Posts tagged radfems

queernonymoose:

She clarified that it is not science she is using to argue but the letter of the law, which defines it as such and whatnot.

However science has been used to determine legislation and whatnot. I.e: DNA, and in this instance genitalia is the determinant of sex by law.

With that change, that she is actually saying by law this is what genitalia means, she is actually still being racist.

Because last time I checked.

All

These

Laws

And

Back-handed

Faux Legal

Deals

Are

Entrenched

In

Racism.

I liken it to this, and perhaps this would better explain to Cathy what I had meant when I said conflict of interest.

Andrew Jackson, the president, was a land surveyor and prospector before he was president. Do you know what that is? It’s someone who surveys land to see value, prospect it to see if there is any mining that can be done.

Sitting conveniently on top of a good mining area were Cherokee and the “Five Civilized Tribes”.

So what did he do?

He got a law passed to get them out. I.e, the Indian Removal Act.

This has happened time (Black Hills) and time again (Navajo country Uranium), and still occurs actually, but mostly out West.

So you can see, that Andrew Jackson benefited from these policies both financially, and in line with trying to protect good white people’s interests.

Your double dipping, to me, is a conflict of interest. Had I become a lawyer, I would not in any way make it known I was a lawyer as a means to get something done.

It’s about balancing and leverage. I will never use a position of authority against someone else.

You know what that “I was arguing LAW! not SCIENCE!” thing sounds like to me?

Its sounds like Cathy taking that bicycle of racist trans hatred and backpedaling as hard as she can.

For real, has she ever had to genuinely argue something? Because I have yet to see her engage in any conversation that wasn’t premised on “I’m loud and inflammatory, which makes me RIGHT!”

(Source: dansphalluspalace, via so-treu)

blackenedbutterfly:

and you out her as queer to a homophobic part of the country she lives in

you realize you’re literally putting her at risk for sexual and physical assault, right?

you fucking bigots just don’t know when to stop.

[tw: everything forever]

Radfems,

This is the reality of what your ridiculous websites can do. Its not about it “being legal to disagree.” You are putting people’s lives and livelihoods on the line because you are fucking bullies. And then you have the nerve to whine about death threats.

You are soulless husks, and I live for the day when I can see you face some sort of consequences for your actions. You’ll probably try to paint yourself as the victim then, too. Assholes.

(via blackenedbutterfly-deactivated2)

in calling themselves “women” yet claiming to not have a gender identity, the internet radfems are shitting all the fuck over DFAB genderqueer folk who are non-binary, agendered and non-gendered. I can’t believe this didn’t occur to me before.

It takes a lot of fucking nerve to call people “pretendbians” and accuse DMAB trans* folk of appropriating “womanness” while you are appropriating my gender. It takes some serious soullessness to appropriate my gender in order to attack DMAB trans* folk.

Cute, really.

that their brand of feminism hasn’t been relevant for decades.

Seriously, y’all. bell hooks was debunking your shit re: race and faux sisterhood 20+ years ago, and she wasn’t the only one.

Your assumption of universal femalehood is accepting a social framing that has several oppressive concepts embedded in it. Yes, oppressive even to you.

Its not like our criticisms are coming out of the fucking blue, here.

Magicpoppy, you are in need of a compassion implant.

Stat.

Eh, more to add to the block list.

to the post about popular myths re: camp trans and MWMF?

Specifically the list that included the fact that the shower incident was a post-op trans man as opposed to a pre/non-op trans woman?

I could really use it for this thing I’m writing, and I know I liked it but I can’t find it.

shadowsighsilverlights:

“Encourage lesbianism.”

“I’m a lesbian for political reasons.” 

“I gave up heterosexuality.” 

I know it’s not a new thing, yet a lot of this bullshit is popping up lately, here on Tumblr and elsewhere on the Internet.

What a fun way to deny having heterosexual privilege, ehh?

While making life harder for lesbians (and I mean all lesbians, including the ones you fucking radfem assholes refuse to acknowledge are women too!) who don’t have that privilege. 

It really is thanks to you guys that the stereotype of lesbians as “man haters” and “feminazi’s” exists, persists, and will probably never go away. You know, every time—which happens way too often—I get “You’re a lesbian? And you support ’women’s rights’? So you hate men?” I have you fuckers to thank for it! 

