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recursiveparadoxFor those that remember the last post about people finding cisgendered offensive based on some of the most fallacious and stupid reasoning applicable, don't forget, trans people are just as capable of fallacious silliness.
When in comes to fallacious arguments and pseudoscience, no one does it better than the Harry Benjamin Syndrome proponents. To give you a reasonably good idea of what they're claiming would require me to suspend about 90% of my biology knowledge, beat my head against my desk until it became numb and try very hard not to make the wtf face that my friends are so very familiar with nowadays.
I will do my best for you. But first, there may be uninformed cisgendered people here. Cisgendered people who (provided they haven't ran off from being so offended by the word cis) may want to know what Gender Identity Disorder (which is certainly not HBS) entails first. A point of comparison if you will. It's blindingly simple to describe so it isn't necessary to make an entire For The Uninformed post for it (but to be helpful, I will put a tag for GID and a For The Uniformed tag on this post).
For the Uninformed Mini Section: Gender Identity Disorder
Put simply Gender Identity Disorder (or GID for short) is a mental disorder wherein one exhibits a persistent (meaning it doesn't go away) urge to exhibit traits of a different sex. These traits may be the somewhat ethereal and short lived cultural elements assigned to a given sex. Or these traits may be a simple self conceptualization and involvement with the social group of a given sex. Or these traits may be the actual physical bodily structures that arise from the developmental path of a given sex (not necessarily all of them either). Or all three. GID doesn't specify, so it covers an epic shit ton (technical word) of symptoms.
GID is often characterized by dysphoria, which causes this urge and is persistent in and of itself. This dysphoria has triggers and normally the triggers are traits of one's birth sex. It's often described as a feeling of foreignness or wrongness to one's body parts and/or social and cultural roles and expectations and/or sociological group and conceptual description as assigned at birth.
Okay, maybe not so simple. My fault for being a biologist and loving technical terms. To make it a little bit less sciencetastic: Your body's sexed traits (penis, breasts, vagina etc) and/or your grouping in society (guys, chicks or androgynes), and/or your social/cultural roles and expected expressions (how society expects you to behave) causes you to hurt a lot and makes you want to change one or more of those things.
Ending of For the Uniformed Mini Section!
Transsexuality is more of a phenomenon then a disorder, it's the phenomenon in which individuals with the conditions described by GID (or other folk with different issues) seek out, attain or finish a process known as transition. This transition can be physical or it can be social or it can be both.
So what does this have to do with HBS? After all, HBS's website claims that it is an intersexual condition wherein the mind is the only section that possesses the traits of another sex (whereas more commonly intersexed folk may have genitalia and physical structures that do not strictly follow a male or a female development path alone). That doesn't sound much like GID right?
Well actually, "HBS sufferers" (you will find out why I used quotes shortly) experience dysphoria, often seek out physical and social transition and are pretty much entirely medically and conceptually described by the phrases "GID" and "transsexuality". In fact, the HBS people like to claim that HBS is "true transsexuality". Well shit. So that makes things a lot more interesting now, doesn't it?
First problem: HBS claiming "true transsexualism" (as a medical version of the word transsexuality, which is a fabrication in and of itself, as transsexualism is essentially the exact same damn thing) is a No True Scotsman Fallacy. In case you abhor hyperlinks, a no true scotsman fallacy is based around circular reasoning wherein the actual data or definition of a concept is ignored and counterexamples are dismissed as not being true so and so.
So if I were to say, "all MtF transsexuals like high heels," and then someone else were to dispute that by saying, "I don't like high heels and I'm an MtF transsexual" and I responded with, "you're not a true transsexual, therefore your example doesn't do anything" it would be circular fallacious reasoning based on misuse or complete ignorance of a definition.
