WPATH Announces the New Umbrella Term: Transsexual

According to Zoe Brain, Ed McMahon was apparently the last remaining normal person in the world and his passing released the time/space continuum into freefall.

Immediately WPATH announced that those who actually had surgery and changed their bodies should no longer reap the benefits of the legitimized and chic term “transsexual” so in the name of greater fairness and embracing diversity henceforth anyone who engaged in any cross gender normative act is a transsexual. Rudy Giuliani immediately announced his run in 2012 as the first Republican female candidate stating “hell, I’ve done more time in dresses than Angela Brightfeather so why not? Besides how else to best steal Sarah Palin’s thunder?” In related news President Obama promptly announced that having accidentally put on Michelle’s panties one morning he now could also declare himself a transsexual and defuse the complaints of the trans activists because he was now one of them. Not to be outdone, Famous Amos also came out as transsexual due to the gender bending activity of baking cookies.

Following Starbucks buyout of the MSNBC “Morning Joe Show”, Maxwell House announce the takeover of Pam’s House Blend and the new motto, “bitter to the last drop”

In news from Bilerico, Alex Blaze announced being the world’s first ? to ? transsexual and Father Tony and Yasmin Nair had a “suck off” at an underground bathhouse reportedly next door to Chaney’s underground bunker. Yashmin reportedly won hands down. “I’ve changed the definition of lesbian to include cock loving sluts” she proudly announced after the win and following having her stomach pumped.

Autumn Sandeen and Monica Helms were ordered by the 8′th district court to undergo paternity testing in the newest pregnancy of Thomas Beatty.

Maura Hennessy and the ‘Super Secret Lesbian Illuminati’ ™ announced the purchase of the entire state of Michigan today as an end run around Lisa Vogel. “Why should we miss out on marginal lesbian music just because we don’t want to wallow in mud and the million bug march?” adding that Perez Hilton is constructing a seven star lesbian only facility for the new and improved Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Henceforth the state of Michigan shall be known as “the Land”. Michael Moore allegedly promptly announced his transition in response.

Mara Kiesling and Marti Abernathy, finding themselves left out of all these rapid changes announce the formation of the “Classic Transgendered Defense League”. “The word transgender used to have an actual meaning” explained Mara. “It’s not fair we have had our identity erased.”

Ray Blanchard and Ken Zucker announced the discovery of a new psycho-pathology, autojavaphilia, for those who are just “a wee bit too fond of their morning coffee”. This was followed immediately with the joint announcement by both Andrea James and Lynn Conway that they had photos of Ray and Ken having un-natural relations with both a beaver and a wolverine in the tea garden of the Clarke Institute. Mike Bailey is reportedly penning a new book defending Ray and Ken to be titled “The Man who Would Use Half and Half”.

It is with great sadness we announce Barney Frank had a total breakdown due to having no idea who should use which bathroom in the aftermath of these events.

In one final item, Rebecca Juro, who remained unemployed in a state with full employment protections, was offered a position as manager of the HRC Condo Complex where Riki Wilkins reportedly still resides.

Vanessa Foster was unable to be reached for comments on all these new developments.

 

When in the course of human events…..

A blog fueled revolution among LGBt people is becoming a reality. Now is the time to start considering where we go from here to keep the pressure up on the administration and the DNC.

Pride events have become just big parties with little sense of the history of the movement but we can do something else besides picketing of EVERY DNC fundraising event until we are full, first class citizens in our own homes. We should be starting Queer-Ins all over the country.

We’ve been denied our rights in part due to the blatantly unConstitutional DOMA law so a great place to start is taking back the Constitution as part of the process. What do I mean by that? Simple really. We have a Constitutional right of freedom of assembly. That means no more begging for permission via permits….that violates our Constitutional rights. No more “free speech zones”. No pandering to local governments.

We have a right to assemble, the right of free speech, the right to demand hearing of our grievances…all under our Constitution. We need to lead on this once and for all and restore the rights of protest in the US which, in case you haven’t noticed, has all but been taken away.