And then there is the wonderful way in which your bullshit helps perpetuate the belief that homosexuality is something a person chooses. Another fun thing that gay people will never get away from! 

I have no fucking respect for any of you.

Being a lesbian shouldn’t be some kind of fucking political statement, but it is, and it is because of fucking radical-feminist-political-lesbians as much as it is because of fucking conservative-homophobe-assholes-bigots. 

This is not policing your identity. This is telling you to stop fucking with the identities of lesbians and the lesbian community and twisting it for your political bullshit. 

This is not “oh, teh mean dyke doesn’t want us in her spechul club, waaaah.”. It’s you don’t belong to the fucking club to begin with, so shut the fuck up and get the fuck out! 

Quite simply, just fuck off. Take your “political lesbianism”, “womyn born womyn”, “teh patriarchy is out to get us!”, and “teh mens is evil” bullshit and shove up your ass and fuck off.

—One extremely pissed off dyke.

(via genderbitch)

This has been kicking around in my head for a while, mainly in response to things like the post from girlsandgifs claiming that sex categories that can be strictly organized into male, female and intersex are a reality that transcends culture, society and time.There tends to be a reference to reproductive organs, genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics. While there is a good deal of science that disagrees with that, there are a lot of people who believe it and have been throwing it around on tumblr lately.

Here’s the thing…by those rigid standards, I don’t make sense.

This post may be getting a bit TMI since I have to discuss my anatomy. You have been warned.

I have a beard. A goatee. It starts at the corners of my mouth, and spreads back to my neck if I don’t shave. I also have the beginnings of a mustache. It doesn’t grow out to be really bushy, but it is noticeable from a distance if I haven’t shaved in a few days. I have a lot of body hair. I have a deep voice and have from childhood. I was the youngest alto in my choir at 7, with a deeper singing voice than boys almost twice my age. I have a rather distinct clitoris, considerably larger than average, about the length of the first joint of my thumb.

I also have a body shape that, politely, could be described as “Venus of Willendorf.” H cup breasts, a size 16 butt, and what my mom calls child-bearing hips. I have given birth to and nursed a child who was conceived without any fertility assistance except for taking high levels of vitamins. I have a regular cycle, if a bit heavy. I have had an ultrasound that was not pregnancy related that has confirmed the presence of a uterus and ovaries.

But…but…hormones! Well…I have abnormally high testosterone production. If my genitals and voice are any indicator, that is a fact of my individual biology. BUT! I also have abnormally high estrogen production. High enough that taking standard birth control pills makes me physically sick. I throw up. Progestin-only pills make my cycle erratic. My hormones aren’t really sure what I am.

I have not had a medical professional “diagnose” me with an intersex condition, but I have had medical professionals tell me that exactly what constitutes intersex is not agreed upon in the medical community. We agreed that since I was not having physical health problems related to these ambiguities that a diagnosis was unnecessary.

I have never checked my chromosomes, so my karyotype status is currently unknown.

So based on all available evidence, and the apparently solid metric provided by the strict male-female-intersex categories (which are also social constructs, but that’s another post for another time) what am I?

“Scientifically” what am I?

“Biologically” what am I?

In this flawed categorization system…What..am..I? And which of my features are you using to determine that? AND, why that feature? What makes it the sole determiner of my reality as opposed to one of the others? All of these things are empirically observable facts about me, what gives one weight over the others, and why?

What is my “biological reality” and why do you think you know it and what it means to live it better than I do?

gcvsa:

Kiriamaya is reminding everyone tonight of the paper authored by Janice Raymond that was commissioned by the National Center for Healthcare Technology, titled “Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery”, and I would like to offer some additional commentary and background, because this information is not as widely disseminated as perhaps it ought to be.

The National Center for Healthcare Technology (NCHCT) was a short-lived, quasi-governmental body funded by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that existed from 1979 to 1982, under the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. According to information provided by Dennis Cotter, the NCHCT had a staff of 20 and a budget of $4 million/year and was authorized in 1978 by Section 309 of the Public Health Service Act to conduct and sponsor assessments of health care technologies and to coordinate such efforts within HHS. The effect of this overview paper, as such documents were called by NCHCT, was the removal of governmental, and eventually, private medical insurance coverage of any and all medical treatments relating to cross-sex transition, and even in many cases, medical treatments which might have been efficaceous at treating other illnesses because they may have had some use in transition-related therapy.

