[lbo-talk] Womyn's Fest tells transgender women to ban themselves

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Fri Aug 25 14:07:47 PDT 2006


info at pulpculture.org

http://www.questioningtransgender.org <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.

^^^^ CB: If I might play womyn's adovocate for a minute, aside from what is said on the website, I'm thinking they think about this something like this:

All phenotypical males are socialized as men-gendered. Changing sex parts in adulthood does not change one's socialization as gendered male. Transsexualized doesn't mean transgenderized, exactly because gender is socially constructed and can't be surgically deconstructed. Therefore, the transsexualized-from-male-to-female will be bringing men-gendered baggage to the festival which is meant to be a place for womyn alone and apart from men.



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