The Boston Dyke March – note, this is the DYKE March, the herstoric march lesbians created, organized, sponsored, and have proudly celebrated since 1993 – has canceled the performance of Bitch, a lesbian feminist musician and performer, because Bitch performs at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.
A poll posted yesterday at Bay Windows out of Provincetown asked this:
Was it appropriate for the Boston Dyke March, which says it is “committed to being proactively trans-inclusive,” to book the performer Bitch, who supports the anti-trans policy of The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival?
Results as of this morning are as follows:
Yes. 42 (37.84%)
No. 50 (45.05%)
Don’t be so reductive. 19 (17.12%)
Comments are as follows:
- It is a dyke march, she is a dyke.
07/06/2007 - The “policy” is pro-womyn. It is NOT anti-trans. Get yer facts straight before you promote more hatred upon women who have experienced a lifetime of discrimination unique to themselves. It’s okay for trans folks to have exclusive gatherings, it’s okay for people of color, etc. and it’s okay for female-born women as well.
07/06/2007 - MWMF and Boston Dyke March are not even close to the same thing.
07/06/2007 - It’s a DYKE march, not a trans march
07/06/2007 - Being proactively trans-inclusive means doing actual work to support all trans people. Sometimes this means doing research about the people you are asking to speak for you or are paying. I do not believe you can both support trans people and give money to people who want to keep them away. Supporting trans men and genderqueers is not the same thing as supporting all trans people.
07/06/2007 - There is no such thing as a trans-positive dyke march if the committee chooses an openly, proudly, transphobic woman to perform. Some queer women happen to be trans, and a dyke march that doesn’t support all queer women is a farce at best, a travesty at worst.
07/06/2007 - I can’t believe this is a controversy
07/06/2007 - what kind of a stupid poll is this?
07/06/2007 - Michigan’s policy is not “anti trans” it is simply a statement that the festival is for womyn-born-womyn. This question is therefore biased.
07/06/2007 - Your disrespect of our festival is shown by the incorrect spelling of fest’s title. Since when does pro WBW equal anti-trans?
07/06/2007 - Just because she beleives in MWMF right to support WBW policy doesn’t mean she is anti Trans. Give us a break, and find something new to complain about.
07/06/2007 - The Dyke March is a lesbian event, as is Michfest. It ought to be respected as such.
07/06/2007 - support the right of any group to gather and celebrate their own particular lives and experiences. It doesn’t take anything away from anyone not within that group. Everyone has special events especially aimed at their particular group or identity, so what’s the problem?
07/06/2007 - Bitch is an awesome performer, is woman-positive and trans-supportive, and her inclusion in any dyke event is totally appropriate.
07/06/2007 - How re-dick-u-l-us. Really, so the next step would be that anyone who doesn’t think that transgendered persons should be required to age admitted to Mich and that this act should trump women’s choice to have a women’s only space. This stinks of male priviledge! We’ve been having public discourse for years about women’s rights…to equal pay, decisions about her body, and in the case of Mich the right to gather together and have a party. This protest is so rooted in hatred of women and a complete failure to RESPECT women’s right to autonomy. Good luck and peace. Please consider allowing the space to consider that women might have the right to self determination??
07/06/2007 - Huh?
08/06/2007
Despite not having anywhere near a majority vote, transgender have activists CANCELED Bitch’s performance as of this morning.
The Dyke March itself is inclusive. Bitch’s performance was canceled strictly because she is willing to perform at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. She is very willing, in other words, to perform at all sorts of events. But transgender activists are willing to cause her material harm if she performs at events they disapprove.
This is the latest in a long string of attacks on lesbian musicians, activists, artists and leaders by transgender organizations to include:
- The closing down of a lesbian resource center in Vancouver because it was for women only;
- A lawsuit which tied up a grassroots, private, privately-funded rape crisis center for over a decade, brought by a person who was white, affluent, and lived as a male professional for many years before obtaining “sex change” surgery. The rape crisis center would not allow the MTF in question to serve as a volunteer counselor on its crisis hotline but offered other positions instead. The cost to the rape crisis center over a decade of litigation was hundreds of thousands of dollars before the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in favor of the crisis center. Note, this was a privately-run, lesbian-owned center which did not receive government funding. Consider how many rape victims might have been helped with the money spent to defend this lawsuit.
- A showing of the film, The Gendercator, in San Francisco, by a brilliant lesbian filmmaker, Catherine Crouch, was torpedoed by transgender activists, most of whom had never seen the film but who just didn’t like the description.
- Transgender activists also attempted to torpedo the showing of the film in New York.
- Many, many lesbian musicians and performers have been boycotted by progressive and liberal people, so-called, on the word of transgender activists because they perform at Michfest. Progressive and feminist lesbian musicians and performers are very much a marginalized, disenfranchised group. Does anybody think they are going to be invited to perform in major het venues anytime soon?
Given that this is the treatment lesbians receive at the hands of male-born persons who do not get their way, consider the outcome were they to get their way.
The next thing that we’ll hear is that as women, before we ask a woman to perform for, or speak to us, we will need to submit a bio and an outline of her political views and activism to local transgender activists for their approval, otherwise we will be boycotted, attacked, harrassed, and lied about.
I sued the Religious Right for this kind of behavior 13 years ago.
And I won.
This is colonizing behavior. It is cultural imperialism. The members of a community themselves, when we are talking about a marginalized, oppressed, people group, as lesbians are, as women are, have a right to autonomy, self-definition and the defining of our own in-group/out-group boundaries.
It was wrong for Bitch’s performance to be canceled. It was wrong for the showing of the Gendercator to be canceled. It was wrong that Vancouver Rape Relief , which has been serving raped and battered women for over 30 years, was sued. It is wrong that lesbian and women performers and speakers are harrassed, attacked, lied about and boycotted when they play at lesbian-owned, lesbian-run, woman-only events, because they dare to play at Michfest.
Please, watch this video of Bitch singing my favorite song on her new CD, “Make This, Break This,” it is a song that makes me cry every time I hear it, and it is this kind of performance that, if transgender activists have their way, women will not be able to see.
You can show your support for Bitch by buying her latest album. below. It’s just $12.
Note: Comments will be seriously moderated and are restricted to women only (even though I know there are good male allies who comment here. I know they will understand and be supportive). If you are not a member of the lesbian community, in particular, please take care to post respectfully, as respectfully as you would, as a feminist and progressive, in any discussion involving a marginalized community of which you were not a member.
Heart
REINSTATE BITCH’S PERFORMANCE.
Really, are transgender activists now the bosses of Dykes? Women (the female ones) seem to have come full circle from being male dominated to being their own bosses to being male dominated again.
That was a great clip of Bitch. I wonder if you could show The Gendercator too?
Heart,
I’ve been watching this march towards triumph of males within the “lesbian” community for decades.
It’s clear to me now that they’ve won.
Where is there any publicly known or publicly accessible lesbian space any more, which is not trans, i.e. male, controlled?
I suspect that MichFest has been able to withstand that huge anti-female pressure only because they provide a time-limited male-free vacation space for het women who are entitled (by heteropatriarchal privilege) to a “girls’ night out”.
And *of course* Michfest is a lesbian festival. But the minute that it announces or names itself as such, it will implode.
Bitterness.
Hm. I should be writing an academic paper at this moment and not musing. But. In postmodernity, “mixed” identities (and I do mean identities) are king and queen. Hip and transgressive. Placing these on a pedestal them at the expense of all other experience is conventional and therefore safe.
Do you know of any male born male only or predominately male born male only spaces that transsexuals have actively focused on to infiltrate/invade? Or do the transsexuals tend to only focus their efforts on invading female born female spaces?
Interesting.
transsexuals seem to be focused on cultural gender roles and “feeling” like a woman;gender roles and standards which are particularly harmful to women and that a lot of the time are not embraced by feminists, especially not radical feminists. I’m sorry but in my Dworkinized opinion they are still very much men enthralled with the -male- idea of what it means to be a woman and what they -think- they would want to do/can do/can express as a woman. So they fight to be women. I think it is horrible that this band was denied a performance because they happen to play at all feminist/lesbian gatherings.
So good to get this support. I am hoping Bitch will see this.
Really interesting what you’ve said there, Mary Sunshine.
Heart
This feels like women are being squashed into an even smaller box.
And Kitty’s comment is telling….
Not a lesbian or trans woman, but I just wanted to say that this makes me really angry.
re: invading men’s spaces - I think the whole world (under patriarchy that is) is a men’s space … which is why it’s so important to protect the women’s spaces that we’ve got.
