http://www.questioningtransgender.org
That's their little piece of propaganda bullshit. Take it from me Charles, the women at the MWMF are not the side you want to be on. They protesteth much, claiming that they have always understood gender to be a social construction, but they continue to slide essentialism right in there because they subscribe to a cultural essentialism -- which was what Judith Butler was criticizing in Gender Trouble. She wasn't criticizing biologism, but criticizing social constructionism of the sort espoused by folks who write crappy little Web sites like the one above.
their argument is something like this: transwomen are just men who want to invade women's spaces like they also do. yeah. So they go through transition, etc. for the fuck of it. *rolls eyes*
For a taste of their bullshit reasoning, read this one. It's really a laugh a minute. In her eyes, transwomen (and transfolk in general) oppress women. How? Well, rich people are a tiny minority who oppress the poor. therefore, you can see how transfolk oppress women. Yepper.
I mean, decide for yourself I guess, but that's pretty fucked up reasoning. Transfolk oppress women because they patriarchy has made it possible for men to become women. Aiyiyiyiyiyi.
http://www.michfest.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000868-5.html
>>Brenda writes: Comparing MTF post-ops with millionares and billionares is TOTALLY disingenuous ... they have a lot of power...*** <<
Heart responds:
As do MTF post-ops vis a vis women, and this is why, this is what I am getting at: A way has been made, a mechanism has been created, societally and culturally, for those who are men to purchase, to buy, with dollars, a bodily presentation that makes their lives tolerable and their passage in this world more comfortable.
A way has still never been made societally and culturally -- after thousands and thousands of years -- for us, as women, to buy, with dollars, any bodily presentation which makes our lives tolerable and our passage in this world more comfortable. In fact, our bodies ensure our rough and difficult passage in this world, and there is no remedy for this, or has not been, outside of feminism.
That is a lot, lot, lot of power: the power to buy a better, more comfortable, safer passage for yourself. It is a power women do not have. The fact that only a few can and do exercise this power is not germane to anything. The inequity, the injustice remains.
Tne existence of a very few millionaires and billionaires at the far end of the class continuum are necessary to the continuation of a class system which systematically and systemically oppresses the poor. Those millionaires and billionaires do not need to be many in number or to individually, personally engage in acts of oppression of the poor in order to be central and integral to the system which *does* oppress the poor.
Or viewed another way, compared with all of the Global South/Third World, there aren't very many Americans. We consume, by far, *most* of the world's resources, which means need and impoverishment for most of the world's people. We, as Americans, do not need to engage in direct acts of oppression of Third World/Global South people in order to be integral and necessary to the system that oppresses them. We can even give donations to the oppressed and can even serve them, and our very existence will continue to be integral and central to their oppression and impoverishment. It is all connected. That's what "systemic" means.
In the West, the potential for wealth exists, the potential to buy comfort and ease exists, in a way it does not exist in by far most of the Third World/Global South. And similarly, for MTFs, the potential existed to buy a more comfortable existence in a way that is not true for the people of women. In order for these systems -- systems of gender and class -- to continue, mechanisms must remain in place which make it possible for some to purchase relative, comparative comfort where as others cannot. Again, that's what systemic oppression is all about.
At 09:37 AM 8/25/2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
>On Aug 25, 2006, at 9:02 AM, Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>Shouldn't the womyn have the self-determination to define themselves ?
>
>Who defines the definers?
>
>Doug
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