Transsexual's definition does not specify a brain intersexed condition. It doesn't even really specify dysphoria or GID. So to make claims about "true transsexuality" or worse yet to attempt to pretend that transsexualism is a medical term replacing a political term, when those claims involve things that have nothing to do with its definition (while simultaneously dismissing all counter examples as not real transsexuals) is the textbook example of No True Scotsman.
And that is exactly what HBS proponents do.
Wait, it gets worse.
GID is established in the medical community for America and written into the DSM (diagnostic statistical manual, the book used to diagnose and keep track of the disorders that the psychological sciences know of). It has essential equivalents in the ICD (what the World Health Organization uses for the same purposes as the DSM). It's backed by the psychological field and biological field's research and the methodology of treatment has been tested and is detailed in the standards of care put forward by WPATH an organization of medical doctors, psychiatrists and other biology and psychology related scientists. It's also accepted by the American Medical Association (which is usually a good sign for its scientific authenticity)
What does HBS have establishing it? Well... nothing actually. It's a theory presented by a layman (an admittedly latently sexist word for non-scientist) named Charlotte Goiar and expanded on by more laymen, all of whom are transsexual and personally invested in HBS being taken as reality by the medical field. This theory is based on a flawed study that tested the brains of dead transsexuals who had already undergone hormone replacement therapy against the brains of dead cisgendered folk of the same birth sex who underwent no HRT. A study done in the 1990's I might add.
The reason why this is flawed? Because exposure to estrogen or testosterone changes the brain, as established in this study published in 2006. Oh and the fun part? They based this study on a group of people with GID and a group of people without it, took brain tests using MRIs and whatnot and then exposed the people with GID to hormone replacement therapy. Which not only tests to see whether HRT changes the brain but also establishes what a pre HRT transsexual's brain looks like.
The information revealed is pretty damning. The transsexual individuals had brains identical to cisgendered people of the same birth sex. After HRT, the transsexual individuals had brains nearly identical to cisgendered people of the same sex as their target sex. So this idea that trans people have intersexed brains? Completely and utterly unscientific. To the point where you can arguably state that the evidence used to back up the hypothesis has been scientifically disproven.
As a note: This is not to say that there couldn't be elements of the brain's structure that we can't detect with current methods that are sex specific and could contribute to or actually inflict GID on someone if they were mismatched with the external birth sex. But the only study used to back up the idea of "intersexed minds" has been disproven so HBS has been relegated back to layman unbacked hypothesis. Any attempt to claim that it is scientific, empirically proven or backed by research is at best shoddy pseudoscience and at worst outright willfully ignorant lying
So the whole HBS thing? Fallacy and a lack of scientific backing. Good times. As Laura from Laura's Playground has cautioned one should not take the HBS proponent's standards of care seriously, nor should one take what they say seriously. The fact that they continue to peddle this abhorrent pseudoscientific garbage as scientific and medical fact is a pretty good indicator of either willful ignorance or outright self inflicted delusion. Not a great bunch to be taking advice from.
There are a few people though (especially because of the note above) that would ask, "well isn't it possible that they're still sort of right? That there might be an intersexed brain condition or something causing GID?"
Perhaps. But something that is important to remember is that anyone who claims that they know the single cause of GID is either full of shit or doesn't understand how the disorder is named and defined.
You see, when I went over GID above, you'll notice that it is (basically) a name assigned to a collection of symptoms. The name doesn't yield a whole lot of idea about what might cause these symptoms and if you look around, you'll find that there's not a lot of ideas on what any causes might be. Considering the sheer numbers of substantially different experiences of dysphoria, transition and whatnot had by various trans people who still meet the definition for transsexual and meet the diagnosis of GID one would be hard pressed to make a viable argument that GID had one single unifying cause.
Like most disorders named after a collection of symptoms (like Multiple Personality Disorder was before it became DID) you really don't know if there's multiple causes. Whereas a disorder that is named including a causative agent (Dissociative Identity Disorder, same effects as MPD, but caused by dissociation fragmenting one's identity and self conceptualization into multiple individuals) can definitely be shown to have a single cause.