Putting aside my thoughts on the trans issue (which are pretty complicated), I don’t think that having women-born-women space= transphobic or anti-trans. If women are saying hateful things about trans people, like “you’re a lot of men in dresses”, or opposing civil rights for trans people, then that is transphobic. For example I’m Asian-American and if Asian immigrants in the US wanted an “Asian immigrant” space, I wouldn’t automatically think that they are bigots or denying that I’m Asian for not inviting me.
I do think it’s important for traditionally oppressed groups of people to be able to define themselves on their own terms, though.
Totally just ordered the cd.
I sometimes wonder why the trans-activist movement has been co-opted so much to these ends. I mean, there are great groups out there working to end the medical establishment’s violence toward transwomen, to end the exploitation of trans youth in pornstitution, to provide safe spaces for gender non-conforming kids whose parents abuse them and/or throw them out. These are amazing, righteous movements that I, as a radical feminist, am proud to be allied with.
These anti-MichFest witch hunts are not. The work of some people (trans and non-trans) to silence the lesbian voices of MichFest under the guise of being “pro-trans” is a double-edged sword. It creates enemies where there are none, but also it exacerbates the divide between people who can do great work together, despite disagreements over what constitutes being a woman.
Heart,
I really admire your commitment to feminism in so many ways, but I just have to express some disagreement here. I know that Michfest is very special and important to you and many other women, and it must be really frustrating to feel like it is under attack. But I feel like you are overgeneralizing a lot here. In my experience most transgendered folks are just trying to be happy, like we all are. I understand that your experiences have been different. Every group has its bad apples. I’m not weighing in on any specific issue or controversy, because I don’t have enough information to reasonably do so. I’d just ask everyone to remember to treat people as individuals.
Ann,
It’s not that any of us feels like Michfest, or womyn’s spaces, or lesbian spaces are under attack– they really are under attack. In all the ways I’ve listed and many I haven’t listed. They’ve been under attack for a long time.
Every Michfest woman I know — including me — treats transgendered persons as individuals, both online and in real life. Every Michfest woman I know, and every lesbian I know, at least in real life, is unfailingly accepting and supportive of her transgender friends and allies.
However, in this instance, and in many instances in the past, transgendered people have directly and materially and intentionally damaged lesbians, damaged women, in the same way Bitch has been damaged here, just as Catherine Crouch has been damaged via the torpedoing of the showing of the Gendercator, just as VRR and other lesbian organizations have been damaged.
When transgendered persons sue lesbian organizations and boycott lesbian performers, who are inclusive, who are their allies, because they simply perform at Michfest, they are certainly not treating lesbians, or women, as “individuals.” We have become the easy stand-in for for the real enemy, white male heterosupremacy. We are the easy, easy, easiest of targets, because we have little power and even less money.
Why do they not target the real enemies, as the Soul Force activists I blogged about recently are doing? There is where the power is, the money is, in places like fundamentalist churches. There is where the hatred is, in fundamentalist churches. The Soul Force folks, lesbians, gay men, and transgendered people have my complete and total 100 percent support. The work they are doing will make, and has made, a difference for all human beings, and they are putting themselves on the line to do that work in the most admirable of ways.
This bullshit here? This canceling of Bitch’s performance? In my view it is absolutely inexcusable and abhorrent.
I am an ally to transgendered persons all the way up until they directly, intentionally, materially harm my lesbian sisters, as here, or any woman. ANY woman.
And of course — of course; there are going to be overgeneralizations in blog posts. We cannot be comprehensive here. I just wish there would be the same level of concern, on just about anyone’s part, over the ongoing, not overgeneralizations, but LIES, outright LIES, malicious harrassment, of radical feminists and lesbian womyn, regurgitated out there on the blogosphere, by self-identified feminists, you know? Instead of pretending it isn’t happening while holding radical feminists at arm’s length, this distancing, “I don’t agree with her, but…”, when, in fact, we — radical feminists — are the ones who are willing to put ourselves out there, and take the hits, and take the bullshit for saying what nobody else has the goddamn courage to say or even entertain because it’s going to cost her a bit, maybe make somebody mad, open her to criticism, whatever, hell, get her threatened, get her children threatened, get her harrassed all the way offline, as I have nearly been, as some radical feminists have been. It is much easier to play it safe and stick to issues everybody can rally around and for which you will get a huge buttload of props and kudos. I mean, what. What is there to respect because someone opposes rape? Or domestic violence. Fundamentalists and right-wingers and Republicans and conservatives do that all of the time. What is there to respect when someone devotes herself to all the various liberal causes the entire liberal world can get behind, and for which everybody will give her hella “atta girls,” “you rock,” “you are just such a good girl,” while sitting silently by as those same liberals either ignore lesbian and women’s issues or put them at the very end of the list.
I mean, defend lesbians? lesbian separatists? Radical feminist lesbian separatists? Women, just in general? Against this tiny thing of, say, “progressives” suing us? Canceling our performances at our own events? Violating our boundaries, our spaces, and us as individuals?
Hell no. They’re just lesbians. They’re just radfems. They’re too radical for me. I want to have some friends at the end of the day. Who cares if a lesbian musician or a radical feminist can’t find a venue. Who cares if she can’t get her film shown. Who cares if her organization is closed down. Who cares if she can’t get published, doesn’t get invited to speak. Who cares if women are raped and there are no funds at the local rape relief center because the funds are all going to pay legal fees to somebody who got her goddamn feelings hurt.
It’s fucking *enough,* Ann.
I respect you, too, and I am sure we will continue to be friends and allies as feminist women. But out of my own integrity and commitment to women, I am going to say loud and clear, this is bullshit, this right here. If that loses me friends, then it does. I don’t care about that. I care about being respected for my integrity and my ongoing commitment to women, not for how nice I am, neither my willingness to make nice nor to stay silent when a woman is being harmed. If I’ve got to sell out my sisters to keep my friends, then they aren’t my friends.
Because no person is your friend who demands your silence.
You know?
Heart
And you know, there is someone I am treating as an individual right this moment. That someone is Bitch.
If this were done to you, what would you want to see happen? Would you want to read your friends writing platitudes about treating everybody — but you, presumably — as an individual? Would you want everybody being really quiet and saying, well, there are a few bad apples, but we have to treat everyone as individuals.
While ignoring the fact that you, an individual, just got your performance canceled?
Or would you hope that those who actually cared about you would treat you as an individual and challenge those who have sought to harm you?
Feminism is about each woman’s voice, and making sure each woman’s voice is heard. HEARD. Not silenced. Not shouted down. Not made to be not quite as important as all of those many faceless individuals out there. Not muffled because, say, she is an embarrassment somehow and might cause me diplomatic difficulties.
Bitch is an individual. She has been hurt.
I am hear to say so.
Heart
Maybe most transgendered folks are just trying to be happy without interfering with anyone else, but if that were so, why is it these bad apples seem to have so much influence in the transgender community? Are they just so skillful at making noise that the Boston Dyke March and Frameline in San Francisco feel they must pay more attention to that noise than to the interests of lesbians? If they are a small minority within the transgender community, why would anyone pay attention to their noise? Why would the larger transgender community not be up in arms about all this, to repudiate their bad apples?
Oh Heart, you have no idea how much I love your passionate writing. You say all the things that I think and feel but only so much better.
“Because no person is your friend who demands your silence.”
So, so true.
At the moment in Australia we have a gay bar that wants to kick all heterosexuals and women (including lesbians) out. And another trans mtf is suing some lesbian feminists for not allowing them to come to one of their events.
I agree that this is male privilege in a different form. Hopefully as the transactivists get more extreme, more women will begin to see how important it is to stay strong and committed to women-only spaces.
…most transgendered folks are just trying to be happy, like we all are.
Oh no! We wouldn’t want to make the chaps unhappy by not granting them their divine male-born right to rule over and dictate to the female-born. Oh, the sheer blasphemy of it all! What could we be thinking? Did we forget that the female-born were put on this earth to serve the male-born? And be their genie in a bottle and grant them their every wish, want and desire? Now stop being so mean and bigotted, women, and get in your place and assume the subservient roles the male-born have defined for us. Or boo hoo, they’ll be unhappy.
Lucky, that’s not what Ann Bartow was saying AT ALL. And when we start putting reactionary words in each other’s mouths, it just fuels the flames of the fire that anti-MichFest people started.
