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This is part three of a series of essays on self-described transsexual anti-defamation activist Ashley Love. Part one of this series explains why I’ve written, and why I’m posting this series of essays.
~~Autumn Sandeen~~
Homophobia and transphobia are the ugliest when they come from inside the community. “Tranny” isn’t a word I apply to myself, nor do I find it charming. But I won’t tell other trans people what they can and can’t call themselves. And denigrating them for being drag queens, genderqueer, non-op or anything other than “your” idea of what a True Trans Person is smacks of transphobia and homophobia. “You” don’t own the word “trans” just because you went through some version of it.…Ashley, what I’m hearing you and others express is an all-out condemnation and hateful, homophobic and transphobic jihad toward anyone who uses the word “tranny” for any reason. I don’t hear any room for any other opinion, or acknowledgment of any other trans experience than your own. It’s shrill, ugly, dismissive and typical of fundamentalism. Hopefully, your activism will mature with time. For now, you’re a bit over the edge.
~Calpernia Addams in a Facebook comment thread (November 13, 2010)
If you’ve ever seen the movie Soldier’s Girl, you may remember who Calpernia Addams is. If you know anything about the murder of Barry Winchell, you may remember who Calpernia Addams is. Calpernia Addams was a showgirl in 1999 — she came to her trans identity through drag community. Addams made her comments above after Ashley Love, in a Facebook comment thread stated this on November 13, 2010:
I’m tires of trans people who only advocate for the word “tra**y” because their gay male fans pay to laught AT them. I’m tires of drag queens, or trans women who perform alongside drag queens, advocating for the use of the word because they exploit their birth challenge in a minstrel “trans face” show where trans women are “othered”, not as women, but as harlequins, clowns, and lap dogs/pets and gay men. When are we going to take a stand for our dignity, humanity and rights? Of we are only seen as campy jokes, how r we going to be taken seriously? Not all og us want to be segregated to West Hollywood or other gay areas. Mainstream sees us as “drag queens and tra**ies”. Why would we encourage that by submitting to degrading slurs? The slur stemmed from a way to mis-gender and objectify transsexual WOMEN. Now its morphed into a term spit with hate and is often associated with violence. Its a way of saying ” you’re not *really* a woman” and knocking a trans woman into “her place”. I want more for our community, and our youth. Just because drag queens like the shock value and “coolness and comedy” of the word, doesn’t mean they should make up BS reasons why its okay. Think of the bigger picture, our movement, strategy, perceptual management and reality. We are not clowns, we are human beings, not “its, subwomen or tra**ys”. Low self esteem is common for people oppressed and dehumanized by society, so I understand why some find the term “comforting”, but that’s not authentic “comfort”, its accepting and making excuses for abuse for our oppressors. I say we rise up and take a stand for our worth. We deserve more then the “class dunce clown” pet name. We deserve to be called by our name, not a “ni**er” “tra**y” or any other dehumanizing slurs. And gay men and drag queens are not right to reclaim a word.
In her statement above, Love takes issue with gay drag performers; She states that drag performance is “a minstrel ‘trans face’”; she attacks trans performers who perform with gay drag performers as facilitating gay men laughing at trans women.
Since Addams had commented in that thread prior to that Love comment above, and Addams advocates for people to being able to self-identify — even if the self-identity is “tra**y” — Addams assumed Love was referring to her in that comment. Love assured Addams in the comment thread that this wasn’t the case, but Love made broad statements about drag performers, and transsexual performers that perform with drag performers, and those broad statements painted Addams’ life experiences as a showgirl as supporting minstrel show “trans face” shows. Addams knows, as I do too, that Love’s broad brush painting of drag performers and other showgirls applies to many trans women.
I personally know a good number of transsexual people who identified as drag queens as an interim identity on their path to embracing themselves as the transsexual women they are. Sylvia Rivera, one of Love’s heroes, identified herself as a drag queen.
One of the six people who influenced me the most on my path to becoming an activist is Amanda Watson — a trans woman who at one point in her life was known in San Diego as the drag performer Amanda Hugandkiss. Gender identity (to include gender expression) wouldn’t have been added to San Diego’s Human Dignity Ordinance (the city ordinance that protects San Diegans from discrimination) in 2003 without Watson spearheading the effort to change that ordinance. We had antidiscrimination protections for trans people in San Diego before we had similar protections afforded by state law.
It’s pretty clear that Ashley Love doesn’t like drag performers. She also doesn’t like genderqueer identified folk much either. In a November 27, 2010 Facebook thread announcing ,her upcoming blog radio program Transcending The Blacklist, Love states the following about drag performers and those she identifies “late transitioning gender queer males”:
[More below the fold.]
A lot of feminists with a transsexual and/or intersex birth condition are not allowed a proper voice in LGB”T” news outlets, and mos def not on mainstream ones. Its seems they prefer drag queens, or late transitioning gender queer males.
In a more specific comment directed at genderqueer people, Love made this comment on January 3, 2011 in yet another Facebook thread:
[I]ts times to stop living in a fantasy, and face the facts. Sweeping diversity and individuality under the rug has done nothing for the sex and gender diverse communities, or at least nothing for the transsexual and intersex communities. Perhaps its done a lot for white cross dressing males and white gender queer FTMs, but it has only served white trans masculine people, and thats it. I have more in common with a non-trans woman than I do with a cross dresser or drag queen. Many TS/IS people are fed up of being bullied by PC BS. We are tired of being muzzled by late transitioning white CD and TG male bodied people who run the TG Facista non-profit world and buy their way onto the Gay(lgbt) non profit boards. Did we go through all we went through to be told we are the same thing as men in dresses? We think not.
Again we go from the macro to the micro. Commenting about community icon Kate Bornstein on December 11, 2010 — who Love has identified as a “gender queer performer” — Love compares Bornstein to anti-transsexual feminist Janice Raymond:
[Ashley Love] is curious why gender queer performer Kate Bornstein always attacks women who are transsexual and expresses some of the same sentiments that Janice Raymond, Mary Daly and other anti-transsexual feminists?
On November 16, 2010, Love stated this in yet another Facebook entry:
Who needs the mother of anti-transsexual woman sentimnet ,Janice Raymond, to bully, misgender and gay appropriate transsexual/and or intersex women when gender queer Kate Bornstein is continuing Raymonds legacy for her?