Queer-Ins….spontaneous, needing no more organization than social networking to get a large number of us in any given place at any given time. BBQ’s for freedom! Food Bank Drives tied to our assembly. The government won’t have a clue how to react but actions like this, in addition to out and out street actions, gain us moral high ground that make any attempt to suppress look downright fascist in nature.  How about Marriage Days?  Imagine more than a hundred couples showing up in Albany demanding marriage licenses all at once complete with clergy to perform a mass wedding right then and there?  Freedom of religion folks.  I’m clergy, I’m game,  I believe I have the Constitutional right to sanctify same sex couples.

Revolution is serious but we CAN have fun doing it too…..and we need to do so.

It’s our country too. We are citizens as well. We need to take it back now. July 4′th is coming up, I hope to see spontaneous Queer-Ins in the mainstreets of every middlesex, village and farm for the 4′th. Are you game?

 

Time for Stonewall 2.0 or More of the Same You Can Believe In

I’m furious. This is the moment in history to right fundamental wrongs and I see too many LGBt people wringing their collective hands and whining the issues at hand don’t impact them.

They do. I would not have picked DOMA as the battleground either, but the battle has been engaged and those who put down their weapons and walk away need to realize they are deserters, traitors, give up all claim to their personal agenda issues for now and forever by refusing to engage.

Obama has thumbed his nose at every single progressive issue that came up since he took office. He has failed every single test of his oath to defend and protect the Constitution since he took office. Every time he could take a principled stand, he hasn’t. He still refuses to give up ANY of the Bush executive office imperial power grabs. He has failed to do one single thing to restore the balance of power in the three branches of government.

DOMA is no longer about same sex marriage if it ever was. It is a watershed test of the Constitution and whether or not we still have one in any form but name only. Now that several states have recognition of same sex marriages, this is a constitutional issue of “full faith and credence”. It is a religious freedom issue now. “God is in the mix?” I don’t think so.

To those in the various trans and post-trans communities that think this isn’t your issue, think again. You’d do well to remember Littleton and Kansas. Your heterosexual marriages can be challenged at will until this issue is addressed head on. For those in the GLB part of the community who don’t want to get married and think this isn’t your issue, think again. This is the watershed moment. Your issues now don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell if this fails, if this moment isn’t ceased.

Get over the idea this is a gay issue, it isn’t. It’s a basic civil rights issue, it’s a basic fairness issue. Obama used you. He has catered to the right since he took office. He needs to be reminded in no uncertain terms that the progressives who supported him are his base and he better damn well start to deliver. Civil rights can only have a positive effect on the economy, don’t go there. Civil rights are tied to health care reform in ways we shouldn’t have to be reminded. Granting recognition and access partner health care is basic fairness.

Obama “gave” limited federal partner rights. Clinton went further. This is literally the absolute least he could have done. It is no more than a token buyoff to divide us once again. To those who gave him a pass over the Warren issue, wake up. He is not your friend, the DOMA brief showed his true face. He’s a homophobe in his heart. He did this during Pride month! He bitchslapped you and some of you are still apologizing for him.

Hold his feet to fire NOW because this moment might never come again. It’s the 40′th anniversary of Stonewall and once again we need to carpe diem, seize the day. We need to pressure Obama and keep him off his message and force him to address ours. We need to take to the streets and demonstrate, to build alliances across party lines with those who want our Constitution to mean something again. We need to be in his face and not let up.

This is no longer about your right to marry, this is about whether or not we get America back after Bush.

We need ten thousand Sylvia Riveras right now.

 

Plain Talk on TG vs TS/HBS

The recent resumption of the Anti-choice terrorists war on women has had me thinking about how to talk about a somewhat related, gender specific, issue that like the right of a woman to control her own body raises emotions to the point no one listens.  The entire HBS/Classic transsexuals vs. the transgenders.

Unlike the Anti-Choice vs. the Pro Choice I do not feel there is a deliberate intent to cause major harm, but the outcome is going to result in it regardless as an unintended consequence.  To begin, for those born with the now understood medically neurological condition known as classic transsexuality, eventual body correction is essential to any quality of life and indeed, in most cases, eventually life itself.  This used to be widely understood and even embraced.  It is the reason the HBIGDA (now WPATH) organization even existed.  It was the sole reason for setting up gender clinics and the original purpose of having gender therapists to begin with.