There are a lot of transwomen who don’t give two shits about what womyn do at MichFest. They’re busy living their lives, yes - trying to be happy, many of them working on issues that I think every one of us could get behind. This is why I too have an issue with huge generalized statements about what transwomen are doing to MichFest, because you know what? A LOT of the people involved in fighting MichFest are NOT trans! They’re anti-womenspace, anti-lesbian, anti-womyn people. They’re defining the movement as “pro-trans” much as the anti-choice movement defines itself as “pro-life.” Smoke and mirrors, folks. Don’t fall for it! And for the love of all that is worthwhile in this world, don’t waste your time fanning the flames.
I’m pissed that Bitch can’t play at DYKE March. I’m pissed that anti-womenspace people can’t leave MichFest alone and attack it under the guise of being “pro-trans.” But I cannot get upset at every transwoman out there because when it comes down to it, we all just do the best we can to survive under the Patriarchy and while I take significant issue with the way some people choose to do it, I can’t justify anger at an entire group of people whose politics have be co-opted by a few.
^Not Altha, but Ann Bartow. My bad.
Fixed. — Heart
Deleted at Amananta’s request.
– Heart
Unfuckingbelievable…while, at the same time, totally believable. Hmmm.
Grabbed a chance to speak to Catherine Crouch at the NYC viewing of “The Gendercator” last week, after she did a Q&A with the audience (which turned quickly into a “you’re a transphobe” scenario, though she handled it well).
Anyway, she confirmed that the video (and the other short videos being shown along with it, the whole collection called “Twisted Love”) will be showing at Fest this year, and that she plans to be there, too.
Note: the following isn’t really only a response to the comments of the women whose names I’ve mentioned. I am just taking off from their comments, processing things through, or trying to. — Heart
I hear what you are saying, Amber, and have a couple of thoughts.
There seems to be, in this conversation and similar conversations, this impulse to say, “but not ALL.” But not ALL transgender persons…
When we discuss destructive acts of any other group, whether it is a group of power elites or a marginalized group, do we police each other in this way, i.e.:
“But not ALL [insert name of marginalized group here] [would agree with this destructive act].”
Of course we don’t. We take for granted, it is a foregone conclusion, that with any destructive act, “all” are not behind it.
And how are our discussions as women regularly diverted?
By someone coming in to tell us, “But! Not ALL!”
And then the discussion is diverted from a discussion of a misogynist, sexist, or racist, or classist, or speciesist or otherwise destructive incident we are analyzing, bringing to light, or critiquing, to a discussion of how wrong we are to omit this theoretically overriding, more important discussion, which is something like that not “all” members of whatever group would have approved. Before anyone realizes it, it’s not about the destructive act, it’s about how mean and wrong and “bigoted” we are — even if the “all” happens to be men — not to focus on those who did NOT approve the destructive act.
It may be true, Amber, that most transgender people don’t give two shits about Michfest. Why is that an important point to make, for the purposes of this discussion, though? Why even talk about that?
I think Aletha’s response to Ann Bartow is very well taken.
Why is it these bad apples seem to have so much influence in the transgender community? Are they just so skillful at making noise that the Boston Dyke March and Frameline in San Francisco feel they must pay more attention to that noise than to the interests of lesbians? If they are a small minority within the transgender community, why would anyone pay attention to their noise? Why would the larger transgender community not be up in arms about all this, to repudiate their bad apples?
Indeed. And why would GLBT organizations throughout the United States — throughout the US, including those operating in tier one universities — have published the bogus press release about Michfest which was mailed out last August?
And then when a responsive press release was mailed out by Michfest, why was it roundly denounced in the most hateful of ways? As it was?
More on point.
Last fall, in an effort to build bridges, even some kind of coalition, another radical feminist, char, two transwomen, and I created an online petition in support of woman-only space which affirmed our commitment to walk alongside one another as allies while also respecting and honoring one another’s spaces.
The petition was overwhelmingly rejected by the transgender community online. One of the transgender women who helped to create the original petition lost a good transgender friend because she did so. Both of the transgender women who signed it were widely criticized, ostracized and called all sorts of names I’m sure you can imagine for having done so.
It makes no sense, when we are talking politics, to talk about these theoretically huge masses of people who don’t care about politics at all, as though that is somehow salient to the discussion.
If we talk about some destructive stunt the Democrats have pulled, what sense would it make to say, “But most Democrats do not give two shits about blah, they are just trying to blah.”
If we talk about some destructive political stunt a woman has done, what would it accomplish to say, “But most women don’t give two shits about blah.”
If we talk about some destructve political stunt an environmentalist has done, what would it accomplish to say, “But most environmentalists don’t give two shits about whatever.”
The subtext with statements like this is, the stunt matters less because it does not have widespread support or lots of people don’t know about it. Well– that’s not the issue. The issue with destructive stunts is they hurt people;. And it’s important to talk about how people are hurt; when someone has hurt them for political reasons!
Destructive political stunts ARE ALWAYS a big deal. A few persons can cause a huge amount of damage under the noses of the apathetic, the uninformed, the apolitical, and all who are going to be either hurt by the stunt or benefitted by it.
I think the reason the “not all do it” canard gets dragged out in these discussions has to do with fear. With people very, very afraid of being called “transphobe,” “bigot,” all the way up to “Hitler” and “Stalin” (not an exaggeration, that is the big-guns rhetoric that gets hauled out to clobber Michfest women, and self-identified progressive people sit by and watch it and say nothing), of the way anyone who challenges a certain transgender politics gets metaphorically tarred, feathered, run out on a rail, lied about, harrassed, intimidated, shunned, and mistreated.
But a politics which fears criticism, fears being misunderstood, fears being called names, fears being shunned or anathematized in some way, operates out of fear, is a gutless, useless, politics, especially considering the state of the world’s women at this moment in history.
We are GOING to be stigmatized and hated, as feminist, for our politics to the precise degree that WOMEN are stigmatized and hated. To the degree that our politics support the liberation of women, to that degree we will be lied about, called names, harrassed, intimidated and otherwise mistreated. To the degree that we speak out, challenge, confront, we can expect to be shouted down. At the very least, I think we ought to say that those who are shouting us down and mistreating us are wrong and have no right to do so.
It’s not the people who are NOT shouting us down, after all, and who are NOT harrassing, stigmatizing, hating, or making shit up about us which it is important to discuss, it’s the people who ARE doing all of the above!
This is not a discussion about all of the transgendered persons in the world who do not give two shits about Michfest, politics, women’s issues, and so on.
It is about the real acts, and the material harm and damage, which has already been caused; to real women by the transgendered persons who DO give two shits.
Just like our discussions, as feminists, are not about all of the people in the world who do not give two shits about the harm done to women every single day and who wouldn’t hurt women if they did give two shits.
Our discussions as feminists are about the harm done to women every single minute by the millions of people who want to cause us harm and have the power to do so, and intend to do so, and the way that harm continues to benefit even those who do not give two shits, if they are male.
It pains me and hurts me to even have to say this kind of thing because it evidences how beaten down we really are as feminists, as women, that we have to fear, fear, fear defending women, defending our own, loving our own, even when the facts are right there in black and white as to how a woman has been actually, materially harmed. Somehow what becomes so important is to hedge everything we say in terms that are way too redolent, in my ears, of “Oh, please, kind sir, I’m not trying to cause any trouble, really, I’m really a nice girl, honest, it’s really fine if you don’t do anything about this, I completely understand, I dont want to be any bother to you, I hope it won’t offend you for me to tell you about this,” the apologies women have had to offer over millennia for daring — DARING — to attempt to save our own goddamn lives.
A woman is hurt. Bitch.
A woman is hurt. Catherine Crouch.
Women are hurt. Vancouver Rape Relief.
Women are hurt. Vancouver Lesbian Connection.
Women are hurt. Michigan Women’s Music Festival.
Women are hurt. Those who perform at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival.
And on and on it goes.
The issue is not all the people who don’t give two shits about how and why it was that the women above got hurt. I’m not talking about them.
This is about politics. I am talking about the POLITICS of the people whose acts and behaviors in fact have and do hurt women.
Heart
The petition I referred to is here.
Note of even the persons who signed it, how many signed it anonymously or under pseudonyms.
Heart
This is just another example of how lesbian culture is being erased - either we live under the queer/LGBT umbrella (and are made virtually invisible in the process) or we can expect to be censored out of view anyway.