So to sum it up GID does not contain a cause mention, nor do scientists really know the cause(s). And people with GID have had really radically different experiences. What does this say, logically? That it is highly likely that GID is multicausal. This means that there could be an intersex brain condition version of GID (maybe called Neurological Intersexuality Disorder if it exists, is discovered and split off). This means that there could be a sociologically and psychologically induced dysphoria version of GID (after all, there's a few folks out there for whom the body is not the issue but the way society treats them is). This means that there could be a self conceptualization version of GID, unrelated to society (which would probably still be called GID if others are split off, honestly). This means, overall, that there could actually be quite a few different types of GID caused by different things (going beyond even what I listed above).
All of these versions (with the exception of hypothetical ones that defy what we do know about the brain, body and GID) are possible because nothing about what we know of GID suggests that any single cause is responsible for every case of it. So when people start talking about "true GID" or "real GID" or "the real cause of GID" they are, for lack of a better way to say it, full of shit.
Always good to keep that in mind for medical trans discussions.
When in comes to fallacious arguments and pseudoscience, no one does it better than the Harry Benjamin Syndrome proponents. To give you a reasonably good idea of what they're claiming would require me to suspend about 90% of my biology knowledge, beat my head against my desk until it became numb and try very hard not to make the wtf face that my friends are so very familiar with nowadays.
I will do my best for you. But first, there may be uninformed cisgendered people here. Cisgendered people who (provided they haven't ran off from being so offended by the word cis) may want to know what Gender Identity Disorder (which is certainly not HBS) entails first. A point of comparison if you will. It's blindingly simple to describe so it isn't necessary to make an entire For The Uninformed post for it (but to be helpful, I will put a tag for GID and a For The Uniformed tag on this post).
For the Uninformed Mini Section: Gender Identity Disorder
Put simply Gender Identity Disorder (or GID for short) is a mental disorder wherein one exhibits a persistent (meaning it doesn't go away) urge to exhibit traits of a different sex. These traits may be the somewhat ethereal and short lived cultural elements assigned to a given sex. Or these traits may be a simple self conceptualization and involvement with the social group of a given sex. Or these traits may be the actual physical bodily structures that arise from the developmental path of a given sex (not necessarily all of them either). Or all three. GID doesn't specify, so it covers an epic shit ton (technical word) of symptoms.
GID is often characterized by dysphoria, which causes this urge and is persistent in and of itself. This dysphoria has triggers and normally the triggers are traits of one's birth sex. It's often described as a feeling of foreignness or wrongness to one's body parts and/or social and cultural roles and expectations and/or sociological group and conceptual description as assigned at birth.
Okay, maybe not so simple. My fault for being a biologist and loving technical terms. To make it a little bit less sciencetastic: Your body's sexed traits (penis, breasts, vagina etc) and/or your grouping in society (guys, chicks or androgynes), and/or your social/cultural roles and expected expressions (how society expects you to behave) causes you to hurt a lot and makes you want to change one or more of those things.
Ending of For the Uniformed Mini Section!
Transsexuality is more of a phenomenon then a disorder, it's the phenomenon in which individuals with the conditions described by GID (or other folk with different issues) seek out, attain or finish a process known as transition. This transition can be physical or it can be social or it can be both.
So what does this have to do with HBS? After all, HBS's website claims that it is an intersexual condition wherein the mind is the only section that possesses the traits of another sex (whereas more commonly intersexed folk may have genitalia and physical structures that do not strictly follow a male or a female development path alone). That doesn't sound much like GID right?
Well actually, "HBS sufferers" (you will find out why I used quotes shortly) experience dysphoria, often seek out physical and social transition and are pretty much entirely medically and conceptually described by the phrases "GID" and "transsexuality". In fact, the HBS people like to claim that HBS is "true transsexuality". Well shit. So that makes things a lot more interesting now, doesn't it?