After almost two decades of the “transgender umbrella” this is no longer true and that fact, by itself, poses a very real, very immediate threat to those who were born with the condition.  Some of us have complained loudly and longly about the erasure from view of classic transsexuality.  We’ve been called every name in the book for doing so but the reason most of us continue has nothing to do with claiming to be “more woman than thou”, greater levels of legitimacy, hatred of crossdressers and drag queens or any of the other myriad reasons (most of which are highly insulting).  It boils down to one thing, this erasure will eventually cost the lives of those born with the condition who follow us.  It already has made the mechanics of transition vastly more difficult legally.  Eventually it will result in greatly reduced access to medical care for needed treatment.  This is the trans equivalent of a return to coathanger abortions.

The results are already apparent with the scandal in Australia that is shutting down it’s major gender clinic.  When you remove the distinction between those who are some sort of gender variant and those who are neurologically intersexed, the professionals, long accustom to the screams of transphobia aimed at anyone who actually puts brakes on any demand for surgery or hormones, stop all effective gatekeeping and the number of surgical regretors rises.  And this is absolutely needless because with those who actually are neurologically intersexed, satisfaction with even mediocre surgical results is almost 100% but with those who aren’t as many as 70% have post surgical regrets.  Those figures are direct from psychiatrists knowledgeable about the subject.

Most of us on the other side are often amazed at the number of transgender people who slide through the system because most of us have zero trouble telling who is one of us and who isn’t with even a brief face to face meeting.  When I started my own journey I met mostly around 90% self proclaimed transsexuals who vibed that way to me.  My own original therapist used to arrange for me to meet her new gender clients and tell her who I thought was and wasn’t the “real deal” and relied on that.  Now professionally that was inappropriate and I’ll be the first to admit that but in retrospect it made sense too.

In the past six or seven years the bulk of the self-proclaimed transsexuals I’ve encountered do not vibe neurologically intersexed.  Many of them are openly very very sexual fetishist in nature consuming vast amounts of she-male porn and owning wardrobes that are primarily fetishistic in nature.  And they have zero problem getting through the system.  If you cannot see the problem here I am at a loss to explain it.  Those who remain non-ops will not have a problem but those who seek surgery are odds on likely to be regretors and every new regretor fuels the Blanchard/Bailey/McHugh machine to eventually make surgery and maybe even hormones impossible to get.

This is my problem with the transgender movement.  Every time one of them loudly proclaims themselves a transsexual who does not need surgery the legitimacy of surgery as a needed treatment for actual classic transsexuals takes a hit.  Every time transgender is equated in the public mind with classic transsexuality, every time the simple truth of “woman trapped in a man’s body” is ridiculed by transgenders the eventual public non-acceptance of the need for surgery is harmed, the understanding needed to keep it available for those it is a matter of eventual life or death will die.

We aren’t fighting transgenders for legitimacy as women.  Let them be whoever they wish, live as they want, most of us do not care one way or the other or even supportive of your rights in this regard.  But know this, we are literally fighting for the lives of those like us who follow us.  Transgenders, we aren’t like you.  Why is that so difficult to understand?  Why do you consider it so threatening?  You are literally killing our future sisters with this. You and yours don’t require surgery, we get it.  Ours do as a matter of eventual life and death.

Different means ‘not the same” there is no implied hierarchy you do not place there in your own mind….. but when you threaten the lives of our future sisters with your actions expect us to continue to fight you as much as required.

 

Time to call them as they are: Rightwing christian fundamentalist TERRORISTS

Read this and follow the links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannyn-moore/christian-fundamentalist_b_209521.html

For the just over seven years of the Bush administration following 911 we witnessed the loss of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights as the country descended into a fear fueled fascist state. It’s past time this was stated baldly. President Obama, who was to deliver us from this back to the clear light of a Constitutional US, has been proving to be not much better than a kinder, gentler GW…..but the right has still stepped up the rhetoric to levels that would have gotten a vacation to Gitmo under Bush had it come from the liberal side.

The opening salvos have been fired. UU church shootings, this particular act of terrorism- shooting Dr.Tiller (that’s what it is, let’s not mince words here). G. Liddy’s comments on the Sotomayor confirmation hearings went as far into mysogyny as is possible, Beck. Limbaugh and company are openly speaking treason and violent overthrow of our government without cost.

It’s war folks. You can sit in your about to be foreclosed upon living room and moan about whether or not you’ll ever get a job again but you had better be thinking about rightwing terrorists if you are an out LGBt person, a bit too “liberal” in blogging your opinions (that would be just right of Barry Goldwater by the way) or just plain “different” in any fashion whatsoever.

