Stonewall To Campaign For Transgender Rights

Well, I guess I shouldn't be too hard on the Human Rights Campaign.  Turns out, they're not the only gay-headed organization that's been throwing trans people under the bus.  Nor are they the first to do so:  Jim Fouratt and his cohort seemed to take the first possible opportunity to kick Sylvia Rivera out of the Gay Liberation Front, which she helped them found in the days after the Stonewall Rebellion.  

Nor, for that matter, is the US the only country in which leaders of gay and lesbian organizations have ignored, or even openly disdained, transgender people.  Ironically, a British organization called Stonewall--yes, after that Stonewall---has excluded trans people since its founding in 1989. Now Ruth Hunt, its chief executive, has announced that the organization will change its policies and start campaigning for transgender rights.

To be fair, Stonewall--an organization devoted to charity and education--has always billed itself as an LGB organization.  Unlike HRC and other organizations in the US, it didn't hypocritically append a "T" to the other letters of the community it purported to serve.  In other words, it neither solicited from, nor claimed to represent, transgender people.  And, I might add, Stonewall wasn't a single-issue (i.e., same-sex marriage) organization that the HRC, in effect, became.

On another note:  Wouldn't Jim Fouratt and Janice Raymond make a lovely couple?

Off-Limits To Christians. And I'm Responsible.

I suppose that if I were a different sort of person, I'd be amused when I hear second-wave feminists (and their acolytes) making the same sorts of false, desperate claims as the LGBT-phobic Religious Right.

But such people affect my life and those of friends, allies and peers of mine.  So I am not amused. 

Someone who was once a really good friend but who later saw fit to disavow me--and claim that she never wanted anything to do with me in the first place-- said that I was "changing" genders so I could go to some university and get a job teaching Gender Studies (or Women's Studies) that should rightfully go to a "real"--that is to say, genetic and cisgender--woman.

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She also asserted that I and other trans women are trying to usurp the other roles and jobs women have available to them. She never specified what those roles and jobs might be, but I don't recall trying to take any job away from any woman, or applying for one in the hope that I would displace what someone like her would deem a "real woman".

Of course, such facts will not dissuade her any more than any other relevant fact would cause American Family Association President Tim Wildmon to rethink his claim that LGBT folk are keeping good Christian people like him from making a living.

(Don't you just love it when hate groups use "family" in their names?)

According to him, the LGBT community seeks to "destroy the personal business and career (sic)" of Christians who don't support same-sex marriage and other forms of equality for LGBT people. (Of course, he doesn't think of them as "equality"; to him and his ilk, such things are "special privileges.) He cited such examples as Vermont's Wildflower Inn, which no longer hosts weddings after it was fined $30,000 for turning away a same-sex couple and Washington florist Baronnelle Stutzman, who faces a lawsuit from her state's attorney general after she refused to create the floral arrangements for a same-sex couple. He also referenced Oregon bakery Sweet Cakes By Melissa, whose owners cited their religious beliefs in their decision not to prep a cake for a gay couple's wedding.

He uses such examples, and others, to claim that seven common careers have become off-limits for Christians. They include those of the photographer, baker, florist, broadcaster, counselor, innkeeper and teacher/professor.

It sounds like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," from the way Wildmon tells it. All right, I confess: I am here to take over your career!"

All right, so that was a joke. To me, anyway. But not to folks like Wildmon--or that erstwhile friend of mine--who, apparently, has been teaching Gender/Women's Studies at the College of Staten Island in the City University of New York. What's really scary about that was that I teach on the premise that knowledge is power and that my budding faith is showing me that I don't have to be beaten down by this world. Yet that old friend of mine--her name is Elizabeth Pallitto--and Mr. Wildmon are painting themselves and those who listen to them as victims.

To be fair, I have to say that Wildmon's rhetoric is more reprehensible because he is, in essence, using his and his followers' privilege (which, of course, they don't see as such) as members of what is considered the mainstream in America to push members of minority groups back into the margins. In other words, he's inciting bullying. All Professor Pallitto and her ilk are guilty of, really, is that they stopped learning after they read Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire.

The Catholic Connection

A former co-worker once accused me of being a "self-hating Catholic."  She--who was attending a seminary while she worked with me--claimed that I would defend Muslims, Jews, Hindus, or just about any member of any ethnic group or race, before I would stand up for Catholics.

She was wrong about the "self-hating" part.  However, she might have been right about the other part of her claim.  As I pointed out to her, there aren't many places left--at least in the Western world--where the rights of Catholics have to be defended.  In most of the currently or formerly Judeo/Christian parts of the world, whatever discrimination Catholics suffer has to do with their race or ethnic heritage.  Francophone Canadians, nearly all of whom are (at least nominally) Catholics, are examples of what I mean.

