Invasion

[Alyssa M.]

this person seemed to have absolutely no clue as to how women feel is because he isn't one....he's a man.

Among the many troubling things you wrote, I guess this is the one that I find the most troubling. You complain about men being dismissive; it doesn't help to respond in kind.

For all human history, authors, poets, and playwrights have explored the feelings of old and young, rich and poor, strangers and countrymen, parents and children, and indeed, women and men. This requires no special Vulcan mind-melding talent, but merely a modicum of human empathy. In The Shipping News, Postcards, and Brokeback Mountain Annie Proulx has written of the experience of men as few have done before. Similarly, in Atonement, Ian McEwan writes about women with a depth and sensitivity others rarely achieve.

The gender divide is certainly the most significant in human culture. Yet it is significant only because we make it so. Men and women are so much more alike in all our experiences than we are different. Your take on diversity, pennyjane, seems to me to be so much about rigid categories that cannot be violated. I'm sorry, but I don't accept this vision. I won't dismiss anyone's point of view for membership in some class. I might wonder how that identity colors the point of view, but this only adds, never takes away.

On the gender divide and uniqueness of human experience:

In his wanderings, Loocus the Thinker one day comes across an unknown
object -- a woman.  Such a thing he has never seen before, and at first
he is wondrous thrilled at her likeness to himself; but then, slightly
scared of her as well, he cries to all the men about him, "Behold! I
can look upon her face, which is something she cannot do -- therefore
women can never be like me!"  And thus he proves man's superiority over
women, much to his relief, and that of his male companions.  Incidentally,
the same argument proves that Loocus is superior to all other males, as
well -- but he doesn't point that out to them.  The woman argues back:
"Yes, you can see my face, which is something I can't do -- but I can
see your face, which is something you can't do! We're even."  However,
Loocus comes up with an unexpected counter:  "I'm sorry, you're deluded
if you think you can see my face.  What you women do is not the same as
what we men do -- it is, as I have already pointed out, of an inferior
caliber, and does not deserve to be called by the same name.  You may call
it 'womanseeing'.  Now the fact that you can 'womansee' my face is of no
import, because the situation is not symmetric. You see?"  "I womansee,"
womanreplies the woman, and womanwalks away...
        --Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

On the importance of categories:

I'm not European. I don't plan on being European. So who cares if they're socialists? They could be fascist anarchists. It still doesn't change the fact that I don't own a car. Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.

Cheers!

~Alyssa

[Ell]

i agree with Alyssa M.

let's not start talking badly about cross dressers and men. that's what the fundies do to all of us.

-Ell

[Lisbeth]

I find this whole topic tremendously amusing.  I laugh to think that there are TSs who wish to exclude CDs because they say they are men, then turn around and object to GGs who exclude TSs because they say they are men.  The absurdity is patently obvious, and is just a reflection of the heirarchy of power and privilege.  As each group pushes through the door it slams that same door in the faces of those who would follow them.

[pennyjane]

hi alyssa.  sounded to me as if the guy in your quote had no clue as to how women felt.  doesn't surprise me, most men don't.

[cindybc]

I have been full time for 8 years and have conversed with both women and men. I have met many men an women who were equal in empathy, and there are jerks and dangerous people about and sadly enough many, actually most of these are male. Whom of those turn out to be the ones that will leave  a trans person in an alleyway to die of multiple stab wounds. I treat everyone equally and I am there for anyone who needs suport. All I can say is I believe that trans people are developing a 6th sense and it can't happen quickly enough.

Well now insult on injury last week when I was at the Vancouver TS suport group there was this Spanish TS girl, realy good looking girl, she had come with a female friend, non TS, who had came along to be her interpreter. Her interpreter friend was asked to leave the room. I was somewhat disturbed about that and went out of the room to talk to the lady interpreter, fortunately everything was fine, I returned to the room and I was relieved to see that she had found another Spanish translator TS girl to sit with her.