Further into the comment thread for the Facebook entry for that entry, Love inappropriately put quotation marks around a pronouns she used to refer to Bornstein:
Read her new attack on TS women on Out.com, zi calls TS women not “real women”, that are “co-opting the word women”, etc, etc. That’s great that “zi” invents new pronouns for “zirself”, and has a primarily white gay queer following, that includes the ant-transsexual lesbian women who say “ts women are fake”, but zi is throwing us under the bus with her gay psuedo gender theories that invalidate our birth condition. My “gender didn’t change” as Bornstien says of us. Not all of us want to be “San Fran queer radical fuck gender super stars!”. Some of us are just women who want to live our lives, and not have Gay Inc pay token toms like Bornstein to “put us in our place”.
And…
Its okay for “zi” to say zi is an outlaw, and both gender, but to cal ts women “fake” and “co-opters” and “wrong to be in “real womens” spaces mirrors the sentiment of Raymond. Why do you think many psuedo radical feminist lesbian professors put zi on a pedastool: they agree with how zi sticks it to ts women who “have the disillusionment to think they are real women”. Why do you think the transphobic white gay male news sites call on Bornstein when ts and tg women rise up and protest? Why don’t they call Andrea James, Julia Serrano, Monica Roberts, Katrina Rose, Katrina Fox (trans women who I respect, and who are women who call themseleves women), etc, etc- its because only Borntein will “shut us up”, talk down to our plight, and throw us under the bus and co-sign the gay appropriated version of transsexualims that say ts women are not women at all. Kate actually has the same message many transphobic LGB people have about ts women, as well as bigoted straight people. I feel bullied be “zi”, and don’t apologize that I’m not “queer” enough for “zi”. I’m a woman, and my gender is real. Also, Kate seems to not understand that male and female are sex terms, and woman and man are gender terms. I see through her propaganda when she miseducated about sex and gender.
On December 1, 2010, Love again inappropriately put quotation marks around a pronouns she used to refer to Bornstein, as well as identifying why she believes Bornstein is revered in community:
Kate Bornstein mirrors a lot of what Janice Raymond and Mary Daly “preached”. But no one notices because the gender queer empire puts “zi” on a pedastool, and the radfem lesbina professors invite Kate to speak at their universitys
She started putting quotation marks around the pronoun ze (that Love spells as zi) on November 12, 2010, in yet another Facebook entry.
Not surprisingly, Kate Bornstein is once again capitalizing off the exploitation of transsexual woman and is writing an article for Out Magazine (which has a primarily white gay male readership, the Christian Soriano types who use the T word to be “cool”) soon to be published glorifying the “T-word”. Bornstein identifies as “gender queer” and this spring attacked & dismissed the transsexual women who opposed the Ticked Off Transphobia film. “Zi’s” career is based off “shock value, aggressiveness & LG pseudo theories of gender”. All the drag queens and gay males who love the T word are going to once again be praising Bornstein as a “hero” like they did when she attacked GLAAD, MAGNET and the trans people who protested the misrepresentation of TOTWK. The sad thing is that T word is not gay mens, their straight girl BFF’s, drag queens, bigoted straight men, cross dressers or even gender queer or FTM guy’s word to “reclaim”, much like Latino people should not reclaim the “N word” just because they have dark skin too. The word originated as a word meant to mis-gender and objectify transsexual women, and has now morphed into a slur spit with hate, violence, mocking, misogyny and/or ridicule. Kate Bornstein: Our birth challenge, the slurs associated with it, and the fear and misunderstanding that provokes hate and violence against us from society is not “cool”. If you want to be “cool”, go buy a Drake or Katie Perry CD, keep your predatorily performance “act” out of our medical condition, and if you need content for another sensational article, try not oppressing an endangered minority group to do so. Just shameful.
Whether or not Kate Bornstein identifies as a she or a ze, it’s not acceptable to put quotation marks around the pronoun one uses to refer to Bornstein. The largest anti-defamation organization for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and in their GLAAD Media Reference Guide the organization says this about putting pronouns in quotation marks:
It is never appropriate to put quotation marks around either a transgender person’s chosen name or the pronoun that reflects that person’s gender identity.
Putting quotation marks around a pronoun is a way to question a person’s gender identification; it’s a means of misgendering a transsexual, a transgender, and/or a genderqueer person’s gender identity by implied disbelief of verbally or visibly expressed gender identity. Despite having stated on November 23, 2010 Facebook thread that “I never misgendered anyone,” Love actually had begun misgendering Bornstein via quotation marks around pronouns on November 12, 2010.
Janice Raymond is a feminist professor and author who wrote the book The Transsexual Empire; The Making of the She-Male; Janice G. Raymond wrote a book with an antitransgender pejorative in the title. To give an idea of how anti-transsexual Janice Raymond’s writings actually have been, these are some quotes from her on transsexuals:
• “Transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists show yet another face of patriarchy. As the male-to-constructed-female transsexual exhibits the attempt to possess women in a bodily sense while acting out the images into which men have molded women, the male-to-constructed-female who claims to be a lesbian-feminist attempts to possess women at a deeper level, this time under the guise of challenging rather than conforming to the role and behavior of stereotyped femininity”.• “I contend that the problem with transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence”.
In a quote from the book known to many transsexual people, Raymond connects transsexual experience to the rape of women:
“All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves … Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive.”
Without apparent hyperbole, Ashley Love has stated that Kate Bornstein is worse than Janice Raymond. What angers Love about Bornstein is Bornstein’s embrace of the term tra**y. In the Out Magazine article by Bornstein that Love refers to, entitled Who You Calling A Tranny?, Bornstein wrote the following:
No matter what ideas you might have about transsexuals or drag queens, if you were M headed toward F in any fashion at all, you moved into, through, up and out of the drag queen community. So there was always a bond between the drag queens and the MTF transsexuals in Sydney. The bond was so strong, they invented a name for the identity they shared: tranny. It was a name that said family. Doris Fish taught me that she and I were family.Years earlier, when I went through my gender change from male to female, I glided through life under the commonly accepted assumption: I was finally a real woman! That worked for me until I ran into a group of politically smart lesbians who told me that I wasn’t allowed to co-opt the word “woman.” Woman was not a family word that included me. My answer to this exclusion was to call myself a gender outlaw: I wasn’t a man, I wasn’t a woman. By calling myself a gender outlaw, I had unknowingly reclaimed the right to name myself outside the language generated by the bipolar gender system. Under that system, each of us needed to fit neatly into a pre-fab sex/gender identity.
