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With everything coming via laws passed and court battles it seems in their infinite wisdom our legislators and judges in state and federal government know more than The Almighty. In their own self righteous stupidity, ignorance, and bigotry they have pronounced My God only makes perfect males and females. Ignoring the reality babies may be born blind, missing arms, autistic, or hundreds of other genetic non perfect male or female, the ruling elite focused on transgender. Ignoring medical science and over thirty years of research from some of the best labs and medical facilities in the world. They still follow the flawed Harry Benjamin concept, transgender is a mental sickness. I'm guessing they have never read any of the medical research. They relied on the tabloids for their knowledge of what is or isn't transsexual. Males joining girls and women's sports, walking into women's bathrooms after proclaiming themselves female, truly put the pot to boil. There were kids being entertained at library parties by what I could only be describe as the most outrageous transvestites who belonged in the lowest of sleeze joints. These actors were neither transsexual nor transvestites but voyeurs seeking their own self gratification. I could see the backlash coming years ahead, and it came with a vengeance. States begin passing laws against anyone and anything hinting transsexual. It included all ages from birth to death; no one could be transgender.
As the smallest minority we let the loudest, most outrageous, the most shocking be the representatives of who and what transgender is. The tabloids and legacy media along with the bloggers ate it up and sent it out to the general public. Those wishing for recondition and a place in society got it. All of us have paid the price of the backlash. Instead of blending in and becoming a normal husband, wife, family next door we have become the leapers of society. Demanding laws be passed granting us special rights and demanding everyone must accept us has brought consequences. Laws have been passed. Not the laws transgender were demanding. If one doesn't pass perfectly we aren't accepted. We are on our own if we disobey the bathroom laws and all other laws passed against transgender. Courts and a lawsuit against discrimination won't help us.
In a lifetime of research into transgender one of the many things I learned is trans IQ is usually the highest of all groups of people. The past fifteen years certainly has been a disappointment in that respect. Possibly proving all those who claim to be trans aren't? This fiasco with the government and the public is going to take years for trans to be accepted again. This isn't the path I wanted for the girls following along behind me. We might not have chosen to get into the same waterhole as the freaks and voyeurs, we got pulled in anyway. It's going to take years to get rid of the stink.
Hugs People
Barb
Comments
Political Polls
Frequently politicians take polls so that they can decide what position they want to publicly take on controversial issues no matter what the facts say.
Of course, the real deciding factor is how the PACs supporting them want them to vote. For those in the House of Representatives in particular fund raising for their next campaign is a perpetual thing.
For a long time I have been of the opinion that the federal budget deadline should go back to July 1 and congress should not be allowed to go on their summer break until they have passed a budget. As an added incentive the air conditioning should be shut off if they haven't passed the budget after one week and their staff should be the first to have their pay stopped.
Michelle B
I agree that the fact that drag queens have become the face…..
Of transgender women is disgusting - but I resent the implication that we, the transgender community, are to blame for this. I have repeatedly complained about the ridiculously over the top and clownish appearance of drag queens, and the use of them in advertising as representatives of our community. I even posted a blog here on this site some time back regarding how insulting it was that a pharmaceutical company, advertising for a “prep” pill to be used to combat HIV, used an obvious drag queen in their commercial. The drug is only to be used by those “assigned male at birth” per their own advertisement, and they end the commercial with an overly made up drag queen recommending the drug to “all of the gorgeous kings and queens out there.”
I neither see myself as a drag queen, or a queen of any kind. I am simply an average woman doing her best to get through life in spite of the disadvantages I was born with. Wellllllll, I might just be the princess in my household and the queen of the office, but that is different!
Ru Paul’s Drag Race is yet another example of how our society sees drag queens as the classic face of our community. I cannot even begin to express how frustrating it is to me to have people ask me if I watch the show - because of course as a transgender woman I must watch it. Even the women who staff my office told me how much they “love” the show when I first met them; they actually seemed taken aback when I told them I hated it. They couldn’t understand how I found the show to be demeaning. Perhaps if any of them were black I could have asked them what they thought of seeing actors in black face? Both are demeaning acts.
Yes, a large portion of society sees us as nothing more than perverts and drag queens. But the simple fact of the matter is that even many of our fellows in the LGBTQ+ spectrum hate us. I have had lesbians treat me like something they want to scrape off of their shoe because I am not “a real woman”, and I have had gay men tell me I need to just admit that I am just gay and stop pretending to be a woman. Which is hilarious, because I am very happily married to a woman, lol.
The simple fact is that we are a convenient target, a political football that can be tossed around by all sides whenever it is convenient. As long as ignorance and prejudice are rampant in our world, we will always be an easy group to strike out against. But yes, we need to stand up for ourselves and stop allowing ourselves to be lumped in with groups which do not define us. We need to show the world that we are not what they would make us out to be. We need to be ourselves, and not the stereotype.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Concerned...
We have around three weeks until the "changing of the guard" for America. Will he actually do what he has said? I'm ridiculously old and hoping for the best.
Gwen Brown
The USA is not the only country...