No comments on that one, I will only ask what every ones opinion is on both my posts and I promise I don't bite ankles.

Cindy  the door keep

[Alyssa M.]

So, pennyjane, you agree with the J. R. Lucas caricature? Ignoring which is "superior," you believe in "womanseeing" as being distinct from "manseeing"?

I don't care who is claiming the superiority of his or her gender. Either way, it's bunk.

--

Yes, to the extent that men experience male privilege (especially the ability to not notice the existence of male privilege), it's hard for them to understand what the lack of male privilege means. I take it from your profile that you are white. There are many kinds of privilege in this world.

[pennyjane]

good lord!  this is going from the sublime to the utterly absurd.  can anyone show me one place where i have disparaged men?  i have said that for the most part men don't understand women.  for goodness sakes, people....for the most part that's definately true.  go out on the street and ask the first man you see if he understands women.

  i have never held my gender up as superior.  for a group who scream so loudly about how much we all love diversity we have a very funny way of showing it.  seems that acknowledging any difference in anything is disparaging. i have never held my gender up as superior, you read that into my posts yourself, it's a reflexion of you...not me.  i don't believe anyone is superior to anyone else.  seems to be a very lonely attitude of late.  i am not one who defines difference as superior or inferior. when you do that you end up hating and fearing what is different.  i don't do either of those things.  i embace differences....it's what life is all about.  it doesn't scare me at all.

what i agreed to, alyssa, was that the man in your example didn't seem to have a clue about women.  why you chose that as an example of your condemnation of my saying men don't understand women is beyond me. 

yes, i am white.  i enjoy the privilege that goes with that in this culture.  i will be glad when that is over, i don't like it one bit!  and i am different then black people in my experience...as much as i empathize with and am sickened by how black people have been treated in our country, i cannot and never would propose that i understood their journey as they do.  that wouldn't make a bit of sense to me.  i enjoy the white privilege whether i like it or not, it's not my choice.

i understand the male privilege in our culture as well.  i don't like it either, but again...it's not my call.  i cannot fantasize it away.  it's real and as best i can figure is going to be with us for a long time.  having experienced the male privilege and the female privilege i know the difference, believe me.

dr erin swensen, as far as i know the only protestant ordained minister ever to have transitioned on the job and retained her ordination put it this way when asked the difference:

i keep bumping into people.

now, she is a phd and i'm sure could have come up with alot of theories and used alot of big words and said alot of things most of us couldn't understand, but what she said was:

i keep bumping into people.

says it all.

[Lisbeth]

dr erin swensen, as far as i know the only protestant ordained minister ever to have transitioned on the job and retained her ordination put it this way when asked the difference:

She is not the only, but she is the first.

[Keira]

Lisbeth, the question is not excluding CD's from a rock concert (like some women
group have done to TS), but excluding them from support groups
that discuss TS specific issues.

A support group has a mandate related as much to the subjects
discussed as who it includes. If it wants to include CD's
and subjects relating to them, it has to change its mandate.
Then, those TS who were looking for something else
out of that group can leave it and seek another one elsewhere.

If I've got a soccer game going, should I just include a
baseball player because he would feel left out?
Too different games played by different people,
if the soccer game is now a baseball game, I expect
that only a few soccer players will remain to play the
new game...

Some feminists want to exclude TS of "woman's space"
like rock concerts, because they're not woman and
men are evil... That's not the same reason behind
not including CD in a TS support group.

[Alyssa M.]

Oh, forget it. This isn't going anywhere. We're just talking past each other. I'm sorry if I offended.

~Alyssa

[Lisbeth]

Some feminists want to exclude TS of "woman's space"
like rock concerts, because they're not woman and
men are evil... That's not the same reason behind
not including CD in a TS support group.

As soon at the reason is given as "because they're men," it becomes the same reason and the same issue.

[pennyjane]

hi lisbeth...that's wonderful news!  who has followed her if i may ask?