…[When we were looking for submissions for Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation], [S. Bear Bergman] posted a call for submissions on his blog. In the interests of keeping the call as open as possible, we agreed to include as many trans-identities as we knew, so we used the word tranny. And that’s where the activist shit hit the postmodern fan base. People were pissed. Here’s their argument: FTMs are co-opting a word that belongs to MTFs. The word tranny belongs to MTFs, those who were hurt by our use of the word reason, because it was a denigrating term reclaimed by MTFs — ergo, only MTFs could be known as trannies. I spoke with Bear, and we agreed that’s wrong on several counts:
- Tranny began as a uniting term amongst ourselves. Of course it’s going to be picked up and used as a denigrating term by mean people in the world. But even if we manage to get them to stop saying tranny like a thrown rock, mean people will come up with another word to wound us with. So, let’s get back to using tranny as a uniting term amongst ourselves. That would make Doris Fish very happy.
- It’s our first own-language word for ourselves that has no medical legacy.
- Even if (like gay) hate-filled people try to make tranny into a bad word, our most positive response is to own the word (a word invented by the queerest of the queer of their day). We have the opportunity to re-create tranny as a positive in the world.
- Saying that FTMs can’t call themselves trannies eerily echoes the 1980s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word woman to identify myself, and the 1990s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word dyke.
Kate Bornstein identifies as a gender outlaw, and embraces the term tra**y. I don’t embrace the term tra**y, for myself or on behalf of others, but I’m with Calpernia Addams in believing people get to self-identify. But that said, disagreeing with Bornstein on use of the term tra**y doesn’t mean I disown Bornstein as a community sibling, nor does it mean I can use antitransgender derogatory or defamatory language to label Bornstein. Frankly, I like Kate Bornstein and many of her ideas a lot — disagreeing with her beliefs regarding the term tra**y doesn’t mean I need to hate her and all she stands for. What it means I disagree with her on an issue of importance to trans community.
Roz Kaveney wrote what’s become known as the Six Axioms of Transgender Activism.
1.) Display solidarity with all our trans brothers and sisters.2.) Build alliances by getting involved as ourselves in other areas of politics.
3.) Refuse to let journalistic and intellectual attacks on our community go unanswered – we can have and keep the moral high ground.
4.) Be creative, be smart, be ourselves, and don’t let anybody tell us who we are and what we do.
5.) Refuse the pathological model – we are not sick, just different.
6.) Refuse those politics – heterosexism, body fascism – that work against all of the above, but especially #1.
These axioms are part of my personal mission and vision; these axioms guide how I approach activism. Building alliances, refusing to let journalistic attacks on community go unanswered, not letting anyone tell tell transgender people who we are and what we do, rejecting politics that divides instead of unites — these are important axioms because they address how to achieve political success at gaining community freedom, equality, and justice.
Since Ashley Love doesn’t identify as transgender, it should be as no surprise then that she doesn’t embrace any of the Six Axioms of Transgender Activism. She definitely isn’t displaying solidarity with transgender people she lists in her biography as one of her constituencies, she’s encouraging divisiveness instead of building alliances, she tells other trans people who they are and what they do, and embraces politics that work against solidarity. And, not only does Love let journalistic attacks on trans community (that she even has linke to) go unanswered, she actually engages in attacks on trans people and trans community and its members herself.
It’s just not acceptable behavior to attack any transgender identified person with antitransgender, derogatory language if one defines oneself in terms of being an activist “dedicated to educating the media about transsexual and transgender issues, as well as pushing for more authentic and positive portrayals of trans people in the media.” A anti-defamation activist who uses derogatory and defamatory language to attack those he, she, or ze disagrees with is hypocritical, and potentially dangerous to the community that he, she, or ze is claiming to serve.
As I’ve said before, I’m finding it difficult to fully embrace Ashley Love as an anti-defamation activist. This is because in the past year she’s used derogatory, antitransgender language herself, and in putting quotation marks around pronouns for Kate Bornstein and in labeling me as a transgenderist, Love has engaged in behavior that she says she doesn’t do — misgendering people in trans community.
Again let me state that the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) doesn’t accomplish their anti-defamation work by defaming others, nor does the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Again let me state that the tactics and language that Love has been using for the past year are more akin with how the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) and Family Research Council (FRC) do their work than with how other anti-defamation focused organizations — and other anti-defamation focused people — do their work. And, that is just unconscionable behavior for a self-identified anti-defamation activist.
~~~~~
Related:
* Part One: Ashley Love And Anti-Defamation
* Part Two: Ashley Love And Anti-Defamation
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40 Comments
Autumn, very respectfullyThere are boatloads of Lesbian Feminists who take issue with drag performances as inherently anti-feminist and anti-woman, caricatures of women, subtly insulting and overtly hyperbolic in the fashion that minstrel shows were of non-causasian peoples.
Further, many of these women are unaware of GLAAD’s positions concerning such things and further are uninterested.
My dear friend, tread lightly….ours is at times a fragile coalition….especially with some people already scapegoating trans people for things that the trans community has no responsibility whatsoever for. Still others nurse antagonisms generated by comments when Dr Mary Daly died..
I say this as a friend, Autumn, this series as a whole can be twisted into a cause celebre concerning the trans community, the validity of the LGBT alliances, and concerning you personally. Honestly, dear lady, I remain unconvinced that this was worth doing….
Autumn,just a short 4 hour ride from your home in San Diego is the beautiful town of Solvang. There you’ll find a windmill you can tilt to…
Don’t you have something better you could be doing, rather than shoving the GLAAD “bible” down everyone’s throats?
This…This is a sad thing.
GLAAD doesn’t defame?You can seriously take this position? GLAAD does not recognize the womanhood of those cured of transsexuality. If that isn’t defamation what the hell is?
And ultimately all drag is gynophobic and mysogynistic no matter how light hearted it is attempted.
