I had SRS over 40 years ago, my wife/life partner had hers over 15 years ago.
While I blog at Woman Born Transsexual I sometimes have a hard time finding trans-specific material to put up. So I run material about matters that affect the lives of all, but that tend to have more affect on people who are already at or near the margins of society for one reason or another.
Yesterday we were talking about a couple of sisters who had been very involved in the Transgender Activist Cause in the early 2000s but who had their SRS and disappeared. I said something to Tina about SRS tends to bring closure to that part of your life.
That doesn’t mean you have to go around berating transgender people or demeaning other women who had the same surgery you had as treatment for transsexualism. Indeed I think that if you feel compelled to that sort of behavior… Well let’s just say I think you have some really serious psychiatric issues that are a lot bigger than any issues post-transsexual people who remain a part of the TS/TG activist community have.
The closure I’m talking about is personal. It involves things like not really giving a shit about some surgeons techniques. It is about not having a clue as to where someone should go for the process of starting hormones and transition.
It’s about thinking and speaking about a lot of matters in the past tense.
As the years pass there is a growing disconnect from the idea of membership in some sort of transgender community.
Disconnect is quite different from acting like a shit hurling monkey the way the HBS clowns do. It isn’t being caught up in being a self-loathing transphobe whose blogs are filled with bigotry.
Disconnect is more a matter of not feeling a part of something, not feeling a personal connection with it, even when you support many of the political goals of that community.
I don’t get all the babble about gender this and gender that. It all sounds very post-modern/new age to me. Sort of like people all belong to a cult.
But the reality is that all that stuff is irrelevant when it comes to supporting an oppressed minority group’s rights and equality. Those are things one should support for everyone.
The same goes when standing up in defense of people who are being bullied.
I had a completely different way of viewing being transsexual than the way people today view things. I was unhappy with the physical body I had, uncomfortable with what was between my legs. Gender to me has always been more of a shifting construct than something concrete, and I honestly think people are chicken shit when they use gender as a euphemism for sex. But that’s me and I have a right to have that opinion.
Which brings me to a couple of things I’ve heard over the last week.
A transgender activist on Facebook described Elizabeth Warren as a horrible transphobic bigot.
Now as far as I am concerned Elizabeth Warren is one of the finest people in the Senate today, right up there with Bernie Sanders and Al Franken. I love her a hell of a lot more than I love President Obama who I consider a right wing DINO and corporate ass kisser.
So I had to ask what her big thought crime was that got her labeled a transphobic bigot.
Turns out that she opposed convicted wife murderer, Michelle Kosilek receiving state funded sex reassignment surgery. She was asked if she supported Michelle Kosilek receiving this surgery on the state’s dime during her hard fought campaign with Republican scumbag Scott Brown.
So I’m supposed to hate Elizabeth Warren for this when she is one of the few elected officials to stand up to Wall Street and the big banks?
I don’t fucking think so and for the record I said that based on the principle that it is wrong to deny prisoners needed medical attention the state should do the surgery on her. At the same time part of me, a part I have to struggle with, thinks Michelle Kosilek should be executed for hate crimes against women.
Moral and ethical principles sometimes seriously clash with gut/emotional reactions.
Then today some of my trans-activist friends launched an attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of my all time favorite civil rights organizations, one which has courageously attacked the KKK and other racist organizations.
Seems they won’t declare a philosophy, “Radical Feminism” or the internet trolls who proclaim their bigotry in the name of radical feminism a hate group.
So in the name of community I’m supposed to blah, blah, blah…
I walked out the door of a community years ago. Now what others call a community is a bunch of people I’m friends with. Sometimes I think they are right on and sometimes I think they are a little crazy.
I’m part of the world of LGBT and so I support them on principle even as I maintain a freedom to disagree on certain specifics.
I buy the memoirs of many, the CDs of some who make music I like. Most of the movies about TS/TG people are too excruciatingly badly made to watch so I ignore them.
After a while transition is a past event, more relevant to those in transition than those post-transition.
In the end friendships with people you can disagree with and still be friends with are stronger than a community constructed on the ideology of a shared identity.
Generally shared principles mean more in building those friendships than being TS/TG.
Would anyone really expect me to be friends with a right wing Republi-Nazi just because they are TS/TG?
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.