Posted on: July 17, 2008, 05:00:30 PMalot of us do get upset when gg's don't want to accept us.  it is upsetting and off hand seems so very unfair.  i have tried to understand what the big issue is about it.  from the women i've talked to about it i think it comes down to that they just don't see us as real.  they don't buy into the basic premise of transsexualism.  to them we seem like interlopers from male society barging in and asserting our male dominance again.  i really don't find that position too hard to understand.  women have been putting up with that dynamic for an awful long time and some have just gotten pretty sick of it.

and....and please don't no one take offense...but many of the women we are talking about here are lesbians.  they have grown up in and circulate in the gay community.  their experience is largely with males doing female illusion.  or the effeminate gay men who go around calling each other "girl" and that sort of stuff.  they don't see nearly as many of us so it's not easy for them to seperate us out.  i could be wrong, but i think with time and with education, telling them the truth about us, we can turn some of that around.  it just doesn't seem to me that this is a door that can be knocked down with brute force.  i think it's more likely to respond to persistent, principled and respectful knocking.  just an opinion.

[glendagladwitch]

I think it is wrong for lesbians to exclude lesbian transwomen on the basis that they are not women.  It is like excluding black people on the basis that they are not people.  Lesbian transwomen ARE women, regardless of whether lesbians see them as such.  Excluding CDs from a TS group does seem to fall along the same lines.  Are they excluded because they are not women?  Would it be OK to exclude them on the basis that they are a different kind of women?  Would it be OK for lesbians to exclude lesbian transwomen on the basis that they are a different kind of women?  Would it be OK to exclude black people on the basis that they are a different kind of people?  Now it's true that under the law private clubs can exclude black people. Does that make it not despicable?  It is a tough issue because I would certainly want a TS only support group during transition.  But such groups exclude cisgendered women too.  I think it comes down to the fact that such groups are not reserved fro women only, but for women having a particular condition.  It is like a support group for women cancer pateints excluding other women who don;t have cancer.  For lesbians to exclude lesbian transwomen is not like that though.  It is just hate.

[Lisbeth]

hi lisbeth...that's wonderful news!  who has followed her if i may ask?

I don't have any kind of list, but there's one serving a Lutheran congregation in Minneapolis.  At the moment I don't remember the name.

[pennyjane]

well, glenda i take your point and admire the premise.  but let's take it one step further.  how about a group for the ancestors of african american slaves...would it be hate for them to exclude the ancestors of american slave owners?  although they are both a part of the same past their histories are very different.

a colorblind society is better then a bigoted society, but a color rich society would be better then that.  in my opinion a genderblind society is better then a gender bigoted society but a gender rich society tops that.  i don't see why we can't see the differences in our genders as beautiful.  i don't understand why difference has to lead to hate.  it doesn't to me, without differences we'd be a black and white species, colorless...drab.  it's the differences that add color.  if eveybody was just like me...wow...how boring.  it's the differences that draw us to one another.  letting the differences draw us apart doesn't make sense to me...that's where bigotry comes from.

so, if some women insist that we are not of them, condemning them won't make that go away.  celebrating our differences will eventually bring us together.

i am not gg and i will never be gg.  the truth is i'm very happy with being trans.  when i say "i'm just another woman" i think i'm being just a little disingenuous.  i'm not.  i'm a rare and beautiful woman.  a woman composed more of spirit then of matter.  i've had to seek and search for and to fight for my femininity, it wasn't just handed to me on a silver platter.  i'm very different then most other women, and i'm very proud of the woman i am.  i think i appreciate my femininity more then most. 

all this makes me different, not better, not worse, just.....colorful.

[Keira]

I'm getting really mad here.
Please read and discuss what I said,
not what you wish I had said.

I talked about SUPPORT groups with a particular MANDATE,
(say discussing and supporting TG people at large)
not a general event like a concert.

