Genderbitch: An angry trans girl's blog

Bold is yours, not bold is mine.

HBS was an attempt to further remove and define those who were Benjamin Type V and Type VI True Transsexuals from the transgender movement after they, the transgender, hijacked the term transsexual and sanctioned its use by anyone on the planet who presented some form of gender variance.

And yet absolutely no evidence of the transgender movement at large actually hijacking the word transsexual exists. Currently, the transgender movement at large uses the word, "transgender" to describe some form of gender variance. Not transsexual. The closest thing you could claim to a hijack is that the transgender movement absorbed the transsexual movement socially as a subset of the transgender movement. Which is less of a hijack and more an attempt to tie together an alliance of mutual interest (whether that mutual interest exists is a very arguable point)

At the onset, I might say you are quite right in saying that no absolute definitive cause for transsexualism has been found, but there is a general consensus that it is due to hormonal anomalies occurring in the very initial stages of pregnancy. And, to that, one can add roughly 200 other papers to the premise that transsexuality is a medical issue and anything but a sociological one

It's wise to not make strawmen arguments. In no way did I say that transsexuality was not a medical issue. Considering my support of there being a disorder diagnosis like GID, I'm fairly certain that would constitute a clear support of it being medical in nature. But where is the evidence for intersexualism in the brain as a cause? I've yet to see 1 paper that has countered that paper from 2006. That was what I was bringing up. As for hormonal anomalies, where is this general consensus? Where are these papers? I'm well aware of the papers dealing with GID's unresponsiveness to psychotherapy and responsiveness to physical transition, all of which establish the medical need and nature. But how many scientific papers establish that an in utereo hormone level anomaly could be the cause? Hypothesis and speculation is great in the scientific world but it isn't theory. So give me some links. Give me some material. Show me this consensus.

No offense, but that paragraph says quite a lot about your lack of knowledge on the issue you are writing about. Particularly the part of where you say: “So really, why are people thinking that gay folk and whatnot are responsible for the way transsexual is set up? The gay, lesbian and bisexual folks, with the trans folks that wouldn’t be categorized as transsexual did not make these categories. Science did.”

Science had nothing to do with setting up transgender, the term was and is an invented word popularized by those not transsexual, but gender variants primarily associated with the GLB. The transgender then decided that transsexual was a part of that group; nothing could be further from the truth…the only people who believe that are the transgender themselves. It may surprise you, but if you had been around 15 years or so ago and said you were transgender most of the people who you were talking to wouldn’t have even had a clue what you meant.

No offense, but you really need to actually read what you just quoted and the context around it before you talk about the words in it. In that post, I said transsexual is a scientific word (including all of the categories of transsexual, which was why it was plural). Not transgender. And frankly, whether transsexual could be absorbed into transgender as a group has nothing to do with whether either of the words are scientific. If you would like to discuss whether TG should have TS within the group, that's fine, we can do that. But I would appreciate a lack of strawman fallacies (claiming I said TG was scientific) and a bit more consistency (you said earlier that TG hijacked TS as a way to label all TG as TS, now it's TG absorbed TS as a part of its group, which is your claim? They contradict.) on your side while we finish up discussing the HBS fiasco.

Those of us who are true transsexuals are not separatists for that implies that at some point we were actually a part of the transgender…and we have never been. We are not elitists either, we are no better than they are. But…we are very different. We are not something less than or other than women…we are female. And we have no intrinsic tie to the GLB or Homosexual T “just because”. We have the same position as the mainstream does…a women can’t have a penis…and males can’t have babies. No female on the planet would ever, ever want to retain their penis…guys simply don’t want to conceive children…all of that is the result of the transgender gender benders everyday clap trap and living in the fantasy that anyone can just say they are something and they will be it.