First problem: HBS claiming "true transsexualism" (as a medical version of the word transsexuality, which is a fabrication in and of itself, as transsexualism is essentially the exact same damn thing) is a No True Scotsman Fallacy. In case you abhor hyperlinks, a no true scotsman fallacy is based around circular reasoning wherein the actual data or definition of a concept is ignored and counterexamples are dismissed as not being true so and so.
So if I were to say, "all MtF transsexuals like high heels," and then someone else were to dispute that by saying, "I don't like high heels and I'm an MtF transsexual" and I responded with, "you're not a true transsexual, therefore your example doesn't do anything" it would be circular fallacious reasoning based on misuse or complete ignorance of a definition.
Transsexual's definition does not specify a brain intersexed condition. It doesn't even really specify dysphoria or GID. So to make claims about "true transsexuality" or worse yet to attempt to pretend that transsexualism is a medical term replacing a political term, when those claims involve things that have nothing to do with its definition (while simultaneously dismissing all counter examples as not real transsexuals) is the textbook example of No True Scotsman.
And that is exactly what HBS proponents do.
Wait, it gets worse.
GID is established in the medical community for America and written into the DSM (diagnostic statistical manual, the book used to diagnose and keep track of the disorders that the psychological sciences know of). It has essential equivalents in the ICD (what the World Health Organization uses for the same purposes as the DSM). It's backed by the psychological field and biological field's research and the methodology of treatment has been tested and is detailed in the standards of care put forward by WPATH an organization of medical doctors, psychiatrists and other biology and psychology related scientists. It's also accepted by the American Medical Association (which is usually a good sign for its scientific authenticity)
What does HBS have establishing it? Well... nothing actually. It's a theory presented by a layman (an admittedly latently sexist word for non-scientist) named Charlotte Goiar and expanded on by more laymen, all of whom are transsexual and personally invested in HBS being taken as reality by the medical field. This theory is based on a flawed study that tested the brains of dead transsexuals who had already undergone hormone replacement therapy against the brains of dead cisgendered folk of the same birth sex who underwent no HRT. A study done in the 1990's I might add.
The reason why this is flawed? Because exposure to estrogen or testosterone changes the brain, as established in this study published in 2006. Oh and the fun part? They based this study on a group of people with GID and a group of people without it, took brain tests using MRIs and whatnot and then exposed the people with GID to hormone replacement therapy. Which not only tests to see whether HRT changes the brain but also establishes what a pre HRT transsexual's brain looks like.
The information revealed is pretty damning. The transsexual individuals had brains identical to cisgendered people of the same birth sex. After HRT, the transsexual individuals had brains nearly identical to cisgendered people of the same sex as their target sex. So this idea that trans people have intersexed brains? Completely and utterly unscientific. To the point where you can arguably state that the evidence used to back up the hypothesis has been scientifically disproven.
As a note: This is not to say that there couldn't be elements of the brain's structure that we can't detect with current methods that are sex specific and could contribute to or actually inflict GID on someone if they were mismatched with the external birth sex. But the only study used to back up the idea of "intersexed minds" has been disproven so HBS has been relegated back to layman unbacked hypothesis. Any attempt to claim that it is scientific, empirically proven or backed by research is at best shoddy pseudoscience and at worst outright willfully ignorant lying
So the whole HBS thing? Fallacy and a lack of scientific backing. Good times. As Laura from Laura's Playground has cautioned one should not take the HBS proponent's standards of care seriously, nor should one take what they say seriously. The fact that they continue to peddle this abhorrent pseudoscientific garbage as scientific and medical fact is a pretty good indicator of either willful ignorance or outright self inflicted delusion. Not a great bunch to be taking advice from.
There are a few people though (especially because of the note above) that would ask, "well isn't it possible that they're still sort of right? That there might be an intersexed brain condition or something causing GID?"
Perhaps. But something that is important to remember is that anyone who claims that they know the single cause of GID is either full of shit or doesn't understand how the disorder is named and defined.
