positioned themselves as the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh of trannydom in my eyes.
September 9, 2009 at 2:53 pm |
Cathryn;
A few points here,
1. You would have never won Bil Browning over on anything, that is just the reality of things.
Browning allowed his pet tranny Monica Helms to call me you and everyone else who transitioned men. I am sorry to say you are dead wrong if you thought you could change his mind, you were just entertainment for him.
I would also ask if you “think” you know who I am please keep it to yourself.
I am sick to death of the threats and attacks from the nutcases in the queer left.
2. I have been following your battle for well over a decade now, I even signed your petition which I have found much to my dismay you didn’t really promote that much.
3. What turns many of us off and what is keeping many of us from uniting on several issues is a very simple thing.
Many of us are not offended by who someone has chosen to sleep with or call their partner. What many of us are offended with is how some, and I include you have turned your sexual orientation into some kind of political battering ram. I personally get sick and tired of hearing about it. It is exhibitionistic and when carried to it’s extreme it’s anti-social. I feel the same way about insecure heterosexuals who must use their sexuality in a similar manner.
September 9, 2009 at 2:55 pm |
Dyssonance, go f yourself. You declared yourself a sociopath and I’m inclined to take you at your word on that.
September 9, 2009 at 3:04 pm |
Do you even know what my orientation is?
Most of my women friends are bi-sexual or lesbians. I call myself bi-sexual but it might as well be asexual at this point in my life because I am attracted mainly to male energy but fed up with macho crap……the exact same position my straight women friends my age find themselves mostly in.
And I only mentioned my sexual orientation to counter the homophobia from Susan for the most part. You really don’t want me to write my private opinions of their sex lives, trust me.
September 9, 2009 at 3:05 pm |
done here, I have an actual life to attend to.
September 9, 2009 at 3:22 pm |
A homophobe … hmmm
Websters : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals
So this is what, a one way street? I am supposed to accept in my life their disgusting and often misognyistic remarks yet I am not allowed to speak back in the same fashion?
Let me make myself perfectly clear on this subject!
I am against gay marriage because of the affiliation forced on transsexuals by the LGBT which puts transsexuals firmly in the gay camp and by association makes our marriages same sex in the eyes of the public. Want to change my views on that? Remove transsexuality from the GLBT. Make it clear that being transsexual is NOT necessarily a gay issue.
Homosexuals may NOT speak for me! If they do then I will be openly hostile toward them. If you want to call that homophobic, then you are misusing the word and it’s meaning. I have no irrational fear of them and no aversion to them. However my level of discimination toward them WILL be in the same measure that they discriminate and against me. You want to end that? quit with the discrimination!
You want me to not be “homophobic”, quit telling me that I am transgender, that I have to be in the homosexual group.
Homophobia is just another club word. The thing I find disgusting is that a women of transsexual history and high priestess who consistantly slams the transgender construct, which is firmly embedded within the LGB, has the gaul to classify other women of history as homphobics for speaking out against what is in fact the core of the transgender movement, the LGB. How she thinks she can speak against one without speaking against the other is a total mystery.
I find it interesting that websters has no definition for “Heterophobia” … but if it did Cathryn .. you would rate!
By the way… You forgot racist! .. and bigot!
Leigh
September 9, 2009 at 3:33 pm |
First and foremost here, Aria has correctly identified a watershed and expressed it pefectly in this Essay “Crossroads” Congratulations Aria.
Now to the other issues raised by Catherine. Good to see you.
Let us not lose sight of what actually happened as a result of Suzan Cooke’s rebuttal of “classic transsexual” Fundementally ignored on her own site it was not until TS Si re-published the piece that sparks flew. I suspect that is an editorial choice that Sharon and Lisa may regret. I am sure the intention was to provide balance for the TS Si readership who do not necessarily get exposed to the diversity of conflicting opinions we do as people involved with these issues.