Give up the idea that the US has any moral high ground or is a nation of laws. We have failed to repudiate the “Bush Doctrine” of the right to attack anyone we suspect might, sometime in the next 100 years, be a vague, undefined “threat” to the US. We’ve allowed ourselves to be linked with terrorist tactics that would do the Inquisition proud and incidentally are capital offenses under International law we signed on to.

We took impeachment off the table. We are not living up to our obligations to turn over our self confessed war criminals over to International Courts. We are still refusing to call our own fundamentalist terrorists what they are, terrorists.  Obama has retained the right of  ‘indefinite detention’, unconstitutional tribunal trials, to  spy on private citizens, secret offshore ‘prisons’ (as long as Gitmo itself is closed).  He has left in place the Bush ordered ‘right’ of healthcare and other essential service providers to refuse needed treatment based on their personal religious objections to your ‘lifestyle’, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or gender identification.

I am descended from Salem witch trial victims and Presidents John and John Quincy Adams. My family history goes back to the 1630’s in this country. And yet as someone who was born intersex/trans, as someone who is a Pagan Priestess, as someone who believes in the Constitution…I still have no equal protection under the law for marriage, employment, public accommodations or even freedom of religion. I’ve even been openly and to my face told I have no, zero, zip, nada civil rights because I was born with classic transsexuality and underwent the medically approved treatment for it by STATE civil rights defenders! I have an extensive FBI file for the crime of promoting civil rights and opposing illegal undeclared wars by LEGAL acts of “peaceful assembly and petitioning my government for redress of grievances.” (sound familiar?)

The agenda of these rightwing terrorists is clear:

The right to criminalize my body and my sexual orientation.
The right to control my body as a woman.
The right of their children to bully up to and including suicide our children without restraint.
The right to force their religious intolerant viewpoint on everyone else.
The right to kill us, or at least imprison us for not worshiping the “right” god or for loving the wrong person.
The right to silence our voices while demanding theirs is covered as “free speech”.
The right to listen in to our phone conversations, indefinitely detain us without trial, the right to read all your private correspondence and gag librarians when they check out what books you read.
The right to take your property, your home, your car on just an accusation.

You are not free. You have no civil rights. Obama will not protect you because (the Abrahamic) god is in the mix. You do not have equal protection under the law, hell, unless you are well off, you have no protections under the law at all because our criminal justice system is totally broken and now designed to crush the poor, the minority religious, the ‘wrong’ socio-economic background. You have no free speech (see what happens if you demonstrate on supposedly Constitutional grounds without playing the police/state game first).

Change we can believe in comes from ourselves and saying “no more”. Civil rights come ONLY from standing up and exercising them.

Learn to protect yourselves physically because the time you will need to defend you and yours is just around the corner.

Never forget the most liberal, free and open society in European history was the Weimar Republic in Germany. Think it cannot happen here?….it already has while you weren’t looking. What are you prepared to do about it?

 

And Now it Gets Interesting……the APA taking back the SOC

The American Psychiatric Association just quietly announced the formation of a committee to “set” medical Standards of Care for transsexuality.

Now this might not seem a big deal to most trans people but it is. Essential in understanding why this is important requires a background on medical politics. WPATH (formally HBIGDA) standards of care were guidelines meaning they were unenforcible in terms of being absolute requirements for medical professionals and were basically set in place to cover the asses of the surgeons doing SRS and doctors prescribing hormones. The medical establishment is about to change that and it won’t be progressive in nature.

Actual medical defined Standards of Care will not be guidelines but writ in stone as far as medical practitioners are concerned. There will be no wiggle room, failure to follow the new SOC exactly will be grounds for lawsuits from disgruntled regretters (no more ass covering without complete compliance) and failure to follow them to the letter will be grounds for disciplinary action against those medical professionals (all medical doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists) failing to do so.

WPATH is about to rendered totally impotent. Look for possible Real Life Tests of two years, possibly without hormones. And this is being done preemptory to enforce medical professional compliance with the upcoming DSM revision. It is a direct reaction to the trans “gendering” of WPATH and the over-the-top tranny reaction to the DSM-V revision team. The APA is leaning very conservative these days.

