It’s Thanksgiving week, so I’d like to express my thanks to Pam and for Pam– the African-American Lesbian and Head Barista here who embraces the wide diversity within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

So, why point out she’s an African-American lesbian? Well, the reason I’m thinking about this is my friend Zoe Brain (ZoeB) provided a link to blog site article by a blogger who identifies this way:

Rolling stone black lesbian separatist with Southern roots. I hate males of all ages, colors, and sizes.

If you have a problem with American black women, have the decency not to sully the comment threads on our posts. If you think American black women are oppressing you, as a western nonblack woman, there are more things wrong with you than I would ever be able to address in a blog post. So, just don’t even bother. Thanks.

Well, with that much love oozing from the About page, you know she’s going to feel-the-love regarding trans women… right?

Enh, not so much. This self-identified black American lesbian separatist blogger, who blogs for AROOO (A Room Of Our Own), seems to actually be an individual black woman working to oppress those whom she sees as oppressibly trans. In her piece No Such Thing As A Transsexual:

If there are so many males who “just want to change their body,” without regard to gender, then why are they calling themselves “women” after they’ve had themselves chopped up? A mutilated male is a mutilated male. As I’ve said before, if males just want to hack off their penises and shove plastic bags under their pecs, how about they call themselves eunuchs instead of “women,” “transwomen,” and “transsexuals”? How about calling themselves males who wanted to chop off their penises and have it fashioned into a hole?

Well, super! I feel the love, for sure!

Of course there’s more:

[More hateraid and thankfulness below the fold.]

I get so sick of seeing women defend the “transwomen” they know in real life with reminders that not all “transwomen” want to wear dresses and pantyhose. OK, fine, they don’t want to wear dresses. What does that have to do with the fact that they’re still walking around calling themselves all manner of “woman”?

That is the crazy part. That is what makes them insane. One cannot change sex, and any indulgence of the, yes, insane, notion that they can is anti-female. I don’t give a damn what eunuchs wear or don’t wear. All I care about is whether or not society is actually obliging them in any way by calling them women. They are not women, insofar as ‘woman’ means adult human female, and they never will be.

Hmm. I don’t feel insane.

But to really get the flavor of the hateraid, you need to read the comment thread. Some examples (blue text is from the article’s author):

• You mean we didn’t get a cookie and/or a pat on the head before kneeling down to suck dick on transgender remembrance day!

How about murdered women’s day? Oh yeah, that’s everyday.

• Exactly. If women weren’t hated and oppressed, “feminized,” and were instead just seen as human beings (though still female — don’t want anyone thinking I’m down with that woman-hating-everybody-should-be-a-tranny “tacqueaux” bullshit), male trannies wouldn’t get erections at the thought of belonging to a submissive class, and female people wouldn’t have any reason to scramble out it.

• Pure fetishism ___, But, then, as soon as you get into the details of all this insanity, you’ve got women running to their defense screaming about how the “transwomen” they know don’t even like wearing bras and pantyhose. I simply cannot understand the scramble to find that ONE tranny out of a million who’s somehow not a raging misogynist who believes butchering a male gets you a female.

Any male calling himself any kind of female is misogyny, period. And just because a woman knows and loves one of these misogynists in real life doesn’t mean it’s not woman-hating.

• “Any male calling himself any kind of female is misogyny, period”

And any women calling herself some form of male is equally misogynistic.

Both somethings the “gay and lesbian community” ignorantly refuse to see.

So, with AROOO‘s take on trans women tacqueaux in mind, I’m reminded today how grateful and thankful I am for Pam, since as a lesbian she ignorantly refuses to see trans people as lesser beings; I’m thankful Pam isn’t a hateraid drinker when it comes down to the broad, diverse, LGBT community.

I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you…. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

In all seriousness, embracing diversity is important. We accomplish more when we work as a broad community together on issues for which we have commonalities of interest. Intra-community hate helps no one improve lives or rid the world of discrimination…

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

The contrast between the AROOO blogger and Pam is pretty stark. I have heartfelt thanks for the virtual coffeehouse space Pam has created — So, and thank you Pam. You’re a personal reminder that we can’t judge whole communities by an awful member or two; or we can better judge a community by its most wonderful aspirations and its diversity embracing members.

Well, I know I choose to be optimistic and thankful, and this week my thankfulness goes in Pam’s direction.

So are you, dear blenders, also thankful for Pam? Or thankful for anything else this week? Take a moment to tell us about what you’re thankful for!

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