I used to volunteer on a popular chat site that had a small lesbian-only room. The main site was approached by a transwoman who wanted to create a trans chatroom. The site owner assumed that this would take place under the wing of our lesbian space. I couldn’t see why the transroom was not being offered its own space but was being incorporated into the lesbian space, with the assumption that the lesbian volunteers would help set it up and monitor it. As far as I could see, this would mean that our little space would be open to people who identified as male and straight! I was told categorically by the other lesbian volunteers that we’re all LGBT and that the transroom had to come under our wing. In the end, the transwoman turned down the offer of the space, as she said she identified as a straight woman and was rather unhappy about being grouped in with a “bunch of lesbians”. Had she, identifying as a straight woman, wanted our lesbian space, time and energy, it would have been given to her.
As other people have asked, why is this only happening to spaces (usually under-resourced) that are for marginalised women? Why, when transgendered people identify as male, female, gay and straight, is it assumed that lesbian space is the appropriate space to take? Why, when there’s any dissent, is it lesbian women who are expected to leave?
Is anyone noticing if transmen and transwomen are having different demands? It seems that they are being spoken about as if they were the same. I think it was mostly transwomen who led the opposition at Michigan, but transmen who object to Gendercator. I get that the gender binary is blurry, but are FTM and MTF speaking with one voice on these issues or are they being dumped into one category?
I am so highly offended and pissed that Bitch was blacklisted because she performed at Michigan. How many hundreds of thousands of us worked in one way or another at Michigan over the years, not just as performers but as craftswomen, cooks, tree cutters, plumbers, what have you. Sheesh. Should we all be blacklisted from DYKE events?
I mean, really, who is in charge here? Why did the organizers of the DYKE march cave instead of teliing the trans protesters to fuck off? Maybe the DYKE march should stop saying it’s trans inclusive to avoid this kind of HISteria.
A LOT of the people involved in fighting MichFest are NOT trans! They’re anti-womenspace, anti-lesbian, anti-womyn people. They’re defining the movement as “pro-trans” much as the anti-choice movement defines itself as “pro-life.” Smoke and mirrors, folks. Don’t fall for it!
When asked not to fall for something, what is exactly being expected? Should the fight to protect women born women spaces be abandoned because the face of the opposition may or may not represent a group it claims to be representing? If the wrong face is being used then it is the responsibility of the true owners of that face to fight with the people who are using their face misleadingly.
The answer is not for the women born women who are being attacked to quit. Your request for women born women to be passive can in fact be translated as anti-women born women space.
Is that what you are doing Amber, are you requesting that women born women not defend their women born women spaces?
And for the love of all that is worthwhile in this world, don’t waste your time fanning the flames.
Again this can be translated to you requesting that women born women surrender and not fight for their own space. Is that your intent? Do you wish women born women to be passive? If the face of the force is wrong, it is the responsibility of the people whose face is being used to fight the misused.
I’m pissed that Bitch can’t play at DYKE March. I’m pissed that anti-womenspace people can’t leave MichFest alone and attack it under the guise of being “pro-trans.” But I cannot get upset at every transwoman out there
There is no proof that women born women are or have been pissed at every transwoman out there. If anything, all the commenters so far have been very particular in saying that they personally support the transwomen in their lives. If transwomen are not behind invading women born women spaces then it should be transwomen who fight the people who are using their name, be it other transwomen or whoever else.
because when it comes down to it, we all just do the best we can to survive under the Patriarchy and while I take significant issue with the way some people choose to do it, I can’t justify anger at an entire group of people whose politics have be co-opted by a few.
Again, in the above comments and in Heart’s original post no one condemned an ENTIRE group. Women born women are protesting the people who are not women born women who are trying to invade women born women space. It is not the responsibliity of the women defending the space to uncovered who is actually doing the invading. If the people who are trying to invade the space say they are transwomen and in fact they are not, or they do not represent the collective motives of transwomen, then it is transwomen’s responsibility to put these space invaders in check.
Women born women have been rolling over far too long to be asked, no demanded (by being called transphobes and demonized in other ways) to give up their space because the invaders may or may not represent whoever they claim they are representing.
Hyperjoy7, great to see you’ve got your blog going again, I’ll get you back on the blogroll, and everybody else:
For those reading, Hyperjoy7 actually *saw* Gendercator and has done an extensive and thorough review of the showing of it here:
http://angrydykeme.blogspot.com/2007/06/gendercator-yet-another-charge-of.html
Some thoughts I had reading what you wrote, Hyperjoy7:
* I think the term “tranny” or “trannies” (and for those reading, the term was used once in the film and is the one thing Hyperjoy7 takes serious issue with) is one of those terms that is acceptable in some places and contexts and geographical locations and not others and is continually in flux, as words which are being reclaimed generally are. I agree pretty much with what you say about the use of the term, in general, but my thinking is, hate speech, epithets, are used in many films for many reasons as a function of context, to illustrate a point, for all kinds of reasons besides to offend the targets of the hate speech. From what you said about the film, it sounds like the woman being forced to have sex change surgery was expressing exasperation and deep resentment. If she used the term “fundies,” that might be similarly offensive to religious people (and I’m not remembering now what word the actress in question used for the religious people who were responsible for people having to choose gender.)
I mean, consider some of the words used in some of the spoken word stuff posted by transgender persons on the Fest boards in the past, stuff like telling wimmin to “suck [the transperson's] cock,” (which this person performs all over the place) or the pervasive use of misogynist hate speech in films and media, some of which goes unaddressed and is intended to be misogynist hate speech, it’s true, but some of which is intended to illustrate a point or punctuate a not-necessarily-sexist message.
* As to the distinction between transgender and transsexual, I agree with you except that I think the use of the term “transgender” obfuscates something that is really important from a feminist perspective, which you also touched on, which is that women have been transgressing gender forever and they still are and “transgender” is not a word they use for themselves. Even though they are women, transgressing gender. That term is too often used, in my experience, in ways which make the ongoing, herstoric transgression of gender by feminists and lesbians invisible.
Amananta: as usual, you have ovaries. Thank you for putting yourself out there in the way you have and for all of your really great insights and observations. And yes! Where is Catherine Crouch’s “free speech”? Where is Bitch’s “free speech”?
Hyppolita, I’m betting the organizers of the Dyke march caved because some of them were transwomen who “identify” as dykes. And because some were transmen who continue to be part of the dyke march anyway. :/
As to lumping transpersons all together, I think at one time it was mostly transwomen/MTFs who took issue with Michfest, but these days it’s transmen, transwomen, and various uninvolved outsiders who happily include themselves within the category “queer” via some letter of the alphabet, who think themselves to be allies to transpersons and who for some reason I can’t figure out feel entitled to weigh in in various aggressive and prick-like ways. One highly vocal leader of the attacks on Michfest most recently is a dyke, female, who identifies as trans. This person opposes transmen on the land but has steadfastly insisted that those who “identify” as women, without respect to their sex, should stroll on through the gates, whatevs.
I don’t really get the sense that it’s mostly transmen, either, who object to the Gendercator. Susan Stryker played a central role in getting it torpedoed in San Francisco and she is an MTF. And just based on what I’ve read and heard, I think it’s the whole “Queer”/GLBTQRSTUVWXYZ contingent that got on it the moment somebody got on the internet and started typing in “teh tranzphobez!” Without having any clue what the film even is.
But yeah. Like I said. I guess we wimmin are going to have to start submitting all of our writing/films/poetry/music for approval from now on, lest we all get boycotted and banned from our own events. By people who are, oftentimes, MALE!
Heart
Yeah, Kitty, so true that nobody on this thread has at any time demonized some general category of transpersons. My title is very specific: “transgender activists.” Transgender activists are not even necessarily, heck, maybe not even usually, transgender! A lot of the time, as Amber says, they are crusader types who are anti-feminist, anti-radfem, anti-lesbian-separatist, anti-women space, and this particular battle appeals to them for reasons which have more to do with misogyny than with supporting transgender persons (even if they are women, which is sad). This is especially true online where all sorts of clueless types who have ZERO transgender persons in their lives and never have had jump on the bandwagon mostly because they don’t like radical feminists and may not even *be* feminists.
If transwomen are not behind invading women born women spaces then it should be transwomen who fight the people who are using their name, be it other transwomen or whoever else.
Yes, it should be, and a tiny number have tried and have really paid for it.
However, there do seem to be some transpersons who are becoming vocal in their disagreements with the movement which speaks for them without their permission. I have a link I’ll post in a minute, I have to go find it.
But yeah, commenting as though anyone has ever remotely suggested or inferred, much less said, that all transpersons did anything at all is misleading. Nobody here has suggested anything like that.