ImmutableIsn’t ones’ skin pigmentation also an immutable characteristic just like transsexuality? That being said, what’s up with all this “white gay males” and “white” this-and-that bashing?
Call racism in all it’s forms for what it is – vile and disgusting.
Once again, this TRANNY (transsexual who is not going to be censored) stands in solidarity with all of my transgendered brothers and sisters.
xo
Brandy (a proud TRANNY)
Autumn, you are blind to the damage YOU are causing our communityAutumn, I just found out about your hate fest against Ashley Love (who has done more for the transgender community in the last year alone then you have in your many years of being a blogger for the gay establishment) on Trans Advocate: http://www.transadvocate.com/s… . I agree with this site’s author, Marti.
Marti exposes “I wish that Sandeen would look inside her own blogging platform and write about the sockpuppetry that’s kicked two trans people off of Pam’s House Blend. I wish she’d discuss the GAYinc elite that silence those with opposing views behind the counter of PHB.” This is suspect, why do you delete transgender people who don’t agree with you or Pam’s agenda? That’s not activism, that’s transgender censorship. You are intentionally smearing Ashley Love, a real activist, when you should be calling out our real enemies, like elitist gay people who resent transgender people being in the gay umbrella.
I agree with Love, drag queens are not transgender women, they are gay male performers. Calperina Addams sold out to the gay mans mocking of transgender woman long ago, her points are irrelavant. I also agree with her that Kate Bornstein has many anti-transsexual rants that mirror Mary Daly and Janice Raymond.
Are you jealous that Ashley Love is taken more seriously then you are by transsexual and cisgender women? You are behaving like a bully, so I have to ask you, what are your true motives? Looking over Loves profile, she has more to offer the transgender community as far as taking the transgender movement mainstream then you ever will. All you do is preach to the gay and lesbian community, whereas Ashley has the ears of straight people (who we really need to reach). You demonizing her is selfish, as I have read that this is really a personal beef you have with her, yet you are disguising it as journalism. Im glad to see many in the community see what you are up to, and its unethical that you would use a gay and lesbian website as bully pulpit to step on anyone who doesn’t believe in your rants. Why should Love be crucified because she says transsexuality is a medical condition, not a drag queen show or a fetish? What are you so scared of? Are you hiding something? I dont feel you are being honest in your agenda here. You attacking transsexual identified people in this forum is very divisive, yet you call Love divisive. Your words remind me of Virgina Prince’s strategy to silence transsexual women
Autuum , please stop this Now!Autuum,
Speaking as a so called ‘pioneer’..in other words, I’m an oltimer …31 yrs post-op (which makes me no better than any other person….just wanted to say that so the pre-ops, cds , genderqueers etc…would not be upset )
This going after Ashley Love is doing no good Autuum ..in fact its harmful if nothing else to our community.
Autuum because you dont like some of the things Ashley has said is no reason to go on and on after her.
You are not winning a contest here Autuum …just please stop.
Most ts’s(mtf’s) strive all their lives to fit in to be no different than their sisters , to be loved by our families. to be accepted ……..we didnt want to be different , it wasnt our choice! Ive lost many sisters most by their own hand ,just because they didnt fit in.
I was thrown into a mental hospital , just because I was TS, thank God in most states they cannot do that anymore…
An example….To be called “gender-gueer’ after fighting all your life to just fit in……..how ironic and cruel is that?
You think you are helping…but many you are not…
You are not the #1 spokesperson for the transgender community Autuum, there are many voices.
Just to noteThat Ashley, who identifies as ‘transsexual’, also uses quotation marks when she refers to Kate Bornstein as identifying as ‘gender queer’.
Despite PHB being a less than ideal place to go into these issues, I’d really hope that most people who identify as ‘transsexual’ would see that use of language as rather repellent coming from an anti-defamation advocate.
Excellent essays, Autumn.Thank you for bringing this to light.
I remember this.Marti exposes “I wish that Sandeen would look inside her own blogging platform and write about the sockpuppetry that’s kicked two trans people off of Pam’s House Blend.
As I recall, those two people said a lot of really mean, nasty things to and about trans people who didn’t fit their narrow definition.
Thank you, AutumnI know we’ve had our disagreements on this forum, but what you’re doing is heroic. Some of the comments left here and on other posts are claiming that you’re disrespectful to Ashley Love and other trans activists. If they really read what you were saying in this series of posts they would realize that you’ve shown nothing but respect for their accomplishments while (rightfully, in my opinion) criticizing their viewpoints.
While not trans myself, I have a number of friends in the trans community. Some are using medical procedures to transition, some are about to, some have no intention to. I have friends who are genderqueer, who are gay drag queens, who are straight men who wear traditionally female clothing for a variety of reasons. To suggest that any of their personal experiences are illegitimate for some ideological reason is loathsome.
To all the naysayers, what Autumn is doing here is important. She may be exposing an ugly aspect of the trans community, but if people are being discriminated against, then that NEEDS to be exposed. Many have argued on this blog that advances in the LGBT community are meaningless if we leave those in the T category behind. Does it not then follow that advances in the trans community are meaningless if we leave the intersexed, the genderqueer, and the cross dressers behind?
A response to much of the aboveWith respect to everyone’s feelings…
Ashley has tremendous energy and charisma, but some of her comments, and some of the comments she has linked to with apparent approval, are beyond the pale. It is never all right for people in our community to misgender and degender each other – unless, like some of the people whom Ashley quotes, or who support her, you choose to define that community incredibly narrowly.
Autumn is entitled to defend herself – and if, in the process, she criticizes some aspects of Ashley’s practice that is hardly am attack on Ashley’s identity. Ashley – from what I have seen of her – has a vey secure identity so I am at a loss as to why she feels the need to defend it so vitriolically.
Some of us have a secure identity, but place that identity in a broader context. I myself could choose to define myself narrowly – I transitioned in my twenties, identify as female, knew that I was transexual in my early teens. On the other hand, I got a lot of mentoring from street queens and drag queens; I’ve come to identify as lesbian; a lot of my good friends are trans guys. And politically I will work with anyone it is useful to work with.
I’ve been prepared to work under a broad front transgender umbrella not because I have any particular theory about who is what – but because I have got support and solidarity from a lot of people in a lot of areas of our family down the years, and because I have seen working together as more often useful than not.