I know this will be dismissed as “sky is falling” on my part. I would remind those saying so, I’ve been right on this sort of thing close to 100% of the time. If you are planning surgery, schedule it now, get your letters now, tomorrow may be too late.

this has been a public informational announcement, you may now resume beating each other and me up.

 

The “Othering” of Feminism, How the Umbrella Concept Erases Women

I rarely discuss my personal history other than to put my ideas in context but this time I must somewhat break that rule. I grew up understanding myself to having a “female mind in a male body”, a conclusion I came to at the tender age I was able to formulate those concepts. As a result, I had my own personal feminist “awakening” around age nine, in 1958 at the dawn of second wave feminism. It came about watching my father’s attitude towards my mother’s attempt to leave him and what he said to me assuming I’d buy the patriarchal way of thinking since I was an apparent heir to it. It horrified me instead.

As it turned out, I discovered after I had transitioned that I had been born a true hermaphrodite and surgically assigned male at birth. The long and short of it all is I have been a lifelong feminist, one who understood herself most of my life as a transsexual woman. I grew up during the period of modern history that saw the most rigid enforcement of gender roles by design in American history, the fifties and early sixties.

So, while some feminists would question my own feminist credentials, in many ways they more solid than many modern feminists because I witnessed the entire birth and growth of second wave feminism, cheered on my own mother’s feminist awakening and empowerment and witnessed first hand feminism being turned into a “dirty word” with the rise of radical separatism that in essence, locked me out of a movement dear to my heart and has remained so.

My somewhat unique history, my very unusual childhood and a lifetime of trying to understand the concepts of gender and sex in relationship to my own life led me to a form of feminism akin to the European second wave variety as opposed to what became American second wave. In the model of second wave feminism most understand, gender is all social construct or at least mostly so. Something imposed by the patriarchy and opposed by “deconstructing” those “artificial” differences. The problem with this is my very life and being and those of women like myself give lie to this by our merely being. Gender roles are often socially imposed, gender itself is not or I would have never spent the better part of a lifetime trying to come to peace with it. I have often seen feminists speculate that in a “genderless society” if transsexual people would even exist. Now this might seem an interesting thought experiment if you are opposing patriarchal imposed gender roles and don’t understand or give much thought to what it means to have body and mind in conflict your entire life, but from my own point of view this is a meaningless question. It arises from religious based points of view that place humans apart from other mammals. One that insists, all the evidence to the contrary, that very real neurological as well as biological differences do not exist between the sexes. It is born also from knowing that those differences are misused by the patriarchy to oppress women. To many feminists these inborn neurological differences are something that absolutely must be denied and many had a knee jerk response to women of trans history (and often their own more traditional minded sisters and femmes) that by demonstrating these differences is somehow “anti-feminist”. Trans-feminist author, Julia Serano, touches on this in her writings with the idea of “scapegoating the feminine”.

What I am witnessing in various feminist blogs all around the internet bothers me considerably. There has been a rise in radical separatism I thought had mostly died out and it arose in response to the so called “Third Wave” feminism that seeks to erase gender by universal erasure of it. It has gone hand in hand with the rise of “transgender” as an umbrella to cover everyone from gay male drag queen, fetishist crossdresser, androgyne gender benders and more in-between gender identities than you can shake a stick at. But it doesn’t stop there, it claims also to cover women such as myself and intersexed people as well. Lately it is taking over feminism and womanhood as well by setting up two new categories: men and not men. Please note, women are not here other than a part of “not men” and this is precisely the sort of argument this new breed of gender deconstructing “transgenders” are using to essentially take over feminism. It is being done in the name of “inclusion” and “creating a big tent” opposition to patriarchy but what it actually does is cut out women identified women in precisely the same manner that the take over of feminism in the seventies by radical lesbian separatists made feminism a dirty word to heteronormal women.

The concept is appealing on it’s face…..everyone oppressed by the patriarchy banding together to oppose it but it comes at the cost of core identity, the inborn strengths of womanhood and the values that go with it and very very real dangers in terms of a rebirth of denial of essential differences that set back women’s medicine once before by serving to oppress research into those differences which have proved critical towards understanding the very real physiological and neurological differences between men and women that effect everything from drug effectiveness to differences in symptomology from everything to heart attacks and strokes to various mental disorders. How do I know this?…….ten years plus experience with the “transgender” community and their doing exactly this to the actual women they claim to represent, women such as myself, fully woman identified, body corrected, neurologically female as opposed to male. We are silenced, insulted in the traditional patriarchal fashions and our identities are co-oped. We are denied an active voice or place at the table. And those who do this have moved on to the third wave feminist blogs and are starting to co-oped the intersexed as well. Alliances are good things, banding together in common cause is a good thing but it comes to bad if individual groups identities are sacrificed in the process.