Susan and Leigh will I am sure respond in their own way and their own words I will not attempt to put words into their mouths either. I do believe that we have a common enemy in the TG and when those who we believe are friends and allies are slow to support when one of us is attacked we feel betrayed and I understand that feeling.
One of the great disservices the TG menace has done is to create distrust through their infiltrations and turn us one against the other when we should stand together. Sometimes it is hard to recognise the infiltrator until too late. So after 25 years of this some of us have become suspicious at the slightest indication.
I agree with the firm stance that Susan has taken and I am right with her in a decision to take TG doctrine on and meet it head on. The time for presenting balanced views is way past. The public know transgender doctrine, it’s been ramed down their throats, now they will learn ours.
Catherine, no one certainly not me doubts your bonafide, your fine essays have undoubtedly had a positive impact and in influential circles. Thank you for what you have done. Suzan Cooke’s attack on classic transsexual in a media that has an influential profile in scientific circles could not be allowed to be seen as acceptable to those of us who identify as “classic transsexual” That is our line in the sand.
Gay and Lesbian issues are in my view quite separate from the one we face. A few “Classic Transsexuals” are also Lesbian or Gay, however most are not. But lobbying for legitimate Gay and Lesbian issues must be done separately from transsexual a standpoint. I think you see that Catherine. We are not homophobic but we are not necessarily gay or lesbian either and are certainly no threat to that community.
I don’t know where we go from here but unless we find a way to sort this mess we make life harder than it could be if we can re unite.
September 9, 2009 at 3:48 pm |
[“when you are cured.”
This is in error — acceptable as a self perceptual understanding, but inaccurate.]
How could you possibly know? But thanks for that opinion, I’ll be sure to remember it when I discuss the pitfalls one may encounter in the middle of transition. Oh wait, I already did that! I guess it’s a matter of either forest for the trees, or not having the transsexual condition to begin with. Those are the only two options.
September 9, 2009 at 3:59 pm |
“Taylor and Leigh have just positioned themselves as the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh of trannydom in my eyes”
Know what your problem is Cathryn? Your a snob, an elitist, top dog on the food chain. The best and most righteous of everyone that ever had surgical correction. You’re never simply post surgical, you are always looking down your nose from the higher position of intersexuality. Nobody will ever be good enough in you’re eyes.
Hell, you even created a religion out of it and proclaimed yourself the high priestess! You keep good company too, Gaughan, Thompson and Cooke, and then to further your own delusions of grandeur, allied with your favorite lesbian activist Maura Hennesey.
It never went unnoticed that your real motivation in having Hennesey post on your blog was to make the statement “Hey look at me! I dont need all you fake trannies, I got a REAL woman on my blog”!
You didn’t even have the courtesy to put Gaughan and Thompson straight when I tried to introduce YOUR PETITION to ts-si. Oh sure you did eventually make a small statement to the effect, but only after I was fed to the wolves!
Hypocritical A*hole
September 9, 2009 at 3:59 pm |
Dyss ……… the way I feel right now you are an error and you picked a bad time to try that stuff on.
Your perpetual understanding is merely self acceptable and inaccurate of itself.
now bugger off!
September 9, 2009 at 4:58 pm |
Cassandra, the problem with the way Cooke was addressed was the exact same problem caused by Conway and James addressing Bailey….personal attacks make you look like a raving lunatic in professional circles. If Conway and James had kept their respective mouths shut for just a month, actual peers of Bailey were about to kick the underpinnings of autogynophilia out from under him in the manner that works….peer review distain. I know three who were about to do it at the time. It would have effectively ended his career.
Leigh, I restrict myself to the observation that by merely changing transsexed for intersexed and adding transgender, what you just said about me could have been any of dozens of attacks on my by Helms and Abernathey.