Also, as I pointed out to her, I don't think of myself as Catholic, simply because it wouldn't be proper for me to do so.  I go to church only for funerals, weddings--and the occasional Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, which I attend for the music.  (Actually, I don't think of the latter as "going to church", any more than I see going into a cathedral to look at the stained glass or sculpture as church attendance.)  Furthermore, I don't participate in any other aspects of church life.  

I don't even factor my disagreement with much of Church doctrine into my non-identification with the church, for many Catholics--including some who are  relations and acquaintances--attend Mass and partake in other parts of Church life even though they disagree with even more of the ecclesiastical mandates than I do.

And then there are those who probably no more consider themselves Catholics than I do, but who agree with pronouncements from the College of Cardinals that are bigoted or simply illogical.  Their arguments--such as they are--can be summed up in such as this post.  

I guess I shouldn't be too shocked.  After all, Elijah Muhammad and George Lincoln Rockwell agreed that the races should be segregated.

But here's what I find interesting:  Three of the most prominent writers and activists in so-called Second Wave Feminism--Janice Raymond, Cathy Brennan and the late Mary Daly--have their origins in the Catholic Church.  Janice Raymond was a Sister of Mercy.  Daly,  a longtime professor of theology and feminist ethics at Jesuit-run Boston College, got all of her schooling in Catholic institutions.  And, to my knowledge--I am still researching this--Brennan also studied in schools and colleges connected with the Church.

And their fellow-traveler (at least when it comes to transphobia) Germaine Greer studied in a convent school before going to the University of Melbourne. I suppose her schooling gave her a lesson or two in standing up for her principles:  Shortly after she was appointed as a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College of Cambridge University, she opposed the election of her transsexual colleague Rachael Padman to a fellowship.  Greer lost that fight and resigned after the case generated negative publicity.

I plan to explore the topic of this post in more detail, in later posts and, possibly, in other venues.  It isn't enough to merely equate the transphobia of the Church heirarchy with their transphobia.  After all, the Church is not the only institution whose leaders espouse homophobia, and hardly the only such institution to have schooled large numbers of people.  Also, there are plenty of people--including at least two whom I love dearly--who are practicing Catholics who were educated in Catholic schools but do not share in the transphobia expressed by the likes of Greer, Brennan, Raymond and Daly.

Learning more about how and why such trans-haters came from Catholic backgrounds is of more than passing or personal interest.  Those so-called Radical Feminists are, I believe, among the reasons why we have the Lost Generation of Transgenders I have mentioned in other posts.  They helped to create the climate of fear and paranoia--which dovetailed quite nicely with the agendae of the so-called Moral Majority and other right-wing religious zealots--that led to a generation of trans people opting not to transition or delaying their transitions--or, worse, dying horribly as a result of violence, homelessness and AIDS.  I want to hold them to account for that, but I also want to further understand how they became the sorts of people who complained about their own repression while doing everything they could to aid the oppression of people who have suffered at least as much discrimination as they have.

How Low Will Cathy Brennan Go--And For What?

In spite of the evil I've witnessed, I still have had hope for this world.  That hope was based on, among other things, that folks like Cathy Brennan and Janice Raymond didn't have children.  


Actually, I haven't thought that much about them, until recently.  Years ago, long before I started my transition, I read The Transsexual Empire and thought it was one of the most ludicrous things I'd ever read.  I still do.  Next to it, any of Professor Leonard Jeffries' rants about "Ice People" and "Sun People" seem like Nobel Prize-worthy science.


As I read further, one of my suspicions was confirmed:  Raymond, Brennan, et al, have no influence outside of a very small circle of so-called Second Wave Feminists.  Ironically enough, even though their hatred has more in common with that of folks like the Reverend Fred Phelps and certain members of the College of Cardinals and the Supreme Court, even they would never pay any mind to the nonsense Raymond and Brennan were spewing.


However, as demented as their so-called theories and arguments may be, I simply can't laugh them off anymore.  At least, I can't do that to the estimable Ms. Brennan.  You see, now she's doing what, in my old neighborhood, would be called some "real bad, real serious shit."


From Kelli Busey of Planetransgender, I have learned that Ms. Brennan has viciously "outed" a transgender teenager.  We saw what happened when Dharun Ravi, in essence, outed Tyler Clementi.  Making a trans teenager's identity public puts him or her at even greater risk  for being subjected to violence, and committing suicide (whether in the way Clementi did or slowly and more painfully through substance abuse or other means) than "outing" a gay or lesbian teenager would .




As vile as his actions were, at least Darun Ravi could claim, and many people would agree, that his actions were childish pranks gone horribly wrong.  However, Brennan can make no such claim.  In fact, she has no defense at all.  The only rationale she has is her own hatred, whatever its sources and purposes.  


