A letter to Cathy Brennan

[El]

Today i wrote a letter and posted it on Brennans Blog. I wonder if it makes her reconsider things lol

Hello Cathy Brennan. Until today I had never heard of you but I've spent the morning looking over things you have written and the responses you have received to try and get a good idea of what you are all about. Now i have what i think is a good idea of your aims and to a lesser extent motives. I would like to introduce myself to you. I understand you must be a busy woman but i hope you can take the time to read it.

My name is Catherine, I am a 23 year old woman and I am a technical sales adviser by trade. I currently live with my loving parents and younger brother in the English countryside. My political beliefs tend towards socialism and libertarianism and my religious beliefs conform to the idea of the Agnostic Atheist ( I don't think there is a god, but i cant know for sure). I am a feminist, I support equal rights for all people, I believe every able man and woman has a responsibility to act decently to all other people on this earth. I have quite a good life, I have an amazing family and great friends and im lucky enough to enjoy the company of my colleagues.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

bugbrennan.com


10 Tuesday Jan 2012


Gender Identity



Posted by bugbrennan in National   | Retrieved from the Internet on July 31, 2012 by SJ

≈ 45 Comments

Tags

gender identity, Libertarian, Transgender

I-dentity (aka trans) politics is fundamentally LIBERTARIAN. It is ahistorical and acontextual. It essentializes sex stereotypes by renaming them consensual "gender identities." It invisibilizes power structures that give rise to female oppression. It is anti-feminist.

Removed links to the blog

[justmeinoz]

Thank you from all of us. 

[El]

Noticed a couple of spelling mistakes now :/ *Always proof-read Catherine!*

[Padma]

Good stuff! *never proof-read your own writing* .

[El]

    bugbrennan said:   

    July 29, 2012 at 10:28 am   

    There is a lot of wrong here. I'll leave you to your wrong.

[El]

Catherine Ditheridge said:   

July 30, 2012 at 2:40 am   

I was expecting a more robust rebuttal. Please tell me where my recollection of my own life is flawed and what insights you hold?

[MrTesto]

It's a great letter. Even though she didn't respond very much, there will be people who read it through: separatists looking for rationales for their negativity, people who are 'on the fence,' and also trans people who might themselves be struggling about whether they belong in the gender they know themselves to be.

[El]

These rad-fems really are lovely people:




GallusMag said:   

July 30, 2012 at 8:55 pm   

" First i decided to try to make my brain male. This consisted of trying to act more masculine and fit the male role."

What on earth possessed you to post this hideous sexism on a feminist blog?

" Sadly however the attempt to change my internal gender failed (I would have loved to succeed and be able to live as a "normal man"). The act of constantly going against the grain caused me much psychological anguish .."

You come to a lesbian blog published by a gender-nonconforming female to whine about how intolerable you found it as a man to "go against the grain"? ->-bleeped-<- you. Really. Just ->-bleeped-<- you. What an insensitive entitled male ->-bleeped-<- you are.

" No matter how much you hurt some of us.."

Females don't "hurt" you by rejecting your sexism you longwinded entitled male prick.

[El]

I know i should have left it at that but i didnt:



This is exactly the sort of abuse i thought i might receive. I am interested in starting a dialogue with people with differing view to myself. Obviously a sensible discussion without swearing is beyond you. I would agree that gender roles are partially a social construction but i would also argue that it isnt necessarily a bad thing. Men and women are different, for example women tend to have more developed linguistic centers whereas men tend to have a more developed visual spacial sketchpad (if you dont believe me, the research is widely available). It becomes a problem when people use these differences to back up acts of discrimination such as pay inequality.
You might have noticed (if you had actually read what i wrote instead of picking out key words and spitting venom) that I myself am a feminist and believe in equal rights and protections for everyone regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.
It makes me laugh that you are so afraid of views that dont match your own that you explode into a vitriolic rant in which you undermine your own moral high ground by swearing and denying my gender identity (which the international medical community has validated). Just goes to show how ridiculous your prejudice is if it isnt presented opposite a scary transvestite who calls you the C word.

At the end of the day the evidence is on my side. It is looking more and more likely that there is a physical cause behind transexualism and that it is not a purely mental, I know on the face of things this appears to undermine your goals and beliefs but it actually doesn't. Just because there are documented differences between the genders doesnt mean we cant have an equal society and tear down the patriarchy.

[Cindy]

Nice post to a bunch of losers. That is your post to them.

Strange people I haven't heard of them before.

[suzifrommd]

I am interested in starting a dialogue with people with differing view to myself.

Such a noble aim, but alas I have had little success opening a dialog with people whose views tend to put down or minimize the experiences of those different from them. If they had desires of being open minded, they would have allowed themselves to become better informed long before having any contact with me.

[eli77]

You might have noticed (if you had actually read what i wrote instead of picking out key words and spitting venom) that I myself am a feminist and believe in equal rights and protections for everyone regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.

That's not going to make them like you any more I'm afraid. They hate liberal feminists (funfems, they call us) just as much as they hate trans folk.

I'm not sure dialogue is really an option here.

[Nero]

From an interview on her blog:

CB: I appreciate and respect that women of transgender and transsexual
experience struggle to be accepted and recognized as women. I
personally accept women of transgender and transsexual experience as
women. Meanwhile, females in 2011 continue to struggle to be accepted
as human. I would encourage women of transgender and transsexual
experience to help us in our struggle as well.

http://bugbrennan.com/brennan-answers-critics/

[El]

Not the vibe im getting of her lol

[Sara Thomas]

I think you dodged a bullet by failing to get her full attention, El... a quick look at her website left me with the feeling that I should not wish her to be aware of me -  lest I find myself embroiled in some drama, lawsuit, or worse... 

Sadie out.