My own postings on Feministe and Feministing would not be welcome despite a lifetime of feminist and activist credentials because I would dare to speak truth to those who claim to represent “trans women” there but elsewhere are clear they are male identified crossdressers and drag queens.

These people only claim womanhood when they wish to dictate to women. When you define the world in terms of men as in men and not men, women are essentially erased. They erased us, you third wave feminists are next…….fair warning.

 

Mother’s Daughter, Holding Keys of Understanding

The Mother in the title refers to the Great Mother Goddess, humankind’s first understanding of the Divine and I am Her daughter, claimed by Her while a mere three years old in the ancient way, through my dreams. Language, the dominant culture that surrounds us and exposure to “key” concepts all have a vast effect on how we see the world, process information we are exposed to and even our basic understanding of how the world works and the meanings of common mythology. I grew up as most did, in a culture dominated by patriarchal thinking and Christianity as the base religious thought was measured by but unlike the majority, I never embraced Christianity as a child but remained Mother’s Daughter. That and part of a childhood exposed to a vastly different world, India, gave me a completely different worldview than the culture I grew up in.

My father was the “scholar” in our family. An educator and later an administrator with an advanced formal education heavy on the social sciences. Surrounded by the classics of psychology, I cut my reading teeth on many of them. But it was from my mother, who had no degrees but had a passion for ancient history and spent her lifetime learning for the shear love it that passed that love unto myself. It was from my father’s books I learned the concept of gestalt perception, but it was from my mother’s love of learning that I experienced it and learned of the keys of perception.

The “National Treasure” movies provide a handy example of what I’m talking about. All around Americans every day are symbols of Free Masonry but almost everyone does not notice them. Once you recognize what they are you suddenly become aware of just how common they are, but without knowing what they are, you simply do not see them at all. It is like learning to read. At first the pages of the books are covered with meaningless markings but gradually, as you learn first the alphabet and then that strings of letters are words, the meanings suddenly are there on the page. Everything we are exposed to in the world and how we understand it is reflected in this principle.

As a lifelong Pagan, how I see the world is vastly different than how a Christian sees it, and I live in a Christian dominated society. Take the story of the Garden of Eden as an example. Now almost everyone sees this as a straight forward creation story with the lesson that Eve brought the woes of women down on them. When I read the story it reads completely differently. Familiar with the symbology of the Goddess, the story reads to me as the suppression of Her by force along with the values of the Sacred Feminine principles and the imposition of the concept that the individual’s personal divine nature be replaced with a separation from the Divine. Allow me to explain. Every symbol present in the story from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the fruit of that tree, the Tree of Everlasting life and the serpent are those of the Great Mother Goddess dating back to the dawn of pre-history.

Consider this: Yahweh lied, the serpent told the truth. Adam ate the apple (fruit) too but was not punished in the same manner as Eve whose’s daughters suffer to this day. Eve was “created” from the side of Adam. Yahweh wished to deny both knowledge and everlasting life to his creations and acknowledges other gods in the story.

The serpent (symbol of the Great Mother) tells Eve (woman) that if she eats the fruit she will gain knowledge (gnosis) and further, if she eats from the fruit of the other tree, she will be imortal. In the traditions of the Great Mother Goddess, we are all part of Her and the rituals of Her worship are designed specifically to connect with that part of each of us that is Divine. Prior to the Abrahamic faiths, the concept of reincarnation, that life is a series of cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth was virtually universal and almost every culture we know of had mythologies that expressed this basic principle. In other words, eternal life through rebirth, the purpose of which was to learn and grow. Eat of the fruit pointed to by the Goddess and you gain wisdom and meaning to your life. Yahweh (god of Abraham) wished keep humankind from it’s own Divine nature. Not the act of a loving deity in my book. Further, when we come to Cain and Abel we come to the imposition of sacrifice of grain (the bread resulting from horticulture) for the blood of living beings. Horticulture, spinning, weaving and making clothing were all products of women and women’s work. Yahweh discovers Eve’s “sin” by seeing she and Adam are wearing clothing (fig leaves) Yahweh places the blame in the story on Eve (woman), even though Adam also ate the fruit. Eve being created from Adam’s side is a straight forward attempt to undermine the creative process of birth from woman to Yahweh, out and out denial of the Mother.

