Sexism and homophobia

Have you been wondering why I keep shouting “SEXISM AND HOMOPHOBIA” over and over until I’m blue in the face? Well look no further!

Canada has our first transgender judge—a trans man who was a lesbian before deciding to transition. She is open about being a former lesbian and several articles written about her describe her earlier life and her journey into transition. What stands out for me when I read about her is the obvious sexism and homophobia that repeatedly appear.

Kael McKenzie describes her childhood the same way butch dykes always do. She was a tomboy who refused to wear dresses and played baseball. She says the following about coming out as a lesbian: “It was like this big a-ha moment. Okay, that’s what this is, that makes sense. So I lived my life as a lesbian for a very long time.”

As a young adult she joined the military, and it was against the rules to be gay at the time. After a few years in the military, she married a woman, had two kids, and went to law school. In law school, she felt uncomfortably different from the other women.

“I wore uniforms and had no cause to wear women’s clothing or to be feminine in any way but when I went to law school that was a game-changer. All of a sudden, I realized I was the only woman in the class who was wearing a beer T-shirt.”

What the hell is wrong with a woman wearing a beer T-shirt? The idea that women have to look “feminine” is called sexism. From the same article:

“In an attempt to blend in, McKenzie went against his intuition and decided to embrace the idea of being what he calls “a professional woman.” He figured: I’ll grow out my hair, put on some eye shadow, slip on some heels. “I was just going to live with it but it just got harder and harder. The more I tried to assimilate to society’s norms of what women are supposed to be like, the worse it got for me.”

The quotes from this journalist make it seem as though McKenzie was just trying to fit into the expectations placed on female lawyers. A quote from another article confirms my suspicion.

“When I moved into law, things got a little bit difficult because there are certain dress and behaviour expectations as you progress in your career. More conformity, if you will.”

There it is in black and white. This is about her having to conform to society’s expectations.

She contradicts herself about her past, as trans people often do. Even though she says that coming out as a lesbian “made sense” to her, and she lived as a lesbian for “a very long time,” and got married twice to women as a woman, she also claims to have always been trans. I don’t buy that. She can’t have it both ways. She has many years of lived experience as a dyke–first as a baby dyke who played baseball, then as an army dyke, then as a lesbian mom. After that lived experience she can’t just re-write it all and say she was a man the whole time. She certainly was not.

What has remained the same this whole time is her personality. She has always been butch, and still is, although now she’s disguised as a man. The testosterone has done its job; she looks exactly like one.

Before she transitioned, she also made an attempt at becoming a feminine woman. Of course this didn’t work; butches cannot do femininity, it’s not in their personality and it’s a foreign concept to them. If a butch tries to wear a dress and makeup she just looks more butch.

“At the time I was very early into my ‘embracing being a woman’ and I was going to act the part, dress the part, feel the part,” he says. “It was probably the calm before the storm.”

Notice these words: act the part, dress the part, feel the part. She’s talking like she was an actor. But you don’t have to “act” to be a woman. A woman is an adult human female, and McKenzie is an adult human female. No matter how she looks or acts she is a woman. There is no pretending or faking required. The only thing she was faking was a personality and an appearance that are not her own. Personality and appearance are part of the gender role, not the biological sex. Gender role is a harmful social construct that should be abolished so that people can be free to express their personalities without being told they’ve got the wrong personality for their sex.

If people try to perform a personality that is different from their own, then it will feel like acting. Her personality is not feminine, and trying to be feminine will make her feel like she is faking. She shouldn’t be required to perform a personality other than her own—no one should. There should be no expectations that people have to look or behave a certain way because of their sex. There should be no expectation that homosexuals should try to fit into the way that heterosexuals behave.

“In an attempt to blend in, McKenzie went against his intuition and decided to embrace the idea of being what he calls “a professional woman.” He figured: I’ll grow out my hair, put on some eye shadow, slip on some heels. “I was just going to live with it but it just got harder and harder. The more I tried to assimilate to society’s norms of what women are supposed to be like, the worse it got for me.”

There it is again, right in black and white. McKenzie did not think she could be herself in the professional world, she tried to become feminine instead, and she felt worse and worse. She specifically says “I tried to assimilate into society’s norms” But of course she couldn’t. Society’s norms for women are centered around heterosexuality and women’s role as wife, mother, and sex object for men. Dykes cannot fit into that role because we are dykes. We should not have to fit into that role—we should be accepted as the dykes we are. There was never a mismatch between McKenzie’s personality and her body. There was a mismatch between her personality and society’s sexist expectations of her.

I don’t agree that transgenderism is the answer when society has unrealistic expectations placed on women. It’s unrealistic to expect women to wear makeup and heels every day. I’m not even a butch and I wouldn’t wear makeup and heels every day! For gawd’s sake, tons of straight women hate makeup and heels! Not enjoying superficial stereotypes about what women are and uncomfortable clothing does not make you a man, it makes you a perfectly normal woman. When women are expected to present in makeup and heels every day against our comfort and our own desires that is called sexism.

If any of you have been wondering why I say that gender dysphoria is a result of sexism and homophobia: here it is, one of the clearest examples. A lesbian with a natural butch personality transitioned to avoid having to wear makeup and dresses and be seen as a different sort of woman. I bet it’s also in part to help her career—due to sexism and homophobia, she’ll probably be taken more seriously in the worldplace as a man than as a dyke.

McKenzie’s whole family was happy to see her transition. One of her kids said “Why couldn’t you have done this a long time ago? I wouldn’t have to explain why I had three moms.’” You know why it’s embarrassing to explain that all your parents are moms? Homophobia! McKenzie’s wife was also supportive, which I don’t get. I understand teenagers not wanting to explain to their friends they have lesbian moms. But how can a lesbian support her lesbian partner looking like a man? Check out this sentence:

“Barr, a lesbian now married to a transgender man, knew of McKenzie’s wishes long before and was also steadfast in her support.”

What?! This makes me really angry. What kind of lesbian supports her partner transitioning to male? Do I have to explain that lesbians are attracted to women, not men? Why would any lesbian support her partner cutting off her breasts and putting artificial hormones in her body in order to look like a man? I would never support that! I have not experienced having a partner transition, so I don’t know how I would react, but when I try to imagine it, I imagine myself crying and begging her not to do it. And I imagine myself having a huge crisis over wondering whether I should stay with her, because she is actually a lesbian and I love her, or if I should leave, because she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to be a lesbian or a woman. I would be in a terrible situation. I think I’d eventually leave, but I’d be heartbroken.

As it happens, I do have a butch partner, and although she has felt some pressure to transition at various points in her life, due to sexism and homophobia, she is happy being a dyke and does not want to change anything about herself. I feel very lucky to be with her and I tell her that on a regular basis. I love her natural butch personality and I love her as a woman.

There’s cognitive dissonance when a lesbian is married to an FtM. If an FtM is a man, then how can her partner be a lesbian? And if her partner is a lesbian, then how can she be a man? Transgenderists don’t care how much they contradict themselves