Recently those who claim some feminist creds among the Transgender/Transvestite spectrums have introduced the concepts of cisgender and cissexual. These words, read in context, appear to be an “othering” of those who use them from the entire rest of the world to then claim victimhood by everyone. At least that’s how it appears to me. Cisgender apparently refers to having a consistent gender identity (sense of one’s self as male or female) and cissexual apparently refers to having a congruence of gender identity with one’s own body. These transgender/transvestites argue that this confers a “privilege” similar to male privilege that is similarly invisible to all but those who are “othered”. This entire line of reasoning rests on being “othered” or a third category in a binary world. It is highly dependent on viewing gender deconstruction (destruction of the sex/gender binary) as the ideal and these trans-feminists call on the traps of the branch of feminism derived from taking the Judith Butler school of feminism to it’s illogical extremes. To feminists who hold this gender deconstructist position anyone who does not agree cannot be a “Feminist” or is a gender essentialist (which is apparently a major insult given its usage). The argument goes that men and women do not differ in any meaningful manner other than simple arrangement of parts and that any study, findings or even suggestion otherwise is gynophobic and a tool of the patriarchy.

This would be all wonderful and good if it were true but the fact of the matter is this is a trap that has lead to suppression of important studies in medicine that would have led earlier to the recognition that men and women are in fact quite different and failing to see these differences means women have not received medical treatments that specifically require acknowledgment of these differences in neurology, drug effectiveness, and even as basic an area as prevention of heart attacks and strokes. In addition to very very basic neurological differences in cognition, information processing, and even brain structure its self, there are also basic philosophical/psychological differences on a more subtle level from having one’s genitals on the inside and having them on the outside that have a greater impact than most are capable of seeing. They are important enough that they even have had an impact on what a society deems necessary to function on a “civilized” level on an historical basis.

Let us start by taking a trip back in time to the last of the great Goddess oriented civilizations, one we are only just now beginning to understand even though it was discovered about a hundred years ago, the Minoans. We do this to try to better understand what an actual feminist-egalitarian civilization was as opposed to the a Matriarchy. We cannot know for sure when this civilization began, although a recent discovery on Mount Ararat of a temple to Cybele that recently was exposed by the melting glaciers would lead to a reasonable assumption of circa 4000-3500 BCE given the date of the mini-ice age in that area would have advanced the glacier to envelope it initially. This temple, carved into the side of the mountain, was devote of furnishings but the walls are inscribed with a language that appears to be the precusor of Linear B, the written language of the Minoan culture, which reasonably seems to point to migration to Thera (modern Santorini) around this time. This would mean that the Minoans were the heirs to the quite advanced, for the time, civilization represented by Catal Huyak circa 10,000 to 4000 BCE.

The Minoan culture, as represented on Crete and recently new digs on Santorini, was remarkably advanced. A non-war like culture, incredible works of art, total equality of the sexes and a standard of living that would seem modern by modern standards. They had flush toilets. Now you may laugh at this but it took civilization more than 3200 years to get flush toilets again. Flushing, indoor, toilets are important to women for obvious physiological reasons, and not so much to men for the same reasons. It takes an enormous investment in engineering and resources and thus is not going to be important when it is merely convenient rather than a sanitary requirement to a society dominated by patriarchal thinking. When we say today that the Minoans were egalitarian regarding the sexes, we tend to think in terms of women sea captains (yes) and other professions but that misses the point that it was feminine values that were reflected in that society as opposed to masculine ones that were starting to take hold in the other civilizations of the time such as in Babylon, Sumeria and Egypt. The Minoans were trading with these groups and their influence was being felt. They dominated the trade on the Mediterranean. Our history today would be vastly different were it not for the worst natural disaster in the history of mankind, the explosion of Thera circa 1700 BCE. There are many differences too involved to enter into here, the difference between a matrilinear descent structure and a patrilinear one, for example which leads to the need to control the sex life of women in order to maintain itself and the overreaching effects that has on the relationships between the sexes. What we are concerned with here is that the entire Minoan culture was wiped out in a single day and the survivors never had the chance to recover because within thirty years what was left was invaded by the Greeks. It took an additional 2000 years to wipe out most traces of the Goddess and completely reduce the rights of women and women’s values in society, but this single historical event was the turning point.