In other words, it was a purely malicious act.  What I find really reprehensible is that she is trying to use the fears and stereotypes some people have about trans people to destroy a young man's life.  That stereotype is the transsexual-as-sexual-predator whose modus operandi--in sex and everything else in life--is deception.


Call me selfish, but one of the reasons I think what Brennan did is especially vile is that I have been victimized in the same way.  Someone I've mentioned on this blog tried to destroy my life--and succeeded in causing me health problems which are just now coming under control--by falsely accusing me of sexual crimes against other people.  


So, when I read about that seventeen-year-old trans boy whom Cathy Brennan  "outed," I felt as if she had assaulted me personally.  And, I would expect, a lot of other non-cisgender people felt the same way.


After pressure from Busey and others, the courageous Ms. Brennan removed the post in which she "outed" the young man from her website.  However, one of Kelli Busey's friends, Stephanie Stevens, saved it, and Busey published it on Scribe.  I am grateful to, and for, Ms. Busey and Stevens.

Once A Bully, Always A Bully?

What is a bully?  Most people, I think, would agree that "people who beat up on people who have less power than themselves" is a pretty good starting point for a definition.


Of course, the beating and power don't have to be physical.  In fact, the non-physical variety can be even worse, and is as often as not what underlies abusive relationships.  Trust me, I know something about that, and it's fresh in my mind!


Anyway, most people would also agree, I think, that bullies act as they do because they know, deep down, they have so little power themselves.  That is why so much domestic violence is done by men whose lives are on the edge:  the ones who've lost their jobs and way of life, or who are about to.  Or, they may simply fear that they are about to lose those things, or that they will be revealed as not having them.


But I don't want to simply rag on men who beat women.  Anyone who doesn't have the soul of a cockroach deplores such things.  Besides, the victims of such people can at least begin to recover from the damage they've incurred--a process that, admittedly, can be a project for the remainder of the victim's life--by getting out of the abusive relationship.  Also, the aftermath of such abuse is usually limited to the victim and his or her loved ones, as well as those of the abuser.


On the other hand, there are other kinds of bullies who can cause untold damage to large numbers, and entire groups, of people.  Such people usually pick some of the most disenfranchised people as objects of their hatred.  


One such person is one who, rightly, is vilified by the trans community and our allies is one about whom I, to myself, swore I would never write or speak.  She is none other than Janice Raymond.


To attack The Transgender Empire at this late date is almost pointless.  The damage she caused with the baseless claims she made in it is finally, I believe, being reversed simply because more people know they know someone who's transgendered, and because, thankfully, only a relatively small number of people see feminism as something that includes hating all men or anything that has ever--willingly or not--worn a male guise.


In other words, more people understand that people like me actually are women and that trans men are really men.  Or, they simply think of us as living a "different" way--one that they,perhaps, wouldn't want for themselves, but that is ours by both necessity and choice.  


And then, of course, there is a whole generation of people who's come along not having read or even heard about Janice Raymond, "radical feminism" or the sexual politics of the 1970's.  They don't think much, if at all, about feminism because they take it for granted that women can be bank presidents and airline pilots and judges rather than just "girls" who serve them.  They see sexism and hit glass ceilings, but know that feminism, as defined by such as Raymond, will not help them to overcome those things.  In fact, some have even come to realize that radicals, in the end, objectify them just as much as men, in the minds of those radicals, objectify women's bodies.


Still, people like Raymond, Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford simply can't be ignored out of existence.  Their real motivations need, as much as the flaws in what they try to pass off as arguments, to be not only fought against, but dismantled.


It seems that, as a friend of mine has pointed out, Raymond has found a new group of people to bully:  sex workers.  She argues against legalizing sex work and wants to end to "the sex industry."  


On the face of it, those are legitimate positions--and I say so as someone who doesn't agree with them.  One can make valid moral arguments against legalizing sex work, and I really wish that the world was a better place so that people wouldn't feel the need to become sex workers or their customers.  However, as cynical as this may seem, unless the human race changes radically, there will always be a market for what sex workers offer.


It would be one thing if Janice Raymond were merely ignorant of this fact, or even if she ignored it.  (Actually, either would make sense had she remained the nun she once was.)  However, as I read her Ten Reasons For Not Legalizing Prostitution, I realize that her real motivation is not concern for exploited sex workers--most of whom are young women from difficult backgrounds--but her hatred of their customers and those who control their industry, most of whom are men.  Instead of going after the johns, the pimps and those who make it easy for them to operate, she picks on the sex workers themselves.


Perhaps Janice Raymond is at too late a stage in her life to change.  Does her example tell us, "Once a bully, always a bully"?  Perhaps. But, I'm happy to say, plenty of people recognize a bully when they see one and will either fight them or simply keep them out of the way.  Most bullies back down or slink away when faced with people who have courage and integrity.  Janice Raymond may not do that, but those people, and others who recognize her for what she is, will consign her to Marx's infamous dustbin of history.