As some of you know some Separatists recently colluded in a bid to have the United Nations remove trans protections based upon gender identity and expression. Dana Lane Taylor, Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford happily sent the following letter to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women:
This letter linked back (note the “xxii” citation) to Taylor’s site wherein she asserts that a number of sick fucks who like to hurt women would be somehow protected/encouraged by trans protections based upon gender identity and/or expression: “When discussing laws that protect gender identity and expression, for public accommodations, it is crucial to use specific language.” She then goes on to warn the reader about the evils of “broad definitions of gender identity and/or expression.” As part of her warning, she lists a number of incidents wherein men (whose unrelated behavior could somehow/some way be tied to back to breaking some sort of gender stereotype) hurt women. For example, Taylor cites the arrest of a peeping tom who was wearing panties on his head. How is this type of behavior allowed, encourage and/or protected by trans anti-discrimination protections based upon gender identity and/or expression? Conveniently for their argument, Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford never actually gets around to offering an evidence-based explanation.
Were any of these incidents – in any way – protected by trans non-discrimination policy? Nope; but Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford were obviously hoping the UN wouldn’t notice that fact. Did any of the sick fucks get away with abusing someone due to trans protections? Nope; but again, Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford were obviously hoping the UN wouldn’t notice that fact either. Did Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford offer ANY actual evidence to support their premise that trans protections = men abusing women and circumventing existing laws protecting people against abuse and exploitation? Nope; but, Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford were obviously hoping the UN wouldn’t notice that fact either.
Which brings me to the point of this post…
Is their any substantive difference between what Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford did (and continue to do) and what the The Liberty Council (a right-wing fundamentalist Christian organization) has recently been doing?
“This was a man, everyone recognized it’s a man, going into the women’s restroom. Now whether that person has good or ill intentions towards women, no one knows, but the fact of the matter is when you defy common sense and when it says ‘women’s fitting room’ and you allow people other than women in that fitting room, you’re just asking for trouble. This is just an absurd policy, this is the so-called LGBT sexual anarchist agenda gone awry, I mean this is the absurdity to which this agenda goes when you ultimately follow it to its logical conclusion… [women] may be watched by a peeping tom or even worse, sexually assaulted or raped.”
– Liberty Council’s Mat Staver on Crosstalk, discussing the firing of a Macy’s employee who refused to follow company policy on transgender customers.
Would Macy’s trans protections allow someone to circumvent laws protecting people from abuse and exploitation? Nope; but Mat Staver is hoping you wouldn’t notice that. Did the trans woman suffering possible androgen damage physically harm anyone? Nope; Staver is hoping you wouldn’t notice that. Was she caught trying to harm anyone? Nope; Staver is hoping you wouldn’t notice that. Did Mat Staver offer ANY actual evidence to support his premise that trans protections = men abusing women and circumventing existing laws protecting people against abuse and exploitation? Just like Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford, the answer is, of course, a resounding NO!
Am I the only one who sees the similarity here?
But wait, there’s more! Building on Separatist/Fundamentalist mythos, the Liberty Council’s Faith & Freedom radio program now claims to know of someone (they couldn’t remember his name) who has some sort of job at Macy’s (they couldn’t remember exactly what he did) who absolutely, positively knows of a bunch of women (they didn’t say how many or where all of these incidents occurred) who were assaulted (or maybe it was raped) at Macy’s BECAUSE OF Macy’s trans protections:
Yes, and because – and only because – this unnamed man showed someone at Macy’s what amounts to Taylor’s website, he was fired.
Again… all I have to say to Dana Taylor, Cathy Brennan, Elizabeth Hungerford, Mat Staver, the Liberty Council or the Faith & Freedom show is:
How is the propaganda Taylor, Brennan and Hungerford spread substantively different than any of the following fundamentalist right-wingers when it comes to trans protections based upon gender identity and expression?
- http://politicalvindication.com/?p=8704
- http://readychurch.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/macys-allows-transgendercross-dressing-men-to-use-women-fitting-rooms/
- http://www.independentsentinel.com/2011/12/macys-looking-out-for-men-in-womens-dressing-rooms/
(BTW – Google News has nothing on any incident(s) of mass rape/assault at Macy’s.)