At the time the paper was delivered to NCHCT, in June, 1980, Janice Raymond was credited as “Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Women’s Studies, Hampshire College/University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts”. There is no information listed for Raymond at the University of Massachusetts website, but according to her Wikipedia entry, she currently serves as Professor Emerita of Medical Ethics and Women’s Studies, having retired from her teaching duties in 2002. Also according to that entry, her academic qualifications include a Ph. D. in Ethics and Society from Boston College in 1977, a Master’s degree in Religious Studies from from Andover Newton Theological School in 1971, and her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Salve Regina College in 1965. It should be of note to readers that Salve Regina College and Andover Newton Theological School are both religious institutions, Roman Catholic and American Baptist/United Church of Christ, respectively. Raymond was also at one time a member of the Roman Catholic non-cloistered women’s religious institute known as the Sisters of Mercy.

You may find it curious that the person commissioned by NCHCT to produce an expert opinion on the necessity and efficacy of transition-related healthcare would come from a background of involvement with the Roman Catholic church, an organisation with a long-standing and publicly acknowledged antipathy to sexual and gender minorities, and that furthermore, this same person would not possess a single medical, let alone psychiatric qualification that would allow that person to serve as an expert on matters of medical concern.

It is not known to me at the present time who was responsible for the decision to select Raymond. I do not know who was in charge at NCHCT in the months and years preceding June 1980, but I do know that the Secretary of Health and Human Services serving during this period of the Carter Administration was Patricia Roberts Harris, an African-American woman, the first such to have served as a United States Ambassador. I don’t know if she had any influence on the selection, nor am I privy to any information about her personal politics.

What I do know is that the paper produced by Raymond contained highly controversial language concerning transsexuality, language that is not only long deprecated, but was certainly not settled opinion even in its day, with the possible exception of within the small, but vocal, circles of academic radical lesbian feminism. In this paper Raymond:

• Uses inflammatory positioning of sexual reassignment surgery as “mutilation”.
• Dismisses established medical and psychological practice in favor of her own, personally developed but uncritically challenged, version of ethics.
• Compares the desire of transsexual women to access transition-related healthcare to hypothetical desire of people of color who may have imagined changing the color of their skin to avoid the stigma assigned to people of color that is common to the oppressively racist cultures.
• Asserts, despite any medical or psychiatric certification whatsoever, that the challenges posed by transsexual lives are not medical or psychiatric concerns, but more properly concerns of sociology.
• Positions medical and psychiatric assistance to transsexual people as actually detrimental to the health of transsexual people.
• Portrayed falsely inflated fears of gender clinics being used as mechanisms of societal enforcement of behavioral norms.
• Invokes fears of predatory medical practice for the purposes of obtaining profit at the expense of transsexual people.
• Conflates sex with chromosomal type, reproductive capacity, and falsely claims that recognition of the need for transition-related healthcare amounts to reification of the argument that gross biology is the sole important determiner of gender.
• Falsely claims pre-eminence of an experiential basis for gender based on an individual’s position within society, rather than on that individual’s own psychological and physical makeup.
• Equates transition-related therapies with heroin abuse and addiction.
• Derides surgical therapies for an inability to necessarily affect psychiatric conditions, as if this were ever a concern in the first place. This flies in the face of all previous research, particularly that developed by Harry Benjamin, who advocated only the employment of such therapies as were sufficient to alleviate the symptoms of dysphoria in each individual case.
• UNETHICALLY misrepresents previous research relating to sexual reassignment surgery and its possible effects on post-transition happiness.
• Claims that transition-related therapies are experimental and dangerous, and have led to causation of disease, without any significant evidence to back up the claim aside from two cases reported by a single source in which it was speculated by the treating practitioner that cross-sex transition-related hormone replacement therapy was responsible for causing breast cancer in the two patients
• Calls for the “elimination of transsexualism” via attritive legislation.
• Insists that feminists who do not experience transsexualism be given authority to help restrict and regulate the right of transsexual people to access appropriate healthcare.