You see, when I went over GID above, you'll notice that it is (basically) a name assigned to a collection of symptoms. The name doesn't yield a whole lot of idea about what might cause these symptoms and if you look around, you'll find that there's not a lot of ideas on what any causes might be. Considering the sheer numbers of substantially different experiences of dysphoria, transition and whatnot had by various trans people who still meet the definition for transsexual and meet the diagnosis of GID one would be hard pressed to make a viable argument that GID had one single unifying cause.
Like most disorders named after a collection of symptoms (like Multiple Personality Disorder was before it became DID) you really don't know if there's multiple causes. Whereas a disorder that is named including a causative agent (Dissociative Identity Disorder, same effects as MPD, but caused by dissociation fragmenting one's identity and self conceptualization into multiple individuals) can definitely be shown to have a single cause.
So to sum it up GID does not contain a cause mention, nor do scientists really know the cause(s). And people with GID have had really radically different experiences. What does this say, logically? That it is highly likely that GID is multicausal. This means that there could be an intersex brain condition version of GID (maybe called Neurological Intersexuality Disorder if it exists, is discovered and split off). This means that there could be a sociologically and psychologically induced dysphoria version of GID (after all, there's a few folks out there for whom the body is not the issue but the way society treats them is). This means that there could be a self conceptualization version of GID, unrelated to society (which would probably still be called GID if others are split off, honestly). This means, overall, that there could actually be quite a few different types of GID caused by different things (going beyond even what I listed above).
All of these versions (with the exception of hypothetical ones that defy what we do know about the brain, body and GID) are possible because nothing about what we know of GID suggests that any single cause is responsible for every case of it. So when people start talking about "true GID" or "real GID" or "the real cause of GID" they are, for lack of a better way to say it, full of shit.
Always good to keep that in mind for medical trans discussions.
Re: Two points
Date: 2009-08-25 12:32 am (UTC)As for the HBS hate machine, you're right on the money. I did some follow up research on the tgnonsense blog (I won't link them, the place is a sick den of harpies that I wouldn't wish on my enemies) and discovered that pretty much 90% of the Neo HBS separatist vocal time is spent insulting, ad hominem dropping, misgendering and making snippy one liners.
All in all, they have all the substance of a giant balloon full of hot, very smelly air. I had thought, at first, that it was just a rare few who had found my blog. But really, it seems like the reasonable, intelligent, relatively civil and rational ones in the HBS crew are actually a very tiny minority.
And even they misgender people.
It sort of speaks to how faulty their views are when they have to depend on personal attacks, insults and one liners to chase people away instead of logic, science and rational reasoning.
It's probably why none of them have come back here after I solidly crushed each and every one of their rebuttals. What does one do when one's only weapon is snark and bitchiness and one is faced with someone who doesn't give a shit about one's snark and can be just as much of a bitch? One runs away back to one's little safe cave.
*shrug*
You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 03:26 pm (UTC)There is nothing wrong with those who prefix their gender identity with trans, as the transgender do, but classic transsexualism (or true, real transsexualism if you are more comfortable with that) is different. If you want to refer to yourself as a bitch, no one is questioning that, but what's the point? And if you see yourself as transgender that is fine too. But, it doesn't change the fact that those who see themselves as something other than, less than, or different than simply female are the same as those of us who don't.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 04:29 pm (UTC)At least you're being smart about the studies. I would disagree that the research to date is leading to that inference, for one, there isn't enough research to make a whole lot of inferences at all. But that's a minor quibble, speculation on science is a constant and mostly harmless.
