Letters to the Editor
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You missed the point about the cover baby!
S/he is dressed in a garment that's half pink, half blue. Get it?
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it's true! it's true! hurray! hurray!
see SEE SEE!!! It is now PROVEN. Gender is fluid so it is now PROVEN it is ENTIRELY reasonable for females to demand that males have exactly the combination of gender/sexual/social behaviors/attitudes/responses/instincts that women see fit to desire. Take that all you sociobiology-using-to-defend-traditional-gender-roles patriarchial oppressors!
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Lots of transgenders and transexuals -- a shame so many feminists hate them
Why are you ignoring how many feminists hate transexual MTF individuals?
Are you upset with them when they seem to embrace a more feminine identity?
Are you upset with them for not seeing the evils of the male patriarchy that you see?
Are you uncomfortable with pre-op transexuals in your bathroom?
Or are you pissed off these "guys" are trying to crowd into your showers?
Or are you just hatas?
Seriously, how come no Salon articles about how many mainstream feminists actively want to discriminate against male to female transexuals?
And here I thought the matriarchy was going to be about equality and a society where gender is invisible....
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Greatest isolation
Perhaps there's some animosity between the feminist and trans communities that I don't know anything about. I will say that for some years, I had a problem--as a gay man--with trans people. It's not that I didn't recognize my own hypocrisy, I did. I knew that any gender line-crossing, whether social/sexual or in personal identity, left that person feeling isolated. But the whole "LGBT" thing left me cold back then; it was enough to fight the myth that being gay meant wanting to be the other gender without lumping myself in with those who were, or wanted to, make that transition.
Even in that explanation, notice how much "I" and "my" show up; that's what it was about, after all. It wasn't until after meeting and getting to know a transgendered person--a smart, talented, incredibly well-adjusted woman--I finally got it. Since then, LGBT makes perfect sense to me; those of us who are represented by one of those initials don't have the same needs or priorities as the others, nor even with those who identify exactly as we do. But the courage to live and speak as a transgendered person is far beyond what I ever summoned up as a gay man. They face a far greater isolation than the rest of us, and bringing their voices forward is a great thing.
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Define "Middle America," please
It's just not cool to create a stereotype whom you can accuse of stereotyping.
Middle... what? geographically? income-wise? aged? In those subsets of our population, some people will indeed be frightened of transgender people, and other people will be fine with them--or even BE them.
Why don't you get rid of the bogeyman and just say, "People who are uncomfortable with transgendered people"? Let those who that defines identify themselves in terms of demographics.
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Interesting reactions.
This subject isn't going mainstream anytime soon. The reactions of two of the three posters before me is indicative of the level of hysteria surrounding this subject. But those letters shouldn't be written off as hatemail, for they both contain valid points beneath the vitriol. It's true: men are confused by the increasing and contradictory array of traits demanded of them in the name of gender equality, and the lesbian community has a definite Janice Raymond, "trans-women are men attempting to subvert female space and feminsim for the ends of patriarchy," way of thinking, which seems to be commonly held.
It's an interesting subject, and as a lesbian woman I am more and more realizing that gender roles are less inherent than they are cultural imperatives, designed to keep people in line. After all, our culture is held together through a series of accepted rules about actions and thought. The most basic of those surround gender. To challenge those imperatives is to challenge everything we thought was true.
But I think this Newsweek article is a good thing. The more varied the gender expression in our culture, the better it is for all of us. The old gender rules no longer serve us.
The king is dead. Long live the queen!
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Did you know that elephants can't stand carrots? It's true!!!
Why are you ignoring how many feminists hate transexual MTF individuals?
Etc, etc.
Anonymous person, would you care to cite any backing for what you're saying? Which mainstream feminists (your words) have come out against transsexuals? I would truly like to know.
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OUTING A FEMINIST BIGOT
Here is one hate lettr from an anonynmmous female bigot posted just three days ago on the article on daddy becoming a woman.
tell her that daddy is an idiot now and he is gone from her life forever. tell her that he/she will now wear a skirt, put on lipstick, speak in a prissy manner, have longer hair. because this is what these people do - this is their idea of a woman. god, i hate these men. they know nothing about being or looking like a woman. they are caricatures. women come with ovaries and eggs, not just some implantable hormones. our culture is going nuts here and children are getting caught in this mess. there are other ways to express your feminine side, if you wish. but the ones i have seen are like monsters and look like poor imitations of women. since i am a woman i will say stay out of our ladies rooms. i spotted one once and i fled.
I excoriated her for her hate and bigotry, but because she is female she believes she is always right and I, as a male, am always wrong.
Maybe if feminists did not try the last fifty years to guilt trip all men into hating themselves just for being men, then maybe so many [of the more sensitive] men would not be transitioning into the sex they feel controls the playing field so dramatically.
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baffled
I keep on hearing it stated in the letters section that feminists (as one letter wrote) "want to discriminate against male to female transexuals." I think I'm a mainstream feminist, and I've never encountered this. I've never heard any feminists complaining about MTF transexuals using the ladies room. (Granted all women complain about the long lines found at women's public restrooms, but that has more to do with the lack of facilities than anything else). Nor have a I received any literature from NOW, PP, NARAL, Ms Mag hating on MTF's because they don't see the "evils of the male patriarchy".
Granted, I don't think that transexuality has been at the top of the list of mainstream feminism, probably because in the scheme of things MTF transexuals don't make up a large percentage of feminists. I completely agree that early modern feminism had issues with lesbians, women of color, and was very class-ist. But as far as I've seen the "feminist movement" (if you can call it that) has really tried to be more inclusive and not so narrowly focused on the typical "white upper middle class" women's issue. Any citations of mainstream feminist sites or publications that are examples of this so-called hatred?