In my daily crawl through google alert land, I found a post over at Egarooo that said:
“I don’t give a shit whether or not they [MTF transsexuals] want to chop themselves up. I don’t give a shit if they want to wear dresses. That doesn’t make them female. It doesn’t mean their issues and concerns are female issues and concerns. So long as female issues and concerns are subsumed to and absorbed by male interests (as they are when male people call themselves and are accepted as female), women will never socially realize our full humanity AS FEMALE PEOPLE.”
I responded at the blog with:
“I think your first five words say it all. You don’t give a shit. Obviously. You follow a belief that it something akin to religion, because it’s not based on any rational basis, only belief (a belief that isn’t falsifiable). The science on transsexuality on the other hand, is growing.
Additionally, if you looked at human beings as people and not objects, you’d not spout such ridiculous stereotypical nonsense. Just because I’m a transsexual doesn’t mean I’m mentally handicapped. I know what my biology is. I know what my chromosomes are. But in the big scheme of things, how many people see your genitals? How do they oppress you, by looking down your pants? No. We may not be biologically female, but I’m not sure how that matters, given that oppression is based on gender, not sex. In the case of transsexuals, gender is the ‘social position’, not sex. Those that have ‘the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex’ (gender), are oppressed no matter what their genitals are (unless there is some inspection that I just don’t know about).
But then to your kind, the facts don’t matter. People don’t matter. The good side of radical feminism is that it is a radical pathology that will, because of its weaknesses, never gain access to power.”
Under their theory (that the radical feminist goal is to have female people be acknowledged as BOTH female AND human), it’s biology that suppresses and oppresses, not gender. But that makes no rational sense. If you are treated in this world as female, even though you aren’t biologically, how is that oppression any different? Light skinned African American can have access to to white privildge because of their skin color. If they are perceived to be white, they are white in the social sphere. Their biology or lineage have little impact on their privilege, unless it is publicly known.
What amazes me is the vitriol and anger that is spewed by these kind of people. It reminds me of the same kind of emotional response that my Klansman grandfather would have to African Americans. It wasn’t a rational response, but an emotional one. I just can’t understand the source (in both cases).
“I mean, whoop-de-fucking-doo if a male can call himself female and have his humanity recognized. What about recognition of the humanity of female people who actually acknowledge and accept that they are, in fact, female?”
Are these radical feminists removed from society enough to know that:
A study in the San Francisco Bay Area conducted in 2006 of 194 transgender individuals found a 35% unemployment rate, with 59% earning less than $15,300 annually.
Nationwide, the rates of employment discrimination against transgender people are consistently high. A Williams Institute review of six studies conducted in cities and regions on both coasts and the Midwest, showed the following ranges for experiences of discrimination based on gender identity:
13%-56% of transgender people had been fired
13%-47% had been denied employment
22%-31% had been harassed, either verbally or physically, in the workplace – source @ Transgroup blog
I’m not going to play the “my oppression is worse than your oppression” card, but to insist that we have our humanity validated is just ludicrous. One look at TransgenderDOR gives you an idea of how well our humanity is validated. But then it really doesn’t matter to them because they “don’t really give a shit.”
One of my friends wrote the following poem, and it’s always touched a part inside of me that wants to understand people that have such hatred in their heart:
for a friend… (Desiree Handley)
i want to sit you down
ask three thousand questions
because
i don’t understand
where the hate comes from.
i don’t understand
how you put together
those words
in that order
to say the most hurtful
hateful angry things.
i don’t understand
how you’re making sense
of this
in your head.
i don’t understand
the sadness and isolation
lack of self or love
that must be rotting away
inside you.
please
show me the light
you’ve been using
in what i can only imagine
is the darkness
of your mind.
and if you won’t speak
if you can’t
explain justify rationalize
(anything please,
i’m begging you)
i’m going to open you up
climb inside and
search for some reasoning,
i need evidence
that something made you this way
and then
we’ll go about fixing it.
because
you presented your self
as human
but yet
i find no humanity.
i’m racking my brain
for a story
of how you came to be
and
in the archives
of my self, i find
only a single line,
which echoes,
pity this busy monster, manunkind
and i think
how can i pity you?
but mister e.e. cummings
hid the answer
on the next line
which didn’t spring
to mind so quickly,
his words were
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not.
so please
give me some reason
to believe
you are not this
monster
because i don’t want to
hate
i don’t want to be
you.