Heart
Goodbye to Transgender and All That
Link originally posted by Brenda, who identifies as “WBT” (Woman Born Trans), and who has attended the Festival, to the Michfest boards.
Heart
“I cannot even talk about this in my own home without dealing with a load of histrionic accusations of bigotry from my wife, who is trans.”
It’s a comfort to know I’m not alone in that, Amananta.
O-M-G, I just read Suzan Cooke and it made me remember someone I read who fits in the category she is talking about, –transgender. I don’t remember where, I think it was sort of a busy blog/site. The author was/is a woman born woman who was in the process of transitioning, taking medicine and whatever else it entails and then decided she no longer wanted to go through with it after putting her family and friends through a living hell I can imagine. Out of curiosity I went through the archives looking for anything she wrote, and to my astonishment, each piece had an air of misogyny, sometimes more than an air, like she hated being a woman, but she did not go through becoming a man. It seems a bit of play-acting. The way people say many hippies (baby boomers) were all against the system and then sold the system out and became the capitalist’s pigs they were supposedly against. Like if being a hippie at that moment was the chic thing to do. There is something about this transgender thing that seems fraudulent or if that is too strong of a word, temporary. Not temporary as in waiting to transition, but temporary in the sense that when the play acting no longer thrills them, or makes them hip or allows them to play with the cool kids they can and will revert back to the gender that their sex born them with under a patriarchy. I wonder if there is a common age range for people who identify with transgender. Something that may pinpoint a time when someone is refusing to grow up. Like if I wanted to play like a man and reap the benefits of being a man but then come home to a husband and pretend to get along in the patriarchy as a heterosexual in order to benefit however that may benefit me. It seems opportunistic. Let me be whatever I can be within whatever situation that will thrill me the most at any given time. In a way, it reflects our current society. No one wants to fight the real cause that causes us pain so instead band-aids are created, outlets of escape, all the while the real problem is still there like an elephant in the room. That elephant being the patriarchy is oppressing, suppressing, and causes repressing.
From Cooke:
The transgender community is like a cult that pounds extremely negative messages into the heads of people treated for TS/HBS. Its fear mongering aims to convince post-sex reassignment surgery people to stay in the transgender ghetto rather than assimilate in to the world of members of their new sex.
Thanks Heart for responding. I am going to make sure I am more aware when I read and use trans-gender vs trans-sexual
Hey, Kitty, you know, I wasn’t really making a statement about the use of the words “transgender” and “transsexual,” because it seems to me they are terms under negotiation? At least transgender is, for sure. In other words, I wasn’t endorsing what the writer of that article wrote from the standpoint of feminist politics. I think the article is good and honest, and I see what she’s saying and really relate to it. She’s saying she’s been tokenized, her reality harnessed to an agenda she doesn’t share, a politics she doesn’t believe in and a group she wants no part of.
The point I mostly wanted to make was that what is referred to as the “transgender movement,” people who practice a certain flavor of transgender politics, can be, to understate, extremely heavy handed in the direction of people who take issue with their politics– in the case of the writer of this article, including post-SRS transwomen who have no interest in “identifying” as trans. The heavy-handedness in this case extends to all the things I’ve listed and many more.
The other points in the article I liked were the way the author points out that presenting or dressing consistently with gender stereotypes, no matter who is doing it, is not a feminist act and so there is nothing “trans” gender about it. It is complicity with gender stereotypes.
And I liked the way the author confirms what many of us have been saying for a long, long time. She says she works or has worked with lesbian separatists and it was no big.
See, this is what I mean. This is a complicated situation which pertains to a specific marginalized group of people, when it is Michfest we are talking about. To barge in like a blankety blank prick and tell Michfest women what to do and how to do it — ignorantly, too, without knowledge of herstory, no insights as to what the situation even is, just because someone called somebody a transphobe, is so wrong. Nobody else, no other marginalized group, would be expected to even pay any heed to that kind of aggression and intrusion.
And then to take it to a whole new level and punish women simply for performing at Michfest?
Just wrong.
As to why people transition, all the various impulses and reasons and so on, you know, that is a whole nother difficult subject which I think transpersons would have to weigh in on and so I’d rather not even get into that here. If you want to know the truth, I don’t really have anything to say about that, about someone doing whatever she or he feels is necessary to be all right in the world. I have my ideas about things politically, of course, about what will and will not result in positive change for women, but on a practical level, people do what they do, I am not really interested in criticizing them.
What this is about, though, is that favor, that giving the benefit of the doubt, being generous, not being returned to me. It’s about how wrong it is for people to be ostracized and boycotted because they violate a specific party line to which many the movement claims don’t hold themselves! What this is about is being bullied by people who do not have the best interests of women in mind.
Heart
Okay. I’m sorry. I think what I was trying to work out in my own thoughts inadvertently diverted your bigger point. Not my intentions. I think I got the bigger point already and proceeded to working out some of the smaller details that I am not comfortable with and wanted to resolve. I forget we are on a stage and the dialogue that I (or anyone else) contribute can divert the original intent. I type so fast that I probably put it out there too fast. Tis what I need to remember when it comes to activism exchange,—all the possible diversions.
What this is about, though, is that favor not being returned to me. It’s about how wrong it is for people to be ostracized and boycotted because they violate a specific party line to which many who have “transitioned” don’t hold themselves! What this is about is being bullied by people who do not have the best interests of women in mind.
Yes indeed!
Hey, Kitty, no need to apologize! I knew you were working it out by writing it out. I just know how these things tend to go and so try to keep them from going certain places.
Heart
Heart: “the author points out that presenting or dressing consistently with gender stereotypes, no matter who is doing it, is not a feminist act and so there is nothing ‘trans’ gender about it. It is complicity with gender stereotypes.”
I thought that the “trans” in transgender/transsexual referred not to a value judgment “trans” as transgressive but to the state of being on the opposite/different side (like in chemistry), which set up for the term “cisgender”.
I’m sure someone else has said it in a more articulate way than me, but I think that supporting women’s spaces does not have anything to do with whether you are pro or anti trans. I think that it’s about supporting the right of a group that’s been traditionally marginalized to define themselves and their own spaces.
Hey, Littoralmermaid, this was actually what the author said:
Good-bye to all the word games that try to turn “woman” from being descriptive of any adult female into a word that describes someone who acts and dresses in a certain manner. I’m too much of a feminist not to see that one as having the potential to oppress all women.
So I think it “works” either way, really. Dressing in a certain matter equalling woman isn’t the “opposite” or “different” side, it’s just same old same old. Which from the perspective of feminism means it is not transgressive.
But yes, I completely agree with you– supporting women’s spaces doesn’t have to do with positions on transgender at all.
Heart
???
this is one issue I know nothing about, or understand it, as far as trans this and trans that and what the hell is gendercator?
I get the part about a woman’s only space though…but the more I read to try to understand the more confusing it gets.
i’m at a loss for words, :0, i know shock huh, lol,
but what little i do get, thus far, is the whole issue with transwomen? [is that when a man becomes a woman? or is that transman???] but anyway,
is that their ‘desire’ for, or no, what they feel is ‘attractive’ about being a woman, is actually the very thing that is the source of oppression of womyn, and therefore that is where the root of conflict lies?
so in that, in a way they reinforce the oppression or justifications of oppression or paternalist domination over womyn by setting up those patriarchial definitions of feminity as the goal?
is it something like that…just trying to figure this out, i’ve read similar discourses on anarcha-feminist sites and though i am aware of GLBT as far as issues on human rights goes,
this protest against Michfest, seems to me a bit odd, as isn’t the intent of Michfest to fight those oppressions therefore, it would be sort of equivalent in letting conservative pro-patriarchial womyn, lets say right wing, come to Michfest and attempt to change the beliefs or create an uncomfortable environment whether complicit or not…
???
Tasha
Yeah, Tasha, you’ve got the idea.
Michfest is a community. And I think you should come to it! You too, Kitty. All the women here. You women would, I believe, love it. I wish every girl, every woman, would come to Michfest, and all the little boys to age 10, too, although they go to Brother Sun camp at the Festival, but it is an amazing place in which to sprout a little boy and help him resist becoming a man.
Anyway, it’s a community. It’s really what remains, in community form, of the 60s counterculture. Women have been meeting on womyn’s land now for 36 years. Michfest is the world the way womyn would create it, would run it, or as close an approximation as is possible. There are womyn at Michfest who have been attending every year for 36 years and have never missed a Festival. The land is lesbian-owned and Fest is lesbian-run and is a lesbian Festival, but it is open to all girls and women and, again, boys through age 10.