Why on earth is she talking about ancient history you well might ask. Because from the time of the Greeks and then the Romans it was the values of women, their strengths and differences that were attacked by the patriarchy and this continued throughout history to the modern times and is so ingrained in Western Culture that we have all, women as well as men, become blind to it much as a fish is unaware of the water she lives in. In ancient times spinning and weaving and horticulture were the work of women. Healing and herbalism and midwifery were women’s work………until they became important on larger scales and viewed as economically advantageous, then they became the province of men. Weaving became the textile industries, horticulture became agriculture and herbalism and midwifery became the practice of medicine. Spinning remained the work of women until modern times as child rearing always has been. The hands on care in medicine remained women’s work. Housekeeping became the main occupation allowed to women outside of these and education. What do they all have in common? They are all economically undervalued far more than their actual value to society. The Butlerian view of feminism would have us address this by insisting that women reject women’s work and values in favour of the patriarchal valued professions but history shows us that in a patriarchy what happens is that if a profession becomes seen as women’s work, it’s economic value drops immediately. In a patriarchy, if the number of women approachs a mere 1/3 of a profession, it becomes viewed as a woman’s profession. You can see this happening today in the practice of medicine on a general care level in America. The male dominated sections of medicine, research and surgery, remain highly compensated while general practice, with the increasing number of women entering that field, is less and less profitable on an almost daily basis now. Nursing has always been absolutely essential to health care yet is far under the economic level of any male dominated field with similar training requirements. Teaching has always been paid at a much lower level because it is considered a women’s profession. Child care the same. Society cannot survive without any of these professions. Women do not achieve equality by giving them up and pursuing only masculine fields, we do so by demanding they be recognized for the value they actually have AND retaining the right to work in whatever fields we wish at an equally valued rate. This is the model of feminism from the French school of feminist thought.

I’ve taken you this far because it is essential to understand that what some third wave feminists are calling “gender essentialism” today is nothing less that actual liberation of both sexes. That gender deconstructism is a trap, a zero sum game you will never win because it completely ignores the underlying problem by seeking equality in a patriarchal system that will never allow that to happen and will just keep moving the goal posts every time you think you are advancing. It is tempting, oh so tempting, to seek the immediate gratification of better pay to makes one’s life a bit easier but when that happens the cost of living increases, men still get more money and the professions themselves shift in perceived economic value as more and more women enter them.

Returning to our gender deconstructionist transgender/transvestite and third wave feminist alliance lets examine the philosophical underpinings of their reasoning and why they react as strongly as they do to women of transsexual history. One very interesting fact is that the entire premise that underpins their deconstruction of gender, opposition to women of transsexual history and insistence that srs is unnecessary for a male to be female (the transgender/transvestite holy grail) is build on a contradictory part of the works of the very “gender essentialists” radical lesbian separatists they say they oppose. Janice Raymond, who is almost unknown today among mainstream feminists, is the original Boogywoman of the trans crowd. However Raymond’s entire point in opposing inclusion of transwomen in womyn’s space was based on her opposition to the same group these gender deconstructions oppose and her given answer to this situation was the exact same on embodied in gender deconstructions who decry transwoman exclusion. Strange bedfellows indeed until you consider that women of transsexual history or classic transsexuals give lie to the entire structure of gender identicalism merely by existing and having the basis of our neurological intersexed condition more and more established every day by medical research. You see, if there were indeed no difference between the neuro-biology of the sexes, classic transsexuality simply would not exist…..and it does and has throughout human history. Raymond reacted so strongly against women of transsexual history not because she was a gender essentialist as is often stated, but precisely because she was essentially a gender deconstructionist instead. She even stated flat out that transwomen would being proving their worth in the fight against the patriarchy by refusing surgery and becoming gender blenders instead which is the precise message of the third wave feminists and transgender/transsexual crowd. They apparently missed this because Raymond disliked the patriarchy so much she also insisted that women’s space be physiologically “pure” which is an actual contradiction to her main thesis and actually quite jarring when you encounter it about halfway through her book.