"True" transsexualism as per the small movement your site represents is defined by arbitrary, near nonsensical lines. Lines I might point out that are not drawn on cis women in any way. While there is a difference between transsexual and non transsexual transgender, that defined difference exists currently in the terminology of the oppressor only (as dyssonance has so kindly pointed out). And if you want to change it, you may, but the lines you wish to draw to change it are flawed. I've taken a look at your TGN blog, I've looked over the more paranoid of the NI model advocates. What I see is a nonstop paranoid delusion regarding a community that is doing nothing to harm you, nothing to subsume you and is certainly seen as a thousands times more legitimate than you or I. That's a bit more than just saying, "hey, there's a difference here, we should honor that so needs are met." It's a bit of a poorly conceived obfuscatory measure to try to pretend that this paranoia and these arbitrary lines are not present in your arguments when you previously (in the comment I responded to, that you are following up on now) exhibited that paranoia and that arbitrary non sequitor reasoning. You must think I have an exceptionally poor memory or work ethic for background research. XD
After all, transvestites, crossdressers, drag queens/kings, gender variant, social role adjusters, gender deconstructionists and other members of the trans realm that don't fit TS (as currently defined) aren't getting surgery and hormone therapy. They don't even want it. We are. And we are seen as self mutilators. Drastic crazies. The NI model (neurological intersex model) does not dispel this notion. These are the people who view intersexed folk as broken freaks. If anything, it is a lateral move with the people you seek to curry favor with. They'll still try to "fix" it in the brain. They'll still see you as a broken freak. And the IS community doesn't seem to appreciate your colonization of them. And the people we have a chance in hell with being offered legitimacy by (the liberal zone and the purely fiscal conservatives) often see us through the lens of twisted feminism, as gender role reinforcement apologists, stereotypes or "ghastly parodies". The TG folk to them are closer to the ideal world, breaking away from gender stereotypes and role reinforcement without surgery.
TS is not losing legitimacy to anyone. TG is actually a safer word to use for TS folk. Beyond that:
It is reasonable to ask that classification reflects different needs. The needs of a gender deconstructor does not match the needs of a dysphoric TS. Where you leave the bounds of reason is in drawing arbitrary lines based on stupid things like "when you figured it out", "how quickly you went for surgery", "who you are attracted to", "are you a prim and demure young lady?" Where you leave the bounds of reason is creating this grand delusion of a vast Evil Transgenderist Conspiracy and base it on flawed at best depictions of a trans person from 40 years ago. Quite frankly, dysphoria and a need for adjustment to end it is (so far) the only truly justified marker for determining if one ought to be called a transsexual. No other presentment so far has really qualified. All the justifications go in circles and eventually fall off the logic cliff. And obviously, commenting on the style of my blog as though it was very important to your points (like the reclamation of the word bitch as a means to make my voice heard) really just makes it look like you have nothing of substance to say.
It's unfortunate really. There are people out there, reasonable not paranoid people, who believe the NI model describes them and their dysphoria the best. They don't think the TG community is out to eat them and welcome the help. They don't run around calling folks gender fascists (which admittedly was ridiculous enough to make me giggle). And especially, they don't constantly misgender and insult people to stop dissent. And people like you and yours are what makes them come of as paranoid, raving lunatics when they bring it up. Great job.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 05:19 pm (UTC)Any inference you make regarding some "vast Evil Transgenderist Conspiracy" is your own paranoid take on things, not anything I've said. And, if you claim that I have inferred that, then please cite it with a link.
What I've said over and over, along with linking to the blogs, comments, and activists of whom I base my position is that the GLBT should lobby for whatever rights they feel they are entitled to, but they have no right to appropriate my political nor those who feel as I do. It's not just my site that has that position, there are many. We don't talk to ourselves, linking to each other's sites, rehashing the same old gender debate within our own ranks. Nothing could bore me, at least, more. We've long taken our position to the mainstream blogs where we are not shouted down and insulted, but listened to with the respect of the years of experience and "real life" we have. The intersex has done the same thing.