Leigh, I am a woman, I never doubted it, a “real” one. You and Susan think you know all about me. Did you know I never made over 25 grand a year in my life? That the last four years of my working life before being physically disabled on the job I was a nursing assistant pulling double shifts? That means I cleaned up poop and pee for a living among other things. Am I also an intellectual?, yup, guilty as charged, mostly self educated at that. As for the high priestess crack, we are organized totally on a horizontal basis, the first religious group to do so in 1500 years.
I know Maura Hennessey through our mutual friend Dr. Caillean McMahon who is one of my sister Priestesses. Maura and some of her friends are quite interested in our religious work. Dr. McMahon is also, inter alia, the senior forensic psychiatrist for the New York Supreme Court system, so yes, I move in circles high and low. Maura and I blog together because we share a common vision of wholistic feminism we’ve had many long conversations about. Frankly, given all the noise you’ve made about how normal your life is, I’m amazed you’d take a shot at me based on the fact that most of my offline friends are non trans women.
Yes Leigh, I’ll come down off my mountaintop long enough to confirm I am a real woman, but then I thought that is the point I was making on behalf of all women of transsexual history from the beginning.
You are consumed with jealousy at an old woman with a broken body who lives on SSD income around 10 grand a year, why? because I write well? Because I live on my own terms anyway? I always did.
September 9, 2009 at 5:58 pm |
Cathryn…so much of what you say is just so patently untrue I’m not going to even address it line by line, but will certainly take your overall argument full on.
When someone supports another, Cathryn, anyone with integrity and character will return that support. But not you, Cathryn Platine, for you are in it for you. When you were banned and silenced from PHB by transgender sympathizer Autumn Sandeen, I overtly supported you on my blog not once but several times…and commented on it after the fact at PHB as well. When you put up a petition, I overtly supported that too, finishing virtually every essay with a link to it…I was the second person to sign it. However, when transgender sympathizer Suzan Cooke, which to myself and many others consider no more than transgender herself, banned and silenced me you saw that as a personality conflict that you decided you would stay out of. I knew you would, I alluded to the fact on the blog post I made that I was sure no one would come to my defense in spite of me doing so for others…I was talking about you, Cathryn Platine. So where have you come to my defense…or Leigh’s defense when you also took the same tact of staying out of it when she and I were supporting your petition…your efforts? Where were you, Cathryn Platine? I’ll tell you where you were…nowhere to be found, that’s where.
When Suzan Cooke was published on TS-Si, you came at me not once, but twice, out of the blue, attacking my position. The funny thing is that my position was also held by everyone who commented on that post except you, Sharon Gaughn, and Lisa Thompson, and Cooke’s girlfriend. Oh, sure, you threw in a line or two about disagreeing, but the overwhelming theme of your comments was in defense of Suzan Cooke. Well, good for you. You allied with Cooke. You defended Ms. Cooke. You believe everything Suzan has ever said on the internet. Admirable, indeed. I’m sure you are proud of that. But, now that you find yourself in her company, don’t try to say you don’t understand why you are getting the critical responses you now get.
You are right, I very publicly asked you to remove Enough Non-Sense from your blogroll. I want nothing to do with someone who speaks out of both sides of their mouth. If you want to apologize, that’s another issue, but no one is holding their breath. I’m speaking for myself, not our group…others will no doubt post there…but I dare say that you will be quite alone when you venture into the blogs, and as you are surely aware, much or more can be conveyed by what people don’t say.
You call me a whole host of names, just sound just like Suzan Cooke…just like the transgender, so until you stop, I will treat you like both of them. My position on homophobia and the rights that the transgender should lobby for if they feel the urge is crystal clear on my blog. The GLB, including lesbian, is not my friend, for the transgender is the GLB; one can’t discuss the transgender without discussing the GLB. Do I have a problem with individual gays, lesbians, and bisexuals…not at all. But their politics which is the same as that of the transgender I’m against and will continue to speak out against it. Your friend Ms. Hennessey is two face. Everyone who posts on my blog now is fully aware of that; her essays on your blog and subsequent posts on PHB solidified any hesitations anyone had about that. Personally, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, said so on my blog, and urged a hostile group to hear her out. But, now her credibility as to our cause is exactly nil. You are not banned from my blog, nor is Maura Hennessey, but I would suspect that both of you would have a rough go of it should either of you make an appearance.