I and people I have worked with in groups have had some success down the years in promoting legislation about change of civil status, in getting stakeholder consultation in specifically trans health care and struggling through education and training to eliminate transphobia from the acute health care sector generally. We did not do this by arguing with each other about identity or obsessing about who is the best transsexual.
And – to declare an interest – Kate Bornstein, with whom I don’t always agree about everything, has been one of my closest dearest friends for almost twenty years. She is one of the kindest and most generous people I know – and to defame her, given that she is a gentle soul who tries very hard to see other people’s point of view at all time, is wrong and unfair.
I’ve only met Calpernia once, but any attack on her and her choices is equally wrong.
These are people I know I like, and whom I will defend proudly.
Given my role in the Toiletgate affair or the row with Stonewall about their proposed award to Julie Bindel, I don’t think anyone can accuse me of being soft on the LG bits of the community when they are guilty of transphobic bullshit. At the same time, when issues like Clause 28 came up – issues that were an attack on everyone LGBT in the UK – I was there in solidarity with people that I had not spoken to since the trans community got elbowed out of the Gay Liberation Front.
I mention this not to bang my own drum, but to suggest that the community should not get too obsessed with critiquing each other’s identity – most people on the outside cannot tell the difference anyway, frankly.There is more useful work to be done.
Having been through
goddess, fortysome years – of liberal/left/progressive and sexuality/gender politics, I know the hard way that it is never terribly useful to start accusing your brothers, your sisters and your comrades of stabs in the back, conspiring with the enemy and betraying the pure essence of whatever. I saw that wreck feminism for a decade, for example, often at trans people’s expense – that’s at best. At worst, it can become a quite sinister rhetoric that hunts heresy and infiltrators and does actual damage to people’s lives.Did you even read any of her post?You seriously just ignored all of her valid posts against Ashley Love, that’s she an self-proclaimed anti-defamation activist for the transgender and transsexual community who misgenders individuals.
I’m not following your argument..Who’s calling anyone who doesn’t self-identity as gender-queer that? Autumn is calling out Ashley Love for mis-gendering and belittling peoples identities who do identify as gender-queer. Barbknj, you say you’ve spent much of your life trying to fit in as a woman. If someone is gender-queer just as much as your are a woman, what gives anyone the right to take that identity away from them, as Ashley Love (and you, with your quotes) have done.
RepresentationApologies to Autumn if this reads like hijacking your articles, but it would be an interesting outcome of this dialogue if collectively people could express their opinions about our representation.
I’m not convinced from personal experience that charities or non-profits like GLAAD hold all the solutions for representing LGBTQIetc communities either.
There are a handful of elected judges and politicians who are trans-identified publicly, there are others like Calpernia Addams who have high-profile celebrity status which they use to be positive educators, advocates and artists in their own right without making any claim other than perhaps living authentic lives and being true to themselves.
Who are the community leaders who can find consensus from so many diverse subgroups?
I’ve found it difficult to place much faith or trust in certain high-profile figures who have financial and/or ideological interest in maintaining the status quo where they can command large fees as professional speakers and are paid by establishment bodies to rubberstamp legislation which protects them as heterosexual trans men or trans women, yet entirely erases the existence of many others without any legal recognition – or with the only recourse to exercising their human rights being to state they too fit XYZ category, which does not do our collective trans movements any justice.
We need leadership, but some people need to show maturity and compassion and humanity before they could be realistically considered as credible public role models fit to hold responsible positions, or make decisions about the lives of vulnerable people they may not like or respect.
I could die happy ifI never again, from this time forward, hear mention of the GLAAD Media Reference Guide. YMMV.
I could also write a multi-part, multi-repetitive, tendentious and tedious series of essays telling everyone why I feel this way. But don’t worry. I won’t.
Thanks for the discussionI learn more every day on this and other blogs.
We do tend to eat our own, don’t we?I do so wish there was the interest and energy expended on this list against each other channeled in some way to unify and push for equal rights and societal “respect”.
We spend more time pointing out our differences rather than the things we have in common and wonder why we get crapped on by our enemies who “glorify” our differences from their view of the mainstream.
Herding cats would be easier!
I do know Autumn, so there will be a personal bias based on our history which is positive. She has walked the walk! I think she has recognized that a small minority must work with many allies to gain power. A minority with a united front will show bigger than one that is divided.
I honestly do not know Ashley, we have some on line conversation … but that seemed to be one way type talk. Sylvia Rivera comparison?
The transgender population is perhaps the most diverse of any demographic political group, has the highest level of unemployment and has had the greatest amount of societal discrimination … perhaps therein lies the rub!
Why can’t we get our crap TOGETHER? Why must we fight over every bit of minutia?
My thoughts on a few terms:
I like the idea of the term. “transgender” it is our term and we get to define it. As an umbrella term we can make appear pretty big… which in political terms, we want to be a big as possible.
“Transsexual” is a medical term, I do not want to be defined to the public by a medical condition. you want I should talk about my arthritis …my varicose veins?
“transvestite” (transvestic fetish) is a Latin medical term.
Crossdresser is English for the same thing and lacks the medical stigma.
“Gender Variant” and Androgyny are real terms that fall in the Transgender umbrella that I think almost all people can understand. Remember the character “Pat” from Saturday night Live? Was he/she vilified? A sympathetic character that most folks embraced … hey add to the umbrella!
The term “tranny” is a pejorative and is generally an insult. I don’t want to see it in print or hear it used, especially by a non-trans person. I will allow for an exception or two in conversation.
1. As a friendly put down (with dramatic effect)from one transperson to another.
2. As a sign of respect. Several years ago after our NJ transequality bill had been introduced , the Prime sponsor of the Assembly bill was hosting a meeting of his local township’s Democratic organization. I walked in with another leader from GRAANJ our state transgender advocacy organization. He looked up and saw us and verbally acknowledged that the “Tranny Mafia” was there. I took that as a compliment!
Are we now quoting Calpernia Addams as an authority…GeeezYes, Calpernia Addams has “sold out to the gay mans mocking of transgender woman long ago, her points are irrelevant.”
And, no, Autumn, “You are not the #1 spokesperson for the transgender community Autuum, there are many voices.”
