Violating Women


Subject: Violating Women
From: TheCallan (callanw@crosswinds.net)
Date: Tue 19 May 1998 - 23:28:00 BST

Michael asked that other people write texts justifying the limitation of
transgendered expression from other positions, especially "TBLG," (which I
assume is GLBT) so that Michael may have the exercise of deconstructing them.

I feel it is crucial that we, if we calim to be scholars, be able to stand and
speak from many positions, because that is the only way we can begin to see
people, events and systems in a way that enlightens and reveals, rather than
just prosteltyzes. We must move from asking many questions to actually
creating some answers.

In any case though, I thought I might try my hand at another position.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - -

"Transgendered people are internalizing a patriarchal and sexist gender system
that has convinced them they need to change just their gender and/or mutilate
their body in order to find some wholeness. They act out the oppressive
social gender system by "transgressing" gender rather than changing it.

"These people, who have a normal body and training in the gender system,
neither of which they can ever erase, actually feel that in order to follow
their hearts they must create a construct of lies, from lying about their
history, to lying about their bodies by submitting to an imperalistic medical
system that constructs, frankenstein like, false bodies to fill the
expectations of oppression.

"In this way, transgendered people reinforce the sexist gender system, as
Lorber notes in "Paradoxes Of Gender," allowing the system to maintain
oppressions by denying changes in the root gender structures that oppress all.
This especially noted in males who claim to become women, and have to be
neutered in order for the classic patrichal restrictions of gender to stay in
place. These false women are simply men who have been conditioned into
believeing that they are women because they don't play the game.

"Similarly women who choose to be multilated and live as men have bought the
concept that women cannot be full, whole and powerful in this culture, and
find the need to turn their back on their sisters in order to gain the
benefits of a place in the patriarchy.

"These traitors and deserters from the patriarchal system are the price the
system pays for not changing to stop their oppressions against women, their
domination of the penised over the non penised. To allow these people to get
away with their lies, lies in which they are complicitous with the medical and
legal system, is to allow the patriarchy to continue the oppression of all
people.

"We must demand that these people not be allowe to reposition themselves,
venting the lies of the system though these deluded and surgically rebuilt
creatures, but rather that they work inside the gender system to change the
roles of men to include the femininity they claim, or the roles of women to
include the maculinity. To allow them to pose and masquerade is an insult to
all who have suffered at the hands of the imperailsitic and patriarchal
system.

"Women are women, and allowing traitor females to become men, allowing traitor
males to penetrate the camp of women weakens the strength of sisterhood at the
cost of a system that builds these freaks out of spare parts. Demanding that
only estrogen-bsed life forms are allowed into the circle of women is what
gives us strength and power. That means demanding FTMs leave women's spaces,
and refusing to allow MTFs in, maybe not even after they have been castrated
and had a gash carved in between their legs.

"Even people who claim not to be men or women are merely trying to not take a
stand, not take a role in the struggle we are all engaged in. All
transgendered people are trying to be not men and not women, to leave a system
that oppresses them and become cowards, deserters, traitors, allowing
themselves to be the subject of medical experimentation rather than to work
for change. They make their own bed when they become willing pawns of an
oppressive system.

"Transgender is an insidious and nasty plot that dupes people who feel
challenges from oppression a way to consipire with the oppressors to maintain
the status quo though falisfying their history and biology to again fit neatly
in a system that oppresses people. The system uses their own sickness and
mental unfitness, and there are many examples of so called "transgendered"
people who self identy as sick, to perpetuate a system of oppression.

"We must refuse to accept these complicitous androids -- literally man-made
creations, for all the surgeons are male -- and their butcher-built body parts
as transgressing gender, because to accept these things is to accept the
continuation a system designed to oppress and degrade women."

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - -

Is this a fair representation of one point of view on why transgender
expression should be restricted?

Anyone have any other representations from other view points?

Callan

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Wed 21 Jul 1999 - 18:21:04 BST