Separatism is in and of itself, simply a movement to leave another thing. It does not imply that you should have stayed or that you need to stay. So it applies as a term. As for the associations with GLB and TG, those are more built from mutually beneficial arrangements and sociological goals, not similarity in type. Unfortunately for you, at least some of society does not see you as female and will not see you as female. They will treat you in a way that is consistent with how they treat gender variant people. Having protections built into law to protect folk from being fired for perceived gender variance (did you know? Even straight cissexual folks can get fired for perceived gender variance, shock and awe) and other such things is beneficial to us and them. No matter how well you "pass", no matter how much you tell someone about your medical disorder, you will need these protections because society will screw you. Hence, mutually beneficial arrangement.

GLB is a little more iffy, that one I'll give you. One would say that we have mutually beneficial ties (the fact that because society will not see you as female it also sees your sexuality as gay, etcetera) the fact is, they have fucked over not only transsexuals but also transgendered folks on a regular basis due to the wonders of cis privilege. So I can understand wanting to just cut ties and be done with the betrayals. That's really neither here nor there however over whether or not you're a separatist and why HBS is full of shit.

Now as for your essentialist claims (a woman can't have a penis), I really wonder if you realize how badly that contradicts your claim that you are female/woman 100% and always have been. Just thought you should know.

That’s also incorrect. Just because someone is gender variant, transition to female, and even though you don’t mention it, even be successful, doesn’t mean the person is transsexual, it only means that it is a man who is successfully living as a female in a social role. True transsexuals transition in a social way and much more importantly, do so physically as well via GRS…surgery being the dividing line between true transsexuals and everyone else. And while there evidence, though not definitive proof as to a medical, biophysiological reason for true transsexualism, there is exactly no proof that transsexualism has a social cause.

You came from Dys' post correct? If you had absorbed any of that you would realize that, no, you are incorrect. Transsexual encompasses all formulations of GID, including those who don't even seek surgery. You may not like this fact but what you don't like doesn't have much effect on reality. The fact is, by all of the scientific standards (sociological for woman, biological for female) if a gender variant person does transition to female, sociologically transitions to woman and successfully functions in society as such then that gender variant person is a female woman. No amount of you not liking this will change it. And really the justifications for your claims even being introduced into scientific labeling are pretty poor to begin with. It would necessitate drawing a line, wherein the mass majority of women and men stop being women and men because they don't exhibit these largely stereotypical traits you ascribe in your essentialist claims (cissexed folk too, if that matters). So really, science is never going to incorporate such a thing into its labeling system. It would make classification a bit ridiculous and useless to base what is a woman and what is a man on stereotypes that have poor basis in reality.

As for proof of a social cause, I distinctly recall pointing out that multicausal GID is simply a high likelihood and that a social cause could be one of many causes. Not that we had scientific proof that it was socially caused. I really hope you didn't come in here and just skim through my post while undergoing rage spasms, because you really are misquoting and misparaphrasing an awful lot. Anger is useful and all but not when it stops your ability to comprehend what your opposition is saying.

You are right, that there are many, many different experiences of GID. But even though true transsexualism is listed as a GID (initially done so in part to legitimize our GRS), the story of our experiences are all generally the same: we knew we were different from an extremely early age, and as soon as we realized GRS was an option we moved hell and high water to have our surgery.

There you go with the No True Scotsman fallacy again. Transsexual is and continues to be what the medical field defines it as. And the fact is, even if you had the power to change that, your justifications are lacking for what you would change it to.

Especially this: "we knew we were different from an extremely early age". Not really. There are quite a few transsexuals who, in every way and form, fit every single other of the arbitrary rules you have applied to create your No True Scotsman fallacy, except for that one. The reasons vary. I thought my hatred of my body structure was normal for guys, ergo I did not realize I was different from a young age. Same for the hell and high water section. Some people go into denial when they face something of that magnitude. Some people kill themselves. Some drown the feelings in drugs and alcohol. An arbitrary rule that bases the diagnosis of a condition on how a person handles their treatment is pretty silly. "Oh Billy is really schizophrenic, because he hates pills". Um what? That's the problem with arbitrary rules made to save yourself from shadowy nonexistent phantoms. In the end, you don't have a lot of actual scientific, rational, logical reason for them to exist.

Me, I'll stick with science, thanks. At least it explains using evidence and theory. Not fear and paranoia of the "Transgendered Conspiracy of International Transsexual Exploitation."