I don’t speak for others, but just as they say they don’t speak for me, they certainly know how I feel about the issues at hand, as I am quite aware what theirs is. None of us are into long drawn out narratives. We have one premise, we are not like the transgender in any way; and we will challenge them at every opportunity, as well as those who sympathize with them on any issue, at any level. You have chosen to sit where you now reside…having no traction whatsoever with the TG as well as loosing ground within our group. That’s not our fault. Continue calling us names, using the same tire old weaponized words that the transgender do should you want to further isolate yourself. But driving a wedge between us will not happen.
September 9, 2009 at 5:59 pm |
Oh Dear me! .. Where did I infer you were anything other than a woman? Oh wait, you mean the bit about the fact that just like the rest of us you had to have corrective surgery.. I see now. I stand corrected then, you are a woman and I am not .. ok got it!
I have never professed to know all about you cathryn. Fact is I don’t even care too. When you talk down to me, you infer that your better than me. If you don’t care for my response then don’t talk down to me! When you call me out as a homophobe (see my earlier response to that), I call you out as a hypocrit.
Just as with Susan, I am not in the least bit interested in feminism. Know what? I too have real women friends.. surprise eh! In fact, I recently asked my friends Katie and Linda how they felt about feminism. Linda, an older women with grankids and an abusive husband had no idea what I was talking about. Katie, is going on 40 and just broken up from a relationship, had heard of it and regarded the issue as something that was of interest to Lesbians. The conversation ended there.
Ok, so how do I become consumed with jealousy over you in your mind? See here you go again, assuming that your experience is so above everyone else’s that it must instill jealousy in everyone else’s mind. I am thinking there must be something wrong with you that you feel the need to put yourself on a pedestal.
One thing I did notice, you never addressed the deal about THE PETITION .. I am sure you will, in the same way that your cronies with bad wigs did, by dismissing it entirely, just as you do every post surgical woman that does not meet your exacting standards.
September 9, 2009 at 9:04 pm |
Susan, Leigh…..this is the last thing I have to say to either of you. I try never to burn bridges unless someone is so far gone, so nasty there is no coming back with me. When you both attacked my religion, which is also my life’s work and essentially, in a very real sense, my essence, you both crossed a line that there is no coming back from, no forgiveness, no possibility of anything even remotely like working together on anything ever again.
I shall do my best to forget you are both on the same planet as I am. Do not write me or attempt any contact with me in any fashion in the future and be thankful I do not curse anyone except on the most dire of circumstances.
September 9, 2009 at 9:15 pm |
“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
(Matthew 6:14-15)
Women it seems are exempt!
September 9, 2009 at 9:36 pm |
Powerful piece with a strong start and a sensible finish. I am not sure about “transsexual syndrome”, I think perhaps the transgenders tend to suffer from “transsexual syndrome” thinking they are a medical treatment rather than human. I would reserve “transsexual syndrome” for the people who seem to think being “transsexual” is an identity.
September 9, 2009 at 9:38 pm |
Women will be women, men will be men, transsexuals will be transsexuals as long as that is where their heads are at.
September 9, 2009 at 10:13 pm |
Cathryn;
There should always be room for forgiveness. If you feel strongly about your religion and truly feel the Goddess working through you than whatever anyone says about your religion it should not offend or sway your faith, because you have the Goddess in your heart.
The truth needs no defense.
For everyone else;
You ether support what the TGs are doing or you don’t.
If you want to be less than a woman a hyphenated woman a
Woman-borne transsexual
Transsexual-woman
transgender-woman
an HBS-woman
A woman- of operative history.
You get the idea, then you are less than a woman.
And that is how society will see you.