We have a word for people like Taylor.
Quisling.
As usual, the separatists hare having a hissy fit, love. The Just Jennifer blog’s whining and kvetching as if she’s ready to clutch her pearls and have a case of the vapors!
The part that pisses me off the most is referring to you and Autumn and others as “Mr.” because you don’t follow the rules and immediately get SRS.
I’m as transsexual as *that* bitch, but try saving up for surgery when you’re getting $200/mo in food assistance, a $400+ Section 8 voucher, and NO income whatsoever!
This classism has me mad enough to spit in these women’s faces and demand to know now many years they spent in the closet until they could afford their surgery? I can tell you that I was *never* in the closet as an adult, and I paid for it.
These bitches who hide for 30-40 years then suddenly tell their wives and kids “Guess what? I’m having a sex change!”, then have the fucking balls to criticize US because we didn’t to what *they* did? Cowards, bullies and hypocrites!
I was just going to post something like this. We never get to see the faces of separatists because they live in seclusion until they get their surgeries in the hopes that they can live a “normal life”. However, once they get their vaginal surgeries, many of them will walk the earth still having masculine traits (physical and mental) because they have NO IDEA how to live as a woman. It’s quite funny and sad if you think about it, the fact that these people have such high hopes that vaginoplasty will somehow magically change their lives when it’s just one milestone.
I giggle at separatists.
Cristan I had no idea you are non-op. Is that true? Oh gosh I know I shouldn’t ask but isn’t it relevant? I mean …. bear with me a moment here …. you speak to all the issues surrounding transsexualism yet you are non-op? How do you reconcile that? Is that like a man who delivers a speech on feminism? Do you even dare to publish my questions or will you censor them? I’d best make a copy in case you edit or delete them.
From what I’ve heard, some Separatists began questioning my surgical status months ago. Those unsupported assertions of fact mutated into asserting that I must hate being post-op (if I am post-op) and apparently they are now claiming that I’m a non-op.
In fact, I had SRS about a decade ago and find the interest Separatists seem to have in my genitalia amazingly humorous! I mean, it’s just a perfect example of the chronic credulity Separatists seem to exhibit.
In the future, demand objective evidence when you hear a Separatists make an assertion of fact.
Thank you for clearing that up. Now I have another question if you will indulge me. This may sound a bit crude. Do you think someone born with a penis and raised male who later has one or more surgeries and now lives as a female (as much as possible) has the right to assert being a woman? Over a FAB?
Therein lies the fallacy. As a MTF transsexual, I never had the experience boys had growing up. It's a false, binary and myopic assumption on the part of rad-fems to assert that I as a trans woman was "raised male" because I wasn't raised female. They are correct to assert that I didn't have their experience growing up; it was certainly far more humiliating, degrading and damning.
I'm a woman. Yes, yes, yes… fundamentalists and separatist feminists will milk whatever sheaudenfrud they can from their hyperbole, but that doesn't change the fact that they've never bothered to define what being a woman is. Some rad-fems claim that there's some invisible energy that only they can detect which makes someone male or female. Some fundies claim that at the moment of birth a god comes down from the clouds and bestows an immutable sex upon a person at the moment of birth (this is what the judge in Littleton v Prange asserts). Do either of them have any evidence to back any of this up? Nope… and furthermore, they tend to get pissed if you challenge their unsupported assertions of fact.
Yes, I'm female; I'm a woman. Can I speak about the rad-fem experience? No… no more than a rad-fem can speak about the experience of the happy soccer mom. I can speak about the experience of my being female in this culture because I am female in this culture. Furthermore, I can also speak about being trans in this culture. What I can't speak about is being male in this culture because I don't know what that's like in the way that men know what it's like to be male in our culture.
I call BS Cristran. I’ve read a lot of tripe through the years and you just piled it on. But what the heck. You are entitled to your own perceptions and who am I to contradict your reality. On the other hand please pardon me if I don’t buy the koolaid.
Are you a transsexual? If so, was your experience of growing up exactly like the experience males have going up? If not, then what, exactly, are you calling BS over?
Separatists and fundamentalists http://t.co/IbilmA6U #transgender