If the support groups want to accept TG's at large,
it should change its mandate and thus
people who want to stay in that group can
and others who thinks it no longer fits them can leave.

I'll go back and kick some cans now...   

[pennyjane]

hi kiera.  i hear you and i agree.  i don't think there's anything in the world wrong with people of like mind and like goals to want to meet exclusively.  makes perfect sense to me.

exactly why i don't go to tg support group meetings anymore.  the ones around here are dominated by cd's, and thus naturally the general conversation is cd oriented.  bores me silly.  that's not putting down cd's, it's just saying that the things that interest them generally don't interest me.  i like a little talk about the fashions of the day and if someone has something really new and works in the way of makeup i hope they'll share it with me.  but...that's enough of that.

i am more interested in the working dynamics of transition and the political positions that i think will further our goals...that is mainstreaming transsexuals.  the glitz and glamour aspect of my interest lasts about one and half minutes on a good day.

i don't think it's bigoted to say that for crossdressers the illusion is the end product.  that's what they are doing.  for transsexuals, settled in ones at least, that quickly becomes part of our history.  we find our personal look and pretty much stay with it.  cd's often go to these places, meeting and parties and such because it's a place for them to dress up and go.  some ts's go for the same reasons, especially when they are young or new...pre-transition.  not a thing in the world wrong with it, but i don't need such a place anymore.  dressing enfemme everyday gets routine, it doesn't excite me at all.

so, although there is a place for the tg thing to work, i also see a place where the cental issues of each subgroup diverge enough to need exclusive space just in order to keep on topic, to stay focused.

susan's is a tg group.  it works here.  i like it here.  but i also like being exclusively with ts's in some forums and for some purposes.

[cindybc]

Hmmmm, again I find myself a wee bit confused as to why trans people have such hang-ups with society. I either have a horseshoe up my butt or I live a charmed life. I have been 8 years living full time and I have never had to question myself, nor have I ever been confused on the issue of being TS.

For most of those 8 years I never found any reason to think of myself being anything but GG, especially after SRS. I got along with everyone, both women and men at work and out and about town. In the little town I started out in, after a time all knew me as being Cindy and I dressed as such, presenting in the proper gender. No big miracle or any thing really unusual, outside of that I know how to communicate with people, and I love doing so.

I didn't feel like I had to go stealth or hold anything back from anyone. All that had changed was my attitude, how I felt and cared about the folks I was involved with on a daily basis. I had just begun full time when my friend left me in care of her three children; for two years. Feeding them, taking them to school in the morning, going to work as a social worker, then go pick them up again after school, cook supper, do the laundry, and put them to bed. I would never have been able to do it if it weren't for my love for children.

I did some growing up during those two years and certainly didn't have time to even think about my transsexuality although I presented as who I was. I got some hand-me-downs from the girls at work and the Salvation Army. I wasn't really making that much money, but the kids and I got by, and to tell the truth those two years were the happiest years I had had since I had my own kids under my roof. Believe it or not that's the way it was for me. I still do the same type of work here and enjoy working with folks. But I will add only that a woman's shelter is sacred only to women.  Men try not to recognize that as they keep on trying to get past the front door in spite of the sign telling them that the place is for women only.

Cindy       

[Ell]

One day there was this gathering of cross-dressers and they were talking and having a fun meeting and then, out of the blue comes this large group of Transsexuals, who just barged in and started taking over the place! it was like, they were being invaded by this so-called group of so-called peeps, if you will (and i think you will).

Well, of course after the transsexuals show up, here comes an intersex group, and, right after them, those dang non-binary androgynes, followed by a couple of FTM's with all their male space-invader ways, and followed by, worst of all, a few lactose-intolerants.  Sheesh!

-Ellie

[Keira]

Since there are about 20x the number of CD's
than TS, I see much more CD's invading
TS groups than the opposite, but what the
hey, 18 years and dozens of groups is
just a fluke...
Or I'm just in a pissy mood...  >