In the wake of this paper, the federal government removed all support for funding access to appropriate cross-sex transition-related healthcare, and in short order, private insurance firms followed suit. It has been an uphill battle ever since for us to regain that access, an uphill battle that has now stretched into a fourth decade.

That such a paper was ever allowed to be commissioned from a person who had absolutely no medical or psychiatric credentials, let alone clinical experience treating transsexual patients is utterly appalling, and a travesty of justice on scale which I cannot even begin to assess. It is not hyperbole to suggest that untold thousands of deaths have been caused by the removal of healthcare options and the subsequently reinforced societal stigma that this paper succeeded in pursing.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that people who purport to provide medical and psychiatric advice, especially at the policy-making level, be required to demonstrate direct competence in that field, rather than hiding behind to aegis of “medical ethics” or “bioethics”, as does Raymond’s younger replacement, Alice Dreger, who holds a Ph. D. in “History and Philosophy of Science” from Indiana University, yet dispenses psychiatric and medical advice concerning transsexual and transgender people, and intersex people even more prominently, in the same vein. I think most rational people would agree.

Hope remains, and springs eternal, as well. People such as Janice Raymond and Alice Dreger are not the entirety of those in positions of power over the provisioning of healthcare for trans people. Progress may be slow, but it inexorably grinds away at the tombstones Raymond and her compatriots, such as Adrienne Rich, prepared for us and for our sisters so long ago. Eventually, they will wear down to sand and be washed away, forgotten in the flow of time, and we will stand tall above the graves of our lost sisters, never again to bow to the hatred of woman upon woman. So say we all.

I will never not reblog this.

This is the facts about the history of radical feminists and the trans* community.

This is how ideas can be violent.

This is one of my biggest reasons for leaving the feminist community behind.

(via sanaa-tamir-is-leaving-deactiva)

magneticsoul:

Fierce…Flawless…: radscumblr: Fierce…Flawless…: radscumblr: life spirit.: Radical…

radscumblr:

Fierce…Flawless…: radscumblr: life spirit.: Radical feminism and biological…

radscumblr:

life spirit.: Radical feminism and biological determinism

genderbitch:

smirkingbenevolence:

genderbitch:

lucypaw:

ad-mirandam:

I don’t get…

K…BUT WHAT DOES INTER*SEX* HAVE TO DO WITH *GENDER*? ARE YOU SAYING THERE IS SOME KIND OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEX AND GENDER?? LOGIC FAIL. INTERSEX IS IRRELEVANT TO DISCUSSION OF GENDER.

Gender IDENTITY is different from gender ROLES.

I’ll say that again, in case you weren’t listening: GENDER IDENTITY IS DIFFERENT THAN GENDER ROLES.

Gender roles are social constructs that vary from culture to culture over time. Gender identity is something you find across human cultures. The ways of expressing it vary, who gets categorized where vary, but the concept of gender identity is there regardless. For your edification, that’s why gender identity fits the academic standards as an inherent human quality, as opposed to gender ROLES, which shift according to culture and the mores of the time.

You are the one mixing them up, so check yourself and your facts before suggesting that someone else is “failing” to logic.If you can’t distinguish between the two, that is your failing, not the trans* community’s.

You can’t or won’t acknowledge that you are creating a straw trans* person for all of your hateful, and fucking deadly arguments. Because I have yet to see a single trans* person in these discussions arguing for any kind of reified gender roles. (And maybe could we derail for a minute to show how trans* people in the US were forced to fit specific gender roles in order to receive treatment almost directly because of Janice Raymond? radical feminists created this situation for trans* people and now you want to point to it as if it proves something? LOGIC FAIL.)

Intersex people (Intersex is not a noun, stop being an asshole) are relevant because they blow your bullshit biological essentialism all to hell. Their existence and you refusal to acknowledge that they are people really shows exactly what kind of bigoted, low information person you are.

You can’t say that the only real thing in this conversation is biological sex and then act like there isn’t a huge variation in human sex and human secondary sexual characteristic without your actions shredding your argument. Those categories are not black and white, one or the other, even for non-intersex people.

You trying to erase them from relevance in this conversation is like a creationist trying to ignore the fossil record while arguing that evolution is fake.

If your theory does not adequately explain reality, the flaw is in your theory, not reality.

(Source: megidophilia, via magneticsoul-deactivated2012043)