The roots of Michfest are in radical feminism/lesbian separatism.
Over the years, there have been, as you might imagine, many, many difficulties and conflicts and contested issues, but the Festival survives and thrives. There were issues over boys on the land and the compromise was, babies/toddler boys through age 4 allowed on the land, and then Brother Sun Camp, which is on the land but boys 5-10 do not go into the Festival, proper, they stay with their moms and the Festie workers in their own cool space with activities designed for them. There were issues over the practice of SM on the land in the 90s, when SM was a big deal. They were somewhat, though not entirely, resolved, and there are lingering difficulties. And there have been issues over male persons on the land, i.e., “transwomen,” (male-born persons who present as women). There are some current issues over “transmen” on the land (female-born persons who identify and present as men), but not so many, in part because transmen generally identify as men and don’t want to go to the Festival, which is a women’s festival.
Michfest is for those who were born female and who have lived as girls and women all of our lives. The idea is that for all of the differences between us, as girls and women, we share a specific experience of subordination, from the time of our birth, under male heterosupremacy. At the Festival, we heal and we bond in ways which are more difficult in the outside world. Fest is clothing optional. It is on hundreds of beautiful wooded acres. Everything is built each year by womyn, and taken down each year by womyn so that wildlife, trees and the forest are impacted as little as possible. Womyn camp in tents. There are special areas for disabled womyn and deaf womyn with facilities to meet their special needs. All of the Festival is accessible via wheelchair and everything is signed by an interpreter for the deaf, including all the music. There are areas for crones, over 50s, over 40s. There are chem-free areas, family areas, clean-and-sober areas to camp in. There is a womyn of color tent run by and open to womyn of color only for meetings, gatherings, but with a porch where womyn of all races can hang out.
The week starts on Tuesday night, really, with a ritual out in the meadow under the stars, with drummers and singing and the spiral dance. (All week long, there are womyn drumming in the background.) There are workshops presented Wed-Sun, some “intensives” and then general workshops. Any Festie can facilitate a workshop by sending in her information by the due date. (Which was yesterday.) The workshops are on every subject under the sun, everything from yoga to Reiki, to radical feminism, to transgender, to internalized misogyny, to Amazon skills, to drumming, One World Choir, breastcasting, astrology, singing in sacred circle. Woman musicians perform every day from Wed. on, afternoon and evening. There is also spoken word, there are poetry readings, dances. Vegetarian meals are served in a community tent every day, breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Every Festie serves one or two workshifts of four hours each as part of attending Fest. Each year, Festies make a quilt together in the quilters tent. On Saturday night, the year’s quilt is paraded in to the main concert area, “Night Stage,” then there is the Gaia Girls parade (Gaia Girls are 5-12 and have their own tent and activities all week). Then come the belly dancers, the stilters and the drummers.
There are alternative medical services and supplies available in the Womb, as well as womyn who will hug you if you are having a hard time. There is Oasis for women struggling emotionally or spiritually where counselors are available. There are recovery meetings all week. There are womyn of color sweat lodges and sweat lodges for healing from sexual abuse and rape.
There’s a Lois Lane run each year. All the paths and camping areas have female names: Amazon Acres, Lois Lane, Crone Heights. There is the Cuntree Store. There is a huge crafters’ tent where womyn sell beautiful art, crafts, books, clothing they’ve made. There is drumming every night in the Triangle around the fire. Showers are taken in outdoor showers– an amazing, amazing experience. All the soap, etc. is biodegradable and everything is recycled.
No males are allowed on the land and no male voices are to be on the land, including in music that is played.
The Festival, for its flaws and human frailities, is a magical place for those of us born female. When I walked through the gates the first year I went (2004) I started weeping and wept off and on for all the days I was there. When you arrive, womyn greet you and say, “Welcome home.” I recognized this place as the place I had dreamt of and imagined all of my life and didn’t know existed.
Fest is peaceful. There are womyn-created expectations which womyn honor, but there is no enforcement other than womyn reminding each other what the expectations are (like put your butts in the Altoid tins womyn save all year for Fest, don’t throw them on the path.
The idea is that on the land, womyn may be, present, as they are, free of the sexist expectations of the surrounding culture. Our lives, our bodies, the way we look are celebrated on the land in all of the diversity we know, as womyn, exists among us. There are many womyn on the land who are gender-nonconforming, who are bearded, for example, who, in the outside world, are “read” as men. On the land, they don’t have to be concerned about the difficulties they face because they don’t conform. They are home there, among other womyn who respect and appreciate their lived experiences.
There are a certain number of transwomen who have intended to come onto the land despite the fact that it is womyn’s land, designed for those of us born female, who have lived all of our lives as girls and women. From the perspective of radical feminism, it is not transgressive to “change” one’s sex whether via presentation or surgery. Why not live as one is, celebrate who we are, and thus broaden, force open, the sex stereotypes which confine all of us? That’s what the festival is about. Females, born into the “sex class”, judged all of our lives by how fuckable we are or aren’t, coming together to heal in a context in which the community values and ethics are completely different and womon-centered and out from under the noses of those who were not born into the “sex class”.
Although we don’t believe, those of us who are radfems, that changing one’s sex to match the expectations of patriarchy is ultimately helpful to women, we are, in general, allies to transpersons, recognizing that we share common struggles. But the festival week is for females, only. Some in the transgender movement say this is discriminatory, bigoted, transphobic, and there are two organizations which they created just to oppose the Festival as space for females only. And they have staged demonstrations every year for at least 10 years, including *on the land*.
So, that’s some beginning, basic information about it.
Heart
I don’t know what it is, but I find that my posts to any internet venue lately accomplish the exact opposite of what I intend them to. I think I’m making what is a concise and clear point but then, when reading reactions to my comments, I realize that what people have taken from them are so far beyond what I truly think or what I intended to convey that I wonder how else I can possible effectively communicate! It’s got me a bit nonplussed, and I’m not sure how to handle it other than to post less and just read and think more.
All that is to say, Kitty & Heart, I’ve read your responses to my post but I’m not going to respond and it’s not because I’m ignoring you or have nothing to say. Just that I don’t think I did a very good job of communicating my stance on this in the first place and in the interest of not confusing what I’m trying to say further, I’m just going to hold my tongue. But I’m still reading, for sure, and appreciate all the stuff you all are saying!
Ah, shucks, Amber.
But thanks for clarifying.
As to the Gendercator, Tasha, it’s a film created by a feminist lesbian filmmaker who is highly regarded. It is science fiction, about a future in which, because of the Religious Right and the transgender movement, persons whose sex is “ambiguous” are required by law to “choose” what sex they will be, and then surgeries and hormones are provided to them.
Some in the transgender movement didn’t like the sounds of this and they were successful in getting the showing of the film canceled in San Francisco.
Heart
Oh, OK, makes sense now…
but I wonder, well I saw the documentary [and i don't remember the name but i remember the film i could probably look it up...maybe i will here in bit, yea, i will, let me see if i can find it Gwen Araujo Story, yea thats the one...well i watched it and the whole time to me she was a woman, and this film really touched my heart,
yea she was born a man body wise but emotionally and i would even go as far to say spiritually she was a woman, now she did personafi the traits of feminity etc that like i suggested are the traits that men use to justify or in that bio-determined excuse to demean all womyn etc., [if i said that right]
and it made me question a lot of things about gender and so forth…and i felt that the entire time it was like Gwen was in this place of no where to belong really, and maybe its because of knowing what that is to some degree [due to childhood, etc]
but, could there be, like, lets say, four days added where, like it wouldn’t have to be all the womyn stay as due to time constraints, etc…but like, at the end of Michfest, couldnt’ there be like a four day camp of like, a type of ‘introduction to sisterhood’ where there could be workshops to work like a
bridge….