And, like others who have commented here, “I could die happy if I never again, from this time forward, hear mention of the GLAAD Media Reference Guide.” Many of us Autumn simply do not march to the GLAAD, the GLB, and the transgender drum.
I’ve said before, I don’t agree with misgendering anyone, I don’t do it nor allow others to do it on my blog, though some try. But because I voluntarily extend the courtesy of not misgendering someone doesn’t mean that I personally see think of them as female/male.
What you don’t realize, Autumn, and fail to acknowledge, is that there are many, many of us who completely agree with what Ms. Love says. Your threads should be indicating that to you in spades. And, like you are doing to her, when we voice our position or agreement with Ms. Love’s position we are vilified, ignored, or completely silenced, erased, and banned for speaking up.
Again, many of us have said for years that one day a high profile transsexual was going to come along who would not mind publicly standing up to and refuting the current transgender activists and, for once, represent those of us who do not agree with the rank and file transgender and our inclusion in its “subgroup”. Ashley Love is fast setting herself to be that person. She is absolutely right when she says that the transgender subgroups, including but not limited to, in Ms. Love’s words, “…crossdressing men and transvestites…” have “…coopted the transsexual movement”…so has the GLB. It’s only a matter of time before she will be followed by more and more people who feel the same way as Ms. Love does; before transsexuals like Ms. Love are the activists being interviewed on the talk shows and of whose stories are being told in the documentaries, instead of a self identified transgender trying to sell society on the concepts of pregnant “men”, “women” with penises, and other equally absurd notions. It’s simply a matter of time…
People such as Ms. Love are now said to be “dangerous” to the civil rights of the transgender “community” by you and, apparently, other transgender. Did it ever occur to you and your cohorts – even once – that those of us who have the same position as Ms. Love feel the transgender subgroups are a danger to the civil rights of the transsexual “community?” Well, has it? Autumn, I think you see her as more of a threat to your own perceived status, than a danger to any community.
Not DisrepectfulI don’t think Autumn’s essays have been disrespectful (and I’m not saying you think that, ciaranmishima). I think everyone should have the right to disagree with someone if they please.
What I do think is that Autumn and many others simply do not understand or choose to acknowledge that there are a lot of us who hold virtually the same position as Ashley Love.
I do acknowledge it, actually.If I want my identities respected, I have to respect the identities of others.
My concern here, as I’ve spelled out many times, isn’t with how Love identifies, but in how Love states in her biography that she self-identifies as a anti-defamation activist for transgender identified people, but then uses language that’s identified as defamatory for subgroups of transgender identified people. And, she has a high enough profile that her hypocrisy on defamation matters. Her viewpoints should be made visible to those who believe, per her biography, that she’s an advocate for transgender people.
I want her to succeed.One can identify as transsexual, and not as transgender, and still be an advocate for transgender identified people. In Love’s biography, she claims she’s an anti-defamation advocate for transgender people, but then she engages in defaming transgender people. Her stated identity as an activist is the issue, not her stated identity as a transsexual woman who doesn’t identify as transgender.
Hey, she was given the honor of introducing Amanda Simpson at the Washington DC Transgender Day of Remembrance memoriam this past November 20th — that day being eight days after she began saying what she said about Kate Bornstein, and a little over ten months after she started using derogatory language about transgender identified people.
It’s not her transsexual-and-not-transgender identity that’s the issue. The issue isn’t even her personally. It is about what she says in her biography about her activism that doesn’t align with how she talks about a community and its members that she states she’s advocating for.
I want her to succeed as an activist. She can do that by living up to her noble goals — the goals she outlined in her biography.
sure you doBut only if she advocates exactly your positions. See, that has always been the problem. You and a few others, consistently use the exact same demonization tactics the tea baggers do. Disagree with you, hold a different world view and you are a bigot, an elitist, transier than thou, have delusions of gender, You attack us for being part of the gender binary 99% of the world lives in when in fact you are the one dealing in straight out binary right or wrong thinking. This is why I have compared transgender politics today to religious zealotry. It cannot be questioned or altered in any fashion. You are with us or against us is your battle cry when what most of us want is actually to just plain forget you exist at all and only respond to you in self defensive damage control. You treat those precious GLAAD guidelines exactly like a word of God literalist does the Bible.
You’ve demonstrated it in spades in the comments on these three character assassination pieces because that is exactly what they have been. You’ve succeeded so many times in the past with this in direct violation of your own TOS…..women of history, HBSers, whatever you call us de jour, we are evil and the enemy…….over and over and over. You invoke a catch 22 that we wish no part of your gender theory constructs to tell us we cannot object to it while you then turn right around and continue to define us by your terms against our express wishes. It is dishonest, it promotes hatred, it does direct real world harm.
And I was a much more fierce advocate than you will ever be. I put everything I had on the line to help trans women. I actually worked with the street girls most like you want to ignore and pretend do not even exist. All I ever got for that was hatred, blind vicious, life threatening hatred and you personally did your part in that.
You gender deconstructionists never seem to understand the concept of personal limits….that you don’t get to call everyone elses tune. Essentially you are just like a Sarah Palin or Karl Rove. Your way or the highway.
The events of last weekend will change this too. People are starting to see through this garbage
IconsI am amazed on how some trans people hold up individuals in the trans community as Icons, with god-like and goddess-like qualities. People like Kate, Ashley, Lynn Conway, Wendy Carlos, Donna Rose, Jamison Green, Monica Roberts, and even Autumn and myself have been given those qualities at one time or another. None of us want to have that thrust upon us, including Ashley, even it it looks like we love it at the moment. And, if anyone attacks their favorite “Icon,” even in the smallest way, then they act as it they have the right to and the privilege to attack back in the most hateful manner. This series is an example of the hate rhetoric that can happen when their “Icon” is supposedly attacked . . . on both sides.
We only need to look to Tucson to see how far hate language can go. We don’t know what truly caused the shooter to attack those people, but we know that the language of the politics of these days needs to be ratchet down. I doubt people here will listen to this, or learn from Tucson.
I just woke up and now I’m so damn depressedI think there is plenty of bad behavior to go around in this one. Ms. Love, I believe was in the wrong for using those awful pronouns over and over again, yet Autumn too, in attacking her has also completely lost her point with these verbal onsloughts.