To me, this story reads as the justification of the destruction and wholesale murder of the societies of the Mother Goddess, suppression of all things feminine and open denial of an entire theology that led to peaceful cities without walls or knowledge of war and all the products of women furthered by the addition of the story of Cain and Abel just in case the point was missed. It’s the story of roving bands of nomadic herders taking the fruits of civilized people. Sort of puts a different spin on it, doesn’t it? Exodus builds on this theme.

And the ironic thing is that early Christianity was first an attempt to return to the older way of living and thinking.

to be continued.

 

Meltdowns, Extremism, Elitists and Feminists…….oh my!

Recently a blogwar broke out over an interaction on Bilerico, a well known GLBt blog, over language that bordered on threatening, trans hatred of the HRC that then morphed into racism.

Everyone lost in that one. The denial of service attack that immediately followed on Bilerico’s server was seen as evidence of how strongly emotions ran over this. Feminism was attacked and most interesting of all to me was a woman early in transition known to me for years was labeled a lesbian trans-imposter based on her well and often expressed feminism, that she is lesbian identified and that she is Islamic. The rhetoric everywhere spun wildly out of control.

This trans war stuff has finally reached a level of idiocy beyond my wildest imaginings. Unknown to most but relayed to me was even an infamous Rad-Fem author emerged from her cave to try to re-assert dominance over a group of professional lesbian women to demand the ouster of the “eunuch” (woman of post operative history) amongst their midsts.

It’s all rather mind numbing. HBS (Harry Benjamin Syndrome) which was supposed to be merely about the scientifically confirmed pre-natal neurological basis of classic transsexuality has become linked to heteronormalcy and even politics.  It has nothing to do with sexual orientation or what age one finally deals with the biological imperative to bring mind and soul into congruence that is the primary indicator.  I abandoned it’s use in favour of “classic transsexuality” largely for that reason. Over and over I have been told I am an elitist. Sometimes I simply want to respond “I’m better educated, more intelligent (genius level IQ), have spent a long lifetime in constant interaction with world class intellects on a wide range of subject matter and have lived an actual woman’s life for well over a decade that has been dedicated to the betterment of all women…….so yes, that does in fact give me some more authority than someone lacking all that.”

I watch in fascination the absolute need of most vocal transpeople to “educate” any random feminst who expresses anything at odds with the revealed trans wisdom and wonder why? Actually the reason is quite simple. Lacking almost universally in all trans discussions by all sides is the sense that anyone involved is secure in their own identities. Myself, when occasionally in discussion with a neo-Raymondite, chuckle at the notion that the opinion of someone who has not lived as an adult woman as long as I have about my own womanhood has any actual impact on my life.

In the past couple of weeks my ex has suffered a severe stroke, the mother of one of my priestesses also had a stroke, the father of another priestess just had a heart attack and died. I’ve spent a lot of time on the phone in my capacity as a healer and spiritual advisor, my actual vocation at this point in my life.

The ancient Radfem failed in her attempt to co-op today’s lesbian feminists with her aggressive, ironically masculine, “demands” of compliance with her personal vision of womanhood. It worked in the seventies and basically de-railed feminism for a couple of decades, it failed this time. Some things do actually progress. Trans issues, on the other hand, have been made even less open to honest discussion with the double whammy of racism added to the ludicrous “cis-victimhood” and the ever popular elitism for simple observation of difference in agenda and identities. Transness has been given a major black eye in public just as a trans inclusive ENDA was to be introduced complete with extreme homophobic remarks aimed at gay men in general and Bil Browning and Alex Blaze in particular. I’ve had my share of intellectual disagreements with both of them, but never for one second believed either was anything other than a sincere decent person.

I’ve never believed that about most I’ve disagreed with and have always been able to sit down and break bread with people even on the extreme other side of many issues I hold passionate feelings about. A couple of people on the trans side I admit I see as mentally ill and even dangerous, but not any class of people.

My day to day life is foreign to most people’s experiences. I live in a spiritual household, a type of Pagan Convent, and the bulk of my time is devoted to maintaining that household and spiritual pursuits. I remain intensely interested in origins of trans-identities but my own sense of my self as a woman is not bound up in that. My life circumstances have been such that I am living proof that most of the Raymondite arguments are garbage. I was born a hermaphrodite, surgically assigned male at birth but my childhood was a curious mixture of attempts by my father’s side of the family to “make a man of me” and my mother’s side honouring my female nature to the extent that my maternal grandmother chose me over my other female cousins to inherit family heirlooms handed down mother to daughter for several generations that will be my daughter’s when I pass.

I had my own personal “feminist awakening” at age nine in 1958, predating the emergence even of second wave feminism. I lived in India as a teenager and reveled in exposure to Eastern philosophy and theology. I had a curious mixture of “male privileged” freedom as a child mixed with some of the typical restrictions on young girls growing up. If anyone has ever been a mixture of the genders in all senses since the beginning of time, it’s been me. Even my genetics are mixed, as a chimera, some of my tissues are XX, some XY. Yet neurologically, internally, intellectually, emotionally and at my deepest level of personal understanding of myself (a principle extremely important to my personal spirituality) I have always since my earliest memories known myself to be female. Apparently this actually makes me unique, an “elitist”, trannier than thou, a freak of nature, a “eunuch”. (that used to have a different meaning in the ancient world)

What I actually am is a woman who has dedicated her life to the the spiritual advancement of the principles of the Divine Feminine, true equality among the sexes that honours the strengths of the Feminine as just as valuable and necessary as those of men to society and has and continues to live a life of service to others. And I am oh so tired of the endless attacks and insane ego self defense I find myself surrounded with whenever I come near anything trans…..from all points. I believe that you love is much more important than who you love and that same sex relations are just as valid as opposite sex ones. I believe in the essential worth and dignity of all people and that basic human rights are the right of everyone.

Look inside yourselves, face the persona within, and in the brief but oh so important words of the ancients “know thyself”…….and be at peace with who you find.

I am.

 

We Finally have some hard data on MtF transpeople

Last night I attended a presentation of the findings of the “Transgender Project” at SUNY Albany. The five year study of 571 male to female trans identified people with a good ethnic mix, separated into two age cohorts using the Life Chart Interview method divided into five different life stages has released it’s preliminary findings. Two psychotic individuals were rejected from the findings. Three different reports have been released on:

Psychiatric Impact of Gender-Related Abuse Across The Life Course of Male-to-Female Transgender Persons

Lifetime Risk Factors For HIV/STI Infections Among Male-to-Female Transgender Persons

Sexual Orientation and Transvestic Fetishism among Male-to-Female Transgender Persons in New York City: A Further Assessment of Blanchard’s Findings

This study and it’s findings are going to be the benchmark for quite a while in the future as they finally provide some hard data to work with and a lot of folks are going to be upset, others vindicated. The study spanned over five years and we were told at the time it would be absolutely groundbreaking. It is. I was a participant in the study myself and can attest personally to the professional and complete nature of the interviews.  Follow up interviews of about half of the baseline participants were conducted at six month intervals to provide a timeline comparison.

While Blanchard’s models were not fully supported, there appears to be a definite link in sexual orientation and transvestic fetishism but not to the extent Blanchard wrote. Androphillics were found to be 23% (mostly white)lifetime transvestic fetishists while non-androphillics (bisexual, asexual and gynophillic)came in at a whopping 69% lifetime transvestic fetishists, which is totally in line with observations by psychiatric friends of mine as well. (appox 70% presenting for evaluation meeting the marker for autogynophilia) Long term hormone and some surgical work was linked to much lower levels of lifetime transvestic fetishism (big surprise)

HIV and STI infection rates were shocking. Approximately 50% HIV positive among Hispanics and Blacks, only 3.5% HIV positive among whites.

Rates of reported abuse of a psychological nature were over 75% in childhood across the study, 50.1% physical abuse. 53% reported thoughts of suicide, 34.9.9% planned suicide and 31.2% actually attempted it.

There is a lot of good material here. Some cherished myths of the transactivist community will need jettisoned.