A powerful nation, for sure, but not the only nation. If 'Trumpistan' becomes as hateful and dangerous as people are suggesting, perhaps it's time to leave - and perhaps the rest of us need to leave it alone, as well. I'm old enough to remember when sports teams wouldn't tour Apartheid South Africa. Perhaps we need a similar cultural quarantine for Trumpistan. I can't do a lot to assist those suffering the direct effects of discrimination, but I can certainly avoid sending a message saying "what you're doing is okay by me" by buying American, investing in the USA, or holidaying there.
Sugar and Spiiice – TG Fiction by Bryony Marsh
I have several American friends
Especially at this site, but I am not a lover of America and certainly American governments who have shafted us for the last century. I try to avoid buying anything American, except a microscope sold by Amscop, otherwise I haven't knowingly bought anything else from there, but I apply the same rules to China, Russia, Israel and other tyrant-ruled states, or theocracies like the US, Iran, Israel and Afghanistan, where the ultimate tyrant seems to be god. Once that happens you just need to wait for the absurdity to happen. Alas people still die because of it.
Angharad
Oh how the mighty are falling
My grandparents and great-grandparents survived the religious persecutions in the 1920s and 1930s because they received a lot of support from Canada and United States of America. Both of my parents studied in USA in the 1960s. And growing up in the 1970s and 1980s I saw the USA as a shining beacon of personal freedom and unlimited possibilities.
But shortly after the turn of the millennium that image started to fray around the edges, and there even started to appear cracks through the middle. And by the mid-2010s even the prospect of attending the yearly Fantasia Fair (a.k.a. Trans Week) in late October of each year has started to give me the creeps.
The last time I set foot on the territory of the USA (I refuse to call them America, because they are only a fraction of America as a whole) was in 2003 when I traveled to the funeral of my grandma. Since the late 2010s I actively try to avoid the USA in any travel plans I [may] make. My condolences go out to all the trans-siblings who live there.
Transgender Rights Activists
Dear Barbie,
I want to address your point [again] when you say:
That trend that has truly put the pot to boil and is spectacularly backfiring, not just back-lashing, on all of us was started way back in 1976/1977 by none other than Renée Richards, who transitioned from male to female in 1975 at the age of 41. After a successful tennis career with a rank of 6th of the top 20 males over 35, and winning both singles and doubles in the All United States Navy Championship, she sued the United States Tennis Association asserting that participating in the tournament would constitute “an acceptance of her right to be a woman“. After winning that lawsuit she became a professional tennis player until retiring in 1981 at the age of 47. Though in her latter years she has become ambivalent and reconsidered her prior hot-headed stance.
For those interested, you can check out the 2012-10-25 Slate article Cross-Court Winner | Renée Richards (1934– ), from Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame. And I think that we should all take heed of Renée's look-back expressed in the last two paragraphs of that article:
The emphasis in the above quote is mine. And considering that most professional athletes are forced to retire in their early 30s because their body is prematurely worn out (either by injuries or by over-exertion), we would all do well to focus our efforts and resources on pursuits that are less fleeting and able to last us into our 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond.
As someone who just wants to get on with life and live my life being comfortable in my own skin, I find it distressing that it is the extremists that are shaping both the public opinion and the public policy regarding our small but vibrant minority and community. You said it so well:
I believe that we would all benefit in the long term if we all adopted a more moderate stance. Including reaching out to those in our community who might endangers all of us by wanting to go to far to fast.
Case in point: In my opinion Lynn Conway, who is a contemporary of Renée Richards, has a far greater legacy precisely because she flew more or less under the radar. Lynn has done a lot to advance not only her professional field, but also related professions as well as society in general. Her website, which I discovered around 2002, has been very instrumental in grounding and shaping the very early years of my “transition”.
Thank You So Much
I have a list many of the ladies who were pioneers and leaders giving their support to trans girls all over the world. I traded email's with so many of them in the early years of the internet and it was dial up. Lynn was one of those. I vowed if she ever got with in a four hundred mile range from me, I'd drive to meet her. If for no other reason than to hug her and tell her how much I loved her for all she has done for all of us. There is so much she did, lost in the history of time most will never know about. Exposing writers, doctors, professors who used and abused transgender in their so called research, filled with lies because they had an agenda. Telling the truth about transgender wasn't part of their research. So much has been lost most will never learn about is as bad or worse in it's own way as the times are now..
We aren't living in the worst of this Hell because it's a top down dislike or hatred toward transgender. It's always been there destroying individual's lives. Only most never understood or realized how bad it was because it was individuals, not every single one painted with the "unclean or hatred" brush stroke.
Every person on this planet had their life affected in some way by Lynn Conway, not only those who use a computer, a cell phone, or any electronic device. Drive a car, fly in an airplane, book a restaurant, the list is endless, Lynn's pioneering work is there.
Hugs Jessica
Barb
I wish you had posted Lynn's site for those who haven't found it yet.
https://ai.eecs.umich.edu//people/conway/conway.html
https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSsucces...
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
TS Successes
Thank you for posting the links to Lynn's site, as well as the entry to her compilation of successful trans people. Even though her focus was more on the male-to-female demographic, she also included quite a few female-to-male success stories.
Unfortunately my bookmarks folder is currently a massive mess. I feel overwhelmed into paralysis when I look at trying to organize that pile of links. And many of my older links have gone dead.