We are not better, but we are very much different. It is the transgender who say that we say we are better, not us who say that. As I mentioned in another comment here, sure, we have fanatics who feel as we do, misgender people, are rude if not down right mental cases. But that doesn't represent the rank and file who represent our position.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 05:33 pm (UTC)And really, you are a fanatic if you think the TG are saying they are better. I've read through the linked blogs, like QT, on your site. None of them are shredding transsexual folk. None of them are pointing out that transgendered folk are better than TS. In fact, a few of these sites have gone out of their way to defend TS folk from the fanatics in gender deconstructionist zone.
What I see on your site is quips and one liners and mockery of the TG community common, discussing their specific issues of self conceptualization and gender freedom. Not evidence of any attacks on TS folk.
Sure, there's a few blogs here and there that specifically reference your site and talk about you in rather unpleasant terms, but most of that seems to be in response to what I mentioned above. Attacking the TG community in general.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 08:44 pm (UTC)And, find just one place, just one place where I said the TGs are saying they are better...just one place. I've told you, myself and others are going to challenge the TG nonsense, that only the TG believe...and we have no apologies for doing so. Some of the bat dung that comes out of the GLBT is outrageous...if that sounds like mockery it probably is, much of it is against the sensibilities of the mainstream of which I am a part.
I'm not concerned at all what the transgender may say about me. The reality is that very few ever quote my blog or link to it. You make a lot of accusations...I just ask you to cite on my blog where you get your information from.
You can't do it.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 10:56 pm (UTC)As for the misgendering, it's extraordinarily subtle. And you do run a tight ship, I'll give you that. Pretty much it all comes out in either third person terms (where the assessment is applied over a wide range, not explicitly individually) or in making assessments about an individual (like you just did now) indirectly through challenging that they've truly moved from man to woman at all (transsexuality being the current language of describing moving from one point to another through transition, and transgender only being a language representing misalignment of body and mind). When you refer to someone who has successfully transitioned, goes by girl pronouns and lives as reasonably as a woman as she can; a transvestite, you are misgendering her because a transvestite is not a gender mover. A transvestite is a performer who still identifies with the original body type or assignment at birth.
Same for crossdresser (in that crossdressers feel no need to literally be a woman, just dress as one).
So, while you don't literally use different pronouns (that's mostly just your more obvious peers), you still misgender folks.
"If someone called one a transvestite then that's what they meant. Someone who has been in transition for fifteen or twenty years is most definitely not TS, but very much a full time transvestite."
This right here is a full on confession and there's a lot of examples of this more subtle misgendering, if you want me to present them. I'm sure you'll want to argue that such a thing is not misgendering and you are welcome to do so, but that is the basis behind my accusation, not literal "omg so and so is a he, not a she".
"I've told you, myself and others are going to challenge the TG nonsense, that only the TG believe...and we have no apologies for doing so. Some of the bat dung that comes out of the GLBT is outrageous...if that sounds like mockery it probably is, much of it is against the sensibilities of the mainstream of which I am a part."
There is a phenomenal difference between challenging views that don't make sense and spouting asinine one liners ("GLAAD, General Losers Alliance Against Defamation") every few lines in your posts, often coupled with personal attacks ("“I can understand how someone like Calpernia Addams can feel that transition is never finished. After all, she went from a preop showgirl (drag queen) to a post op showgirl (drag queen)…never leaving the GLB community in the process. She can’t make the jump. Thank God most of us do.” " - this one admittedly made in another place, but you were still quite proud of it). It really doesn't matter if it's against your sensibilities. Being a horrid asshole to people does not make your claims more valid. Especially when they're based on, at best, a wildly inaccurate comprehension of TG folk based on a few bleating vocal fanatics and at worst, a TG-phobic paranoid delusion that the TG community is out to get trans folk.
Where do you think your credibility goes when you take poorly supported claims and act the way you do about it, especially when they come in and disagree? I've watched people being nice in there, being civil and the same "shred 'em" mentality is dumped on them as you do on the bloggers.
