Thursday, June 14, 2012

Feminists Need To Stop The Rad Fem War On Transwomen

Chelsea Sayre, one of my fellow Transadvocate columnists with whom I have disagreed with before,  just wrote another post in which I need to point out what she failed to discuss. 

In her post she calls out elements of the trans community for the escalating nastiness as she saw it between the feminist and trans feminine communities that needs to stop.  On that point I agree with Chelsea that it is deplorable and needs to stop before somebody gets hurt on either side. 

However, where I part company with her is in noting that her focusing the post on trans women is problematic.  She also failed to understand that what has been done unto transwomen in the first place by rad fems is the reason why the hostility between the two camps exists.

I note you ignored the War on Transwomen was started in the 1970's by predominately white radical feminists.  In the last four decades in addition to sliming us at every opportunity, they have gleefully done everything possible to thwart the enacting of desperately needed trans human rights legislation and policies. 

You do recall the paper Janice Raymond wrote in 1980 to Congress that erased the ability of low income trans women to use Medicare and Medicaid to pay for trans health care and was the impetus for insurance companies to enact trans exclusionary riders in the policies we insultingly pay hard earned T-bills for?

They have pimped their disco-era dogma in transphobic books like The Transsexual Empire and countless other wastes of trees others penned that have called us 'Frankenstinian', for transwomen to be 'morally erased from existence' and called for the worldwide banning of SRS surgeries.

They have also used their positions of vanillacentirc cis privileged power to oppress trans women by any means necessary and swarm attacked in the blogosphere any trans advocates or our cis female allies who have dissenting opinions about their jacked up vanillacentric and racist points of view.


Hmm.  No mention of the 17 year old transteen being outed at his school for daring to express his First Amendment rights online to criticize one of the more vicious ringleaders of the War on Transwomen and whyte rad fem womyn engaging in cis privilege filled right wing intimidation tactics of calling the jobs of trans advocates they don't like and who tell it like it T-I-S is about them in an attempt to frack with their lives.

Curiously, no mention of the 'womyn born womyn' pimping disco era trans hate and feminism ignoring and in some cases leaders like Gloria Steinem and Adrienne Rich co-signing it.  That transphobia egged on by feminists has had a deleterious effect on the lives of trans people and transwomen of color to the point we're getting murdered at the rate of two per month

So yeah, you damn skippy we transwomen have a right to be angry and pissed about that.  I'm not surprised that in your feminist sisterhood of the traveling white pantsuits supportive point of view in your post you'd ignore the right wing bullying tactics they have been engaging in to support their failed disco era dogma..

The point is that I have something you don't as a POC transperson.  I have decades of experience in living as a marginalized person before I even transitioned and I see things from the perspective of being an oppressed person. 

When you are subjected to daily microaggressive and macroaggresive tactics aimed at your humanity by a group that is wielding societal power (and don't even go there in vanillacentric denial that white women don't hold societal power) that they gleefully exercise when they have the opportunity to do so, it is inevitable it will cause resentment and anger in the marginalized community that is targeted by said attacks.

This is simply a reaction to the almost 40 years of dehumanizing trans rhetoric combined with active work by radical feminists in the War on Transwomen.   I'm not saying it's justified, and like I said in the earlier paragraph I agree with you and Monica Maldonado in it needs to stop.

But it needs to stop on both sides. 

If the feminist community is going to point fingers at the trans feminine one and demand we get our over the top misbehaving peeps under control, then you need to do the same thing with your feminist bad actresses as well in order to help ratchet down the developing bad blood.  

Feminism's decades long silence and inaction with the rad fems combined with what it has done to our community is why transwomen are pissed off in the first place and feminism has the negative connotation it does with elements of us. 

Feminism also needs to stop crying white women's tears about the pushback from transwomen against the nekulturny negativity aimed at us by rad fems.   It also needs to immediately stop pretending they are the victims in this kerfluffle and ignoring the fact that the transfeminine reaction to this just didn't organically occur in a vacuum. 

So Chelsea, when you feminists start actively working to rein in the hate group that whyte womyn born womyn claim is part of your movement in addition to feminists actually being seen more frequently unequivocally standing up for transwomen's human rights, maybe then transfeminine women will not feel compelled to go to Defcon 3, 2 or 1 levels to defend their human rights, their femininity and their humanity.


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