between transwomen and natural born womyn [and i could see where for transwomyn that could present a conflict as many do believe that though they may be in 'body' a man they are in fact, emotionally, spiritually, and in some ways, physically in how they feel differently on levels than lets say a man in his natural state [and i realize this is going to open up some disagreement but its worth looking at] and they feel more woman–
maybe for us thats hard to understand but I have to wonder…now I realize that opens up all sorts of whole new questions as to what gender is, sex etc….and maybe its not the same for every individual…now regarding gendercator, o.k. yea i can see that as a rigid patriarchial social forced, key on ‘forced’ construct, in making one choose…
even in cases of people born with both sexes [and i met a woman who was born this way] and in some cases they wait to see if one sex leans more to another but in one case i knew, a couple in church btw [when i used to go to church] they had to choose and i remember the home study group talking about this and they said the it was the hardest most difficult decision the couple had to make…
and you know i’ve often wondered about that..the woman i met, i met her at a bar [when i used to work in bars] and she told me in the bathroom, i had heard and thought ‘yea right’ but she told me, told me she was born with both genitalia and that she grew up with them until she was 12, and she started her menstrual and thats why they chose her female side…but in ways she had some of the qualities of male sex too, and she was very open in discussing this with me and you know she was the sweetest person and i’ve never forgotten her, and i see her as a woman…no doubt nothing…
now i’ve read some stuff online on trans boards and yea, i mean some of its ‘out there’ but then, i think there is some that is like ‘out there’ on several communities and i sort of think its alot to do with the fact that ‘westerners have too damn much time on their hands’, like in most places people are worried about where their next meal is coming from or whether the drought or the rebels will dry up the fields or shoot them or ax them to death…
and here we are in the west like, sort of obsessed with some of the most crazy things, like, ok, S&M, or BDSM…i’m sure that if you went to lets say, parts of Africa and presented some of that they’d look at westerners as if they are absolutely gone mad…
[sorry reading a book right now, by Rhodesian author, i read too many books from foreign authors] but anyhow…
while i totally concur with you all on the need for womyn’s space apart from natural born men, ok that makes perfect sense, and that week should be kept that way,
however, this too is a great opportunity, lets say, add a four day or five day workshop, like i said, a Bridge of sorts, to open the pathway for discourse, healing, communication, and in that process, i think there could be some findings on why men [as far as emotionally, etc] are so bound to patriarchy other than just the priviledge…the effects of patriarchy on men, boys, bust down some of those ‘myths’ of what womyn are or what they think…not only that it would be good for transwomyn too…
ok i probably am not saying this right, but i was thinking about this last night [see i have really bad insomia, since childhood so i sit up and think, can't sleep so i think, alot...know crazy huh, but anyway] i read some of this discussion yesterday so started thinking and theorizing and though i have to be honest i haven’t read that much about the whole psychology and issues that trans deal with and the conficts and so forth..
just from what i was thinking o.k., but like, its almost like, trans are like ‘keys’ to both worlds, like they know what it is to be men, even if lets say, they have always identified as womyn but in society they’ve had to be forcefully [and really, i mean its often a life threatening if they aren't] identified with other men, so surely they’ve known the psychology of men and most likely the intimate psychology of men that men don’t show womyn, you know how men can see through other men that they dare not show anyone else, esp the patriarchial world [this varies in countries]
but then too, they’ve been treated with contempt in some ways [i would have to say it is different from what a natural born woman deals with as far as internalization, etc...so no doubt, that Difference is there] but emotionally, or even just a little, transmen or sorry transwomyn do relate to that a bit…
but one difference i did see, when thinking on this,
is that, 1. when womyn are attacked, in what ever way, its because, they are, womyn, natural born womyn, etc…
where as, 2. when transwomyn are attacked, in what ever way, its because, i would say majority of time…as i’ve not done the studies, they are, due to being ‘men’ who’ve left the constructs of natural born men or what is perceived or expected from them as men in a male world.
i think there is a lot to be learned from transwomyn/and transmen [and i will add something to that here in bit] but in the same regard,
and this i Have seen on discussions, transwomyn can learn alot about what it truly is to be a woman and sometimes in discussions i’ve read, its like they ‘empathise’ but they don’t really grasp it on the ‘inside’ what it is, to be from the day you are born, to be singled out and treated differently because you are a woman…its not that they don’t try, but it is sometimes like they still see things from how a ‘man would look at how womyn feel, etc..’, some transwomyn, i haven’t met all transwomyn and so I don’t WANT TO GENERALIZE HERE…
see to me its like i do see a huge difference between transwomyn and gay men, a huge difference, because its like the transwoman has crossed over, in many ways…and like that movie, about Gwen, the part in the end where she [as a little girl/well transgirl but i saw her as a girl] was running through the forest and the bird…[i raise doves, well only have one now but doves you know are unique creatures...the ringneck doves, they are in many ways androgenous, they can, like two males bond for life or two females or they can half way through life bond sex by same sex then later change...they are somewhat fluid in that, where as, parrots now, aren't...i alway thought that was something too in that the Ringneck/or White Dove is the symbol of the Holy Spirit--something to chew on there....]
i don’t know but i sort of understand the frustration of transwomyn [not so much transmen as i have issues with men in general, no offense, not anything against transmen at all, just my own conflicts there...and i think too, because my bio-mom was so in ways like a man...so understand where that comes from...maybe in a few years..right now its just a bit too painful, as i'm working through some issues there...and maybe that has something to do with why i can sort of see something in this whole conflict...especially in that forced gender or sex choice as i grew up having that abuse...in so many ways...]
but anyhow…to the transgenders here, i think the whole getting shows cancelled and everything sends out the wrong message and does more to defeat getting being heard and understood….and maybe thats partly due to working out so much, you know….because it would be, it seems, like having your foot in two different worlds, though linked yet divided, and painfully so…added to that, the constructs that maybe many have taken on the negative constructs without really realizing…maybe in like 50 years those will be understood more and we’ll see transgenders actually revolting against those constructs and traits that they find today, appealing…
because they haven’t had the experience with them as long as natural born womyn, maybe/???
[don't get offended i'm pondering here...]
but anyway, maybe a four or five day workshop, after Michfest, a Bridge, could have some powerful potential, not just for transwomyn/transmen [or how you would set that up, have no idea] but then too, could possibly open up some avenues in how to address changing patriarchy on a social psychology level, in other words, if the sides would learn to really ‘listen’ rather than force views [and i've noticed this on some of the feminist boards that do have many transgender womyn on them, its like, this wall that they butt heads on constantly...especially in that whole area of feminity, transwomyn love [well the ones i've read, like i said, in no way is this a generalization and i haven't studied or observed enough o.k....] and then, the womyn will be on the total opposite side of the pole and sometimes, yea, they will be nasty to the transgenders, defensive or angry, its like ok. you’re a man and you’re glorifying the things that have been the issue of my being raped, topics like that and boy i mean you can see the hurt and rage and i can tell, the transwomyn feel the pain and empathy but at the same time,
well its like, a white woman, feeling empathy for a woman of color, but no matter how much empathy you may have, you really can’t grasp it in the gut because you’ve never walked outside and been fearful,
because of the color of you skin, not because you are only a woman or because of class but because of the color of you skin and so its sort of like that….
why womyn of color, working in feminism especially those who are very aware of racism within their own race or racism between ethnicity are so powerful in relating to womyn those barriers and conflicts and tensions….
btw it was a friend of mine, an African American who shared that with me one day when i said, yea i understand, i’ve never said that sense, because i may understand on a surface level or from what i see my daughter go through or from dealing with racism which is a little different in scope from white men because i have a bi-racial child..
i will not understand ‘internally’ what that is, to live with that past knowledge of history and present to be singled out because of my skin color…[maybe reverse racism but even That, is different because its base on 'anger towards racism' if that makes any sense...not justifying it, its just as sinister, but the root is different]
so anyway…blah blah blah…
it does bring up some really uncomfortable and yes, dangerous issues [because those eugenics and those misogynists are always there to take whatever progress or understanding and use to twist and force us right back into...if you know what i mean]
but where there is darkness, there is light too.
to close, on the transmen, did you see the Nightline special, two years ago i think, where this woman, well a transman, went to this all male bonding thing, and during she started seeing conflict and the female sex cropping up inside her and that brought up some real conflict in her….
and well she wrote a book and i never did get it but that documentary always got me to wonder too….
no easy answers on this, thats for sure…but maybe, maybe there’s something that could come out of this,
that is positive, for both womyn, men, transwomyn, transmen, gay, children, etc etc etc…
if anything, another door in understanding the ’strength in patriarchy over men in that psychological way’ and in understanding, again other than just simplifying it to just priviledge or bio-determinism, which i know its easy to do….as we’ve been hurt by it for eons…’ but in understanding the effects on a deep psyche level..we can see other ways,
in changing it and overthrowing it.
And half of that probably came out sounding like kaka but oh well…
peace
Tasha
I would like to add that I use the spelling ‘womyn’ and the other alternate spelling of the words woman. Something to consider, when the word womyn is used, it means born female, nothing to do with men, man, being born male.