And still, no justification for this so called TG colonization/co-opting of voice/silencing/political using that bandies about among you and your peers. Nothing more than a few poor references to Virginia Prince and a few rants about TG people.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 05:38 pm (UTC)I'm summarizing this insistence (despite the lack of evidence) that TG people regard TS folk as a political tool, or that they think they're better than TS folk or that they're trying to subsume the community as the paranoid drivel it is.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 08:50 pm (UTC)Because you are insinuating in the statement above that I'm creating one, when in reality, I have never even once written about anything even vaguely related. It's the same in your comment below, making accusation you can't back up with a link to where I said it, or even inferred it.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 10:18 pm (UTC)1: TG people seek to subsume TS people into their political realm
2: TG people are speaking for TS people
Others have said (without any distancing from you), on my blog alone:
1: TG people are trying to steal TS legitimacy
2: TG people are colonizing TS
These have not been shown in any way to be true. They are arising in a paranoid fashion (because of the sheer lack of evidence) and my reference to the "conspiracy" is a (somewhat mocking, yes) imitation of these baseless paranoid claims.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 05:23 pm (UTC)Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 05:34 pm (UTC)Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 09:03 pm (UTC)Geez, are you quoting dysonnance now?
Are you saying that anyone who says they are different from someone else is an oppressor?
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 10:15 pm (UTC)And no, I'm not saying anyone who says they are different from someone else is an oppressor. I'm saying that, currently, the language used to define all of us, you, crossdressers, gender deconstructors, etc is determined by society at large.
You know, the group of people who sees us all conceptually (including you) as freaks? Yeah them. They're the oppressors.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 09:17 pm (UTC)I just don't know where you get the information you so valiantly present as fact. The intersex know we are not trying to colonize them. The exact opposite is true, we support the intersex as different than us, and they know it. We support the intersex in their resistance to being absorbed into the GLBT, and both us and the intersex acknowledge that we are autonomous and different from transgender. But, you seem much more apt to just want to argue rather than to discuss so I will point you at the blogs of two well known intersex advocates and let you make your own conclusions:
http://sophiaofthescythes.wordpress.com/
http://intersex-nz.blogspot.com/
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-02 11:03 pm (UTC)I'm a little bit dismayed so far because this Sophia person seems to have the same crazy view of TG that you do. I've yet to see any strong attempt to incorporate the IS into TG or claim them, although I have seen TG activists put down the welcome mat for alliance. But I will use her blog (among others) to better assess whether the IS community is as adverse of you as was expressed to me by some IS friends.
On argument vs. discussion: Don't mistake my aggressive style or my bluntness for arguing. This is quite literally the way I talk. So far you're one of the few small number who have actually taken offense to it.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-03 01:12 am (UTC)So far, it looks as though those two blog sources that you provided are simply indifferent that you use the NI model and do not consider you IS in any way. The ISNA also separates TS (as well as TG) from association with IS. Of course, this makes me wonder what they think of some of your peers (or you, depending) saying "an intersexed brain condition". I'm guessing problems are avoided there by leaving the IS terminology in the NI model only within the brain condition part?
Anyways, until I can sort out genuine complaints from the blatant trans hate (and painting all transsexuals with the same brush, much like how you do with the TG folk) spilling out of those IS blogs that don't like the NI model of transsexuality, I'm going to drop that point on the IS community not appreciating it. If there arises a time as I find genuine complaints not tainted by bigotry in those blogs, or find good representatives that aren't transmisogynistic, I will bring it back up then.
Let it not be said I'm unreasonable or unfair. *nods*
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-03 03:45 am (UTC)ON the other hand, most of the IS folk in ISNA were fighting to deal with the issue of surgical reassignement, and Dreger's greatest benefit is that she enabled the stopping of that through diagnostic means.
She may not be a friend to transfolk because of her defense of Bailey, but she's absolutely a friend to IS folk.
Re: You've Crushed Nothing
Date: 2009-09-03 03:32 pm (UTC)