Personally, I don’t like the word “tranny”. I don’t like the fact that this word has been appropriated by the cis-world. And yes, I have a problem with trans women as drag performers, especially those who have begun hormones or had surgical procedures. That having been said, I’m not going to judge them or be catty to them.
It is not for me to judge anyone. I think that’s an axiom some in our community seem to have forgotten.
In my observation….I’ve seen a hundred times more vitriol from the “HBS”, “True Transsexual” etc crowd thrown against “Transgenderists” than I’ve seen the other way round.
Some of the invective thrown against my friend, Autumn Sandeen, has been nauseating.
The Irony is.. that I don’t identify as “Transgender”. That I believe a lot of what Ms Love says is true.
Whether I identify as “Transgender” or not is immaterial anyway; both the GLB(t) movement and various Fundamentalists put me in that category, I have no say in it.
Furthermore, I see no reason why my situation, as a woman with an Intersex condition (technically not even a “transsexual”, true or otherwise) should place me in a more privileged “more female than thou” position.
There have been many times when I hear a “true transsexual” woman making claims as to her own femininity, while denying that of lesser beings, that I’ve been tempted, sometimes sorely tempted, to say “I was diagnosed as biologically female, not a ‘transsexual man’ like you” just to show them how hurtful and unfair their remarks are.
I haven’t done that, not once, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it would be cruel. I would become what I was fighting against. This wouldn’t be a problem if they were truly secure in their gender identity – for who cares what misconceptions others may hold about that – but the constant, unremitting attack on their identity from everyone from lesbian separatists to Christian Fundamentalists would undermine any woman’s self-confidence. Women have been told time and time again that they’re not capable of this, or that it takes a man to do that, and the effects on many have been similar.
Second, it would be factually and scientifically misleading, if not false. If “sex” is to be a meaningful concept, it must reside in the personality as constrained by neuro-anatomy, not in chromosomes or endocrinology, the things that were measured by medics before they pronounced me a severely intersexed woman rather than an intersexed male.
And in those terms, that of personality, I’m less typically feminine than many “transgender” women, non-op, pre-op, and even some of the male-identifying “drag queens” and the rest. (which is really quite interesting to a Geek-girl like me). This doesn’t upset me, my Gender Identity for some reason is impervious to such trivial matters. Heck, if it lasted through having 47 years of a body far more male than female, it can endure this self-knowledge.
Yes, I’m a woman, and water flows downhill, and the sun rises in the east, and so what? It’s not that that makes me “special” any more than it does 50.5% of the population of the planet. It’s not something I desperately desire, it’s something that is, and always has been. So?
When I was young, I rather wanted to be a boy… but that’s something you’re born as, or not as the case may be. I wasn’t. Even though I looked like one (mostly…)
I can understand other women feeling that “Blackface Dragqueens” of the “Tranny Heaven” or “Shirley Q Liquor” variety are both misogynist and racist, insulting and demeaning. I think they are too.
As for gay men parodying femininity in burlesque Drag Queen shows – misogynist? Sometimes. Mostly I think it’s for fun. When straight men do it, it’s usually a living, entertainment, even though it sets my teeth on edge to hear them tittering about being just like real girls!.
I’ve never understood men. Whatever floats their boat.
I’m not like them. But had I not had the “Intersexed woman” diagnosis – then I think I too might have been desperate to differentiate myself from others who I don’t identify with.
I’d be as insecure as those gay men who are constantly under attack by the ignorant as being “wannabe women”, or those ultra-butch lesbians who get accused of being “wannabe men”, and react with the most rabid forms of tranbsphobia. Just to show they’re not like those people.
They’re not, of course. But attack people often enough, and unconscious self-doubts will, inevitably I think, creep in. No matter how irrational.
Of course some, perhaps even most, aren’t subconsciously insecure. They’re just transphobes, they don’t need a reason. And some have good reason to distrust and attack others who have genuinely worked against them. One shouldn’t arrogantly impute irrational psychological motives for actually rational beliefs.
Getting down to cases… CathrynP. Insecure? Hardly! She’s just had very different experiences from me, and has come to different (and possibly more accurate) conclusions.
You can tell the insecure ones by the amount of frothing-at-the-mouth fanatic hatred they spew, the insult and invective, rather than reasoned argument.
whatever
Frankly, you have not been around the block nearly as long as I have. You have not been subjected to over 12 years of being called every name in the book, being branded a racist right here on Pam’s when my household looked like a rainbow coalition of transwomen I was housing, not had your life threatened, not just in email but up close and personal with weapons…and more, much more.
Words have consquences and I have almost never, in the past eight or so years, heard anything but threats and vile hatred from the “transgender” activist crowd. Sometimes the other side has gone a bit overboard, but it always, in my experience, has been in response, not a first strike.
Yeah, our experiences are different, that is the understatement of the year. I have little patience left for the insane and willfully stupid and selling political positioning based on fear. And I too was born intersexed as you know….so what?
If I die a violent death it almost certainly will be at the hands of some transgender fanatic, it’s come close to that several times already. I wonder how the Day of Remembrence will handle that?….oh yeah, I won’t count.
try this again
Try this website and tell me again because this is the norm not the exception in my experience.
http://ariablues.blogspot.com/ scroll to the bottom and read up…….
WOWthis is terrible news that transgender fanatics have actually launched murderous attacks on you.
Any idea if this was some organization?
The disciples of Dyss, the assassins of autumn, the bilerico brigade or hit men from Gay Inc.?
Please, I’m sure we’re all anxious to press the relevant law enforcement bodies for information,( after all who knows who might be next ?),so if you could just give those details and…oh…er…these wouldn’t be the sort of attacks that you managed to fend off with a magical charm, would they ? The kind you write about using on people, in your blog ? That might be a little more difficult, but please, I’m sure we’ve all got a strong interest in knowing lots more about these dastardly doings.
Real Life – PoliticsOne of the most disgusting results of an online search is to search the term “transsexual”.
When I was preparing to run for office for the first time I had to stop using the term “transsexual” even though I am. Classic transsexual is the correct term.
No matter what I would do in politics it would not matter as long as people would search for “transsexual”. However, the broader term “transgender” was not only not referencing sex, and the usual association by the general public to gay sex, it is very descriptive and easy enough for people to talk about.