So, as a consideration for the definition and her-storical meaning of the word womyn and all of the other alternative spellings of that word, those words were created by those born female to mean born female. Born Female only. It is out of place to refer to a person born male as wom’y’n.
Someone attempted to comment yesterday alleging they were from Boston and had the inside scoop, and insisting that transgender activists were not directly responsible for Bitch’s performance being canceled. This person said inviting Bitch had been someone’s “mistake.”
I didn’t approve the comment because I don’t think it was a woman who wrote it, and the comments are to be woman-only here. I also didn’t approve it because it set off my bullshit detectors and sounded like a lie.
Which it was.
So I’m glad I didn’t approve it. I approve bullshit too often, really, because I am always trying to be so goddamn “fair.” :/
Anyway, posted elsewhere by someone who went to the Boston Dyke March, THIS is what is true:
So. What “dialog” did the writer of this comment, or women traveling 200 miles to see Bitch, have the benefit of? What’s up with this extolling of “inter-community dialog,” when a bunch of womyn were completely excluded from it and a decision was made to which they completely objected, in favor not of dykes but of transgender activists?
Heart
dont’ put me in a box,
had enough of that from bio-mom thank you
i chose to use the term womyn not for the reason you mentioned…in fact i wasn’t even aware of many of the ‘woman oriented polemic and philosophy’ then…
i chose to use ‘y’ as a revolt against the male dominated ‘polemic’ and also the deliberate ‘burial of womyn’s contributions to far left revolutions’ by BOTH MEN AND WOMYN in the far left, in the documents and information of far left ideology and revolutions especially…
the only womyn ever mentioned were a few ‘tokens’ who were under and somewhat obedient to the male polemic [Marxism/Leninism, etc]
so in my research and struggle against that i decided to chose Y instead of e, to represent ‘womyn’s political autonomy’,
i was studying Alexandria Kollantie and Clara Zetkin at the time, it had nothing, NOTHING to do with lesbian separatism or any kind of separatism, in why i chose to use it…
for me it was a revolution that was personal, within the far left framework and when i started using womyn in essays i submitted to several far left boards and publications it caused quite a stir, and for a year i was harassed over it, targeted, and i wasn’t even aware of the entire political and feminist background/development of the use of womyn, wimmin, womun, etc…
how i evolved and my personal revolution against NOT only the forced gender ‘construction’ or ‘deconstruction’ within the far left but also against the ‘forced deconstruction and construction to fit into some woman’s mold, my bio mom, in which i dealt with for years, and she was a second wave feminist’, but she was too, a fascist, and a misogynist though manifested differently…not in the right wing sort of way that is…
so yes i tend to view things from a entirely different angle with a bent, not bias, but a bent, i don’t see things on every level that this group does or that group…
in addition,
so yea, i’m out of place,
and you want to know something,
thats just fine with me, I define who I am as a Woman, Womun, Womb-in,
AND NO ONE ELSE,
MALE OR FEMALE
Tasha
(Sorry if I hijack the thread, Heart, but I wanted to clear a few things up)
Tasha -
“even in cases of people born with both sexes [and i met a woman who was born this way] and in some cases they wait to see if one sex leans more to another”
“told me she was born with both genitalia and that she grew up with them until she was 12, and she started her menstrual and thats why they chose her female side…but in ways she had some of the qualities of male sex too”
What do you mean, being born with both sexes? There are people who have ovotestes (a few thousand cases ever documented IIRC), who are usually assigned as male and usually look male; there are people who have XY chromosomes but cannot process testosterone, so they are assigned as female, but I don’t know if being “born with both sexes” is the correct term for it.
In cases of ambiguous genitalia, an infant’s genitalia doesn’t “look” right by medical standards, but most of those people are surgically assigned a sex (usually female) at birth. I think there are a few cases where ambiguous genitalia develops in puberty, but it’s most common for it to be assigned at birth.
I hope I don’t come off as being mean and I don’t doubt that you’re telling the truth, but there are a lot of incorrect perceptions about intersex that I wanted to clear up.
I won’t derail or hog any more of Heart’s bandwidth, so if you want to correspond more about this, feel free to contact me.
Hey, Tasha, more history/context might be helpful in understanding what Uppity said. I don’t think her comment was so much in response to anything you’ve written as it had to do with some other issues around the use of the word “womyn” and derivations of the word.
The word “womyn” was used by lesbian separatism/radical feminism initially back in the 70s, for reasons similar to the ones you’ve given for choosing that spelling. I’ve noticed anarchafeminists using this spelling as well, and I think it’s great! I think by now many women have seen these spellings and find them appealing without really knowing where they originated.
A problem in the lesbian separatist/lesbian feminist community has been that at various times, women using those alternative spellings have been mocked for it, ridiculed and despised for it, and not just for the spellings but for changing their names to names they chose, and for just being women and lesbians. In other words, off and on there has been a lot of shaming of women who have used these spellings which was done for sexist and lesbophobic reasons, quite often by men and transgendered persons. Very hurtful.
When it became apparent that the shaming and harrassment wouldn’t keep women from using those spellings, the tactics changed and the spellings began to be used by transgendered persons, i.e., “transwomyn,” which is, again, colonizing, in that the reason for the spellings in the first place for women who adopted them was to reject the old spellings’ male connotations and history. So it’s like a tug of war, it’s a power struggle: womyn name ourselves, men or transgendered persons harrass us, then when that doesn’t intimidate us, they attempt to steal our spellings and self-definitions.
This is a safe space on the internet to discuss these issues where almost no other place is safe. Anywhere else womyn talk about this, we are going to be trolled to some degree. So I think Uppity was mainly seizing the moment to talk about something that is really troubling that we don’t get to talk about very often.
As to being out of place, I am not sure exactly what you mean, but just feel like saying that Women’s Space/The Margins always draws women who feel they are out of place, or who really are out of place in various ways. I always like to remind women that one characteristic of brilliant women is, they always feel like they are out of place. (There is research which establishes this. :)) We are quite the diverse group in here, from really different backgrounds and in really different places in our lives. I’ve been married three times, and have 11 kids and four grandkids, was a radical fundamentalist, and reinvented my politics even more radically after I was excommunicated. Some of the women here have lived all of their lives as lesbian separatists. It doesn’t matter, though, you know? We still share so much in common as women.
Heart
Hey, Littorall Mermaid, I keep thinking about what you said above:
For example I’m Asian-American and if Asian immigrants in the US wanted an “Asian immigrant” space, I wouldn’t automatically think that they are bigots or denying that I’m Asian for not inviting me.
I was mulling over the idea of transgendered persons as “immigrants” so far as gender goes. It’s an interesting exercise to think in those terms. One thought I had is, people recognize they can’t just immigrate because they decide to; they realize they are going to have to investigate the laws, seek the approval of the country they want to go to, and so on. When it comes to women, though, there are no comparable considerations. We are told what’s going to happen and if we raise any objections or even want to discuss it, that makes us “phobic.” There is *such* disrespect for female persons!
Heart
Heart,
you know i didn’t even think of any of that when i typed ‘transgender womyn’, its just such a habit for me to use womyn,
i do deliberately [and probably shouldn't do this and i'll explain why] sometimes use wom’e'n,
but thats usually when i am confronting pro-patriarchial though they claim feminism in the far left [yea i admit i'm sort of a smart ass that way but there's a history there in that confrontation in the far left as far as i'm at...though i have been working on not being so sarcastic on some issues...but--- na thats bull, yea i am still sarcastic when i confront the wom'e'n in the far left [wom'e'n referring to women who side in with the men against womyn on issues especially issues that are extremely hurtful to womyn] figure i need to be honest with myself there…i have thought about not being so confrontational on some issues but i get so angry at some of the ‘planned policies’ and its because if these people whom i know ever get into power we’ve been had, seriously…[i'm referring to pro-Stalinists types, pro-Fascists and pro-Nationalist Fascists types here/including pro-or apologetic Religious fascist types]
so yea to them, i’ve deliberately used ‘wom’e'n’, i’m militant on addressing the pro-misogynist policies and i’m nasty some times…but i tried to be like, polite and professional to revolutionaries and thats like, giving someone about to shoot you with a gun, the bullets to shoot you with…
but i wasn’t aware of the depth of hostility of some transgenders [should i say 'political transgender women'??] to lesbians, etc….
i have read the hostilities in lesbian communties to bi-sexuals AND vice-versa… [and see both sides and concur with some on one and concur with some on the other, and YES I DO SEE HOW MEN HAVE INFILTRATED THIS AS A MEANS OF ENCROACHING...
and YES i can see this