And it is this “women’s space” argument that blinds everyone the essential feminist issues regarding transwomen and women of transsexual history to this very day. Interesting that as we start to examine these postions a bit more closely they suddenly start to shift in meaning isn’t it? Why the importance of trans inclusion in some limited women only space? Has everyone missed the subtext from the trans side that we are somehow talking about the holiest of holies? Could it be that what is really being demanded is validation of a rather shaky sense of one’s womanhood? You can see this very clearly among the subset of transgender/transvestites who never intend to do more than be “weekend women” and remain “not ready for full time players”. They see invasion of women’s space as an adventure and if you read the fiction they write for each other, this is beyond clear as a bell. Going to the ladies room is an act of daring do…woah, and I just go there to pee myself. I cannot help but suspect that the full time never never ops of the transwomen world have placed themselves in a perpetual third category and need constant ego strokes about their womanhood because they themselves placed themselves in a third category and that simply doesn’t work in a binary world. The other day I read a very very long thread on a well known transoriented board where transgender “women” argued there is no such thing as male privilege but there is female privilege that they want. I had trouble believing it myself but there is was.

Most of the feminist women of my acquaintance never heard of Janice Raymond or Lisa Vogel or the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival until it becomes a hot topic raised by some transwoman……..it just never gets brought up in any other feminist context as a rule. Even Mary Daly, Raymond’s much better known mentor, abandoned the Butlerist school of deconstruction in favour of the Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva school of promotion of women’s values and strengths road to equality rather than seeking to become penisless men that deconstructism would lead towards. Don’t believe me? Read Amazon Grace. And interestingly enough, if you accept that there are actual neuro-biological differences between the sexes, which is proved further and further correct on an almost daily basis by science freed from the fear of talking about the differences between the sexes fuel by the recent realization that this has profound influences on women’s health issues, you then come full circle and can “get” the idea that in the realm of intersexed conditions there exists one in which the entire central nervous system is wired to female norm…….classic transsexuality. It is then a small leap indeed to imagine yourself stuck with a body in opposition to your gender identity and what you would do to correct that. Correction of that is not a political act, it is not a feminist act, it is not an attempt to infiltrate women’s space by the patriarchy. It is simple someone trying to put their own life on a somewhat even keel with the rest of the world. Curing the condition via surgery doesn’t make you a totally happy person, immune to the patriarchal crap every women deals with on a daily basis, free from depression…….it just makes you whole enough to continue living, period. It is not a choice. Left untreated long enough it will result in death or complete insanity. We know this who have suffered this condition. Many of us waited until it was in fact a matter of life or death before we sought treatment. Not all of us develop feminist sensibilities just as not all non transwomen do as well………But we have become the battleground of a dying view of feminism and a growing trans fueled gender deconstructionist worldview that seeks to erase us from view or demonize us or out and out deny that which we deal with on the road to being whole.

Correction of the body to the greatest possible extent is the marker of the condition. The body and the soul do not exist independent from each other and those who tell you that surgery is a choice speak only for the fact they are not suffering from the condition which makes about as much sense as someone with 20/20 vision telling someone with 20/100 vision they don’t need corrective lens, and received about as well. Surgery is vital to a woman born with classic transsexuality, but this also becomes a place of accusation of being a gender essentialist. Funny that in opposing women of transsexual history, the first thing the average transgender/transvestite does is deny her womanhood while proclaiming their own. When we talk about our own lives all that is heard is implications from that on the listeners life……….and we aren’t saying that.

In conclusion, if the life and death need I had to bring my body and mind into full congruence means I am a gender essentialist, so be it………but that rings totally false to a woman who devotes her life to the Goddess and the restoration of the Minoan socialist ideals of a truly egalitarian relationship of the sexes and the elevation of the value of women’s unique strengths and values. I need no validation of my own womanhood, I understand it on a level so basic it is beyond challenge and I celebrate it daily.