I had problems with ignorance of the general public in all areas regarding LGBT issues and knowledge, occasionally having people come up to me and tell me they had never met a “transvestite” before and I was so different from what they thought one would be like.
The one problem I had was whenever a trans person would do a stunt or acted like a professional tranny victim. I would end up doing damage control for a week, or longer depending on the media coverage. That mayor in the mini-skirts and boob job caused a lot of problems for me and other trans people.
What politicians such as Amanda Simpson, Dana Beyers, and a handful of others, along with myself did was reach hundreds of thousands of people locally and millions nationwide with the knowledge that we were not freaks or sex fiends. We were the neighbors and the committee members they met. We were in churches and eating at the same restaurants they did. We had the same concerns they did about their cities and states. We are concerned about taxes and how to pay for schools.
Many of us in politics worked hard to have people accept us as representatives of the Trans communities, usually overcoming misconceptions brought by lack of knowledge and prejudice.
It does not take much to bury a minority such as the trans world. It does take a lot of work to break down barriers. Some of us do our work in a way that is not physically confrontational.
What would you have us do?When a high profile transexual person publicly misgenders others, how can it be reasonable to expect that such a person will not to be subjected to public criticism?
Is it not too much to ask that those trasexuals who revile the transgender category simply label themselves non-trangendered transexuals and move on, secure in the knowledge that any mention of the word “transgender” in no way refers to them?
Are we not allowed to have a word for the alliance between people who have suffered at the hands of society for failing to conform, in the eyes of society at at least one point in our lives, to gender norms?
How is it that we are expected to silently endure these continuous assaults from divisive fringe elements, who write with cruel pens to ridicule and scorn those who don’t conform to their gender norms?
Last post’s nearly a year agoAnd all the posts were over a 2-month period.
I condemned that site at the time, and I do now. It stands as a monument to the depths to which reasoned debate can sink when both sides try to deliberately hurt each other.
Severe provocation was answered with total craziness. I’ve not seen anything like it before or since.
Find other examples, ones spanning years, and you’ll convince me. They don’t have to be as utterly evil as that one.
DisgustingIt’s hard to decide which is the whackiest: ariasblue.blogspot or AriaBlue linking to The Church Of Scientology’s front group “Citizen’s Commission On Human Rights Intl” under the guise of what AriaBlue calls “a watchdog for psychiatry”.
I think it’s the latter. Take you meds people.
thank you“If I want my identities respected, I have to respect the identities of others.”
You encapsulated my thoughts exactly, in far fewer words.
I’ve often argued that while trans women are and should be referred to as women not “men in dresses”, it is equally valid for someone to identify as a man…and wear a dress.
Just a second.Are you seriously suggesting that this series of posts has put Ashley Love’s life in danger? If so, I question your sense of perspective, but that doesn’t make you a bad person. If you were just trying to score cheap rhetorical points, though, then it does and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Where’s the beef?Every quote you provided in this essay from Ashley was out of something she posted on Facebook. Maybe I’m just behind the times, and there’s probably a very good case to be made that I am, but I have a very hard time taking seriously anything said on Facebook. Things said there are for the most part only going out to people you either identify or accept as “friends”. It is not a broad public forum, and spare me references to 500 million members. It’s 500 million little circles of friends, and we’re talking about one of them. If you don’t like what someone is saying there, you “unfriend” them. Either that, or you engage them in the same forum in which they spoke their offensive words, on Facebook.
This site, however, is a broad public forum. It is read by large numbers of people and it is open to anyone with internet access. Going after someone on PHB for what they said on FB is like using a bazooka to retaliate for a cap gun crack. The utter disproportionality is shocking.
Now, I’m not saying this as an advocate for Ashley. I don’t agree with what she says. I’m saying this as an advocate of reason. You don’t have to spend much time around Ashley to pick up on the fact that she’s a flighty, self absorbed, somewhat histrionic girl. I can’t for the life of me understand why she deserves this kind of column space on a nationally recognized political forum.
Yeah, Ashley has some nutty ideas. Some of them can be offensive. She talks about them among her friends. There are people like that out there. We’re a very diverse community. And maybe you are very justified in being miffed about it, but do some FB comments really warrant all this? This entire essay in this series was completely unnecessary.
If you had instead talked more generally about the ideas she’s espousing instead of focusing on the only slightly public comments of one individual, you may have been able to address a broader issue in our community and used this column space for better purposes. Going after one person for comments made on Facebook is an inappropriate waste of everyone’s time.
It’s not 99% It’s more like 97%Because the Writing Themselves In 3 survey found about 3% of the school children responders did not want to put down male or female. In that study they labeleed that data under the term Gender Questioning. Of course it is likely just the tip of the iceberg of ISGD.
I do hope you will acknowledge those who have not done soI have not threatened you or shown you hatred.
I acknowledge your human right to self-identify however you wish.
I too have faced violence, though not for my activism but just for being who i am. And i deplore all threats and acts of violence against you.
No matter how much i may disagree with some of your viewpoints and/or conclusions and no matter how much i find some of the comments from people on your side of the debate to be vile hatred, hypocracy and deliberate abuse of the human rights of others none of that excuses ad hominem attacks on you or anyone else, none of that excuses vilification, threats, incitement to violence or acts of violence.
Maybe, just maybe, real progress could be made and all i think it would take is if we all or even just a bunch of us acknowledge each others full human rights and our common humanity.
CathrynP, I acknowledge yours. All your human rights. Including your right to protection from vilification and harassment, to self identification, to recognition both personal and legal, to access to any and all health requirements, your right to life and liberty, to protection from discrimination, to autonomy of the self, to religious belief, to cultural traditions and any and all other human rights.
I ask you in the spirit of our common humanity and the spirit of peace to also equally acknowledge all of mine.
Hatefest? Pleaseget some perspective. Autumn rightly called out Ashley. Ashley either needs to stop defaming others in our community or she needs to stop misrepresenting herself as an anti-defamation activist. She doesn’t get to play it both ways and Ashley’s politics of pettiness and divisiveness will do a fuckload more damage to our community than Autumn shining some disinfecting sunlight on the auctions of one Ashley Love.
DamnI didn’t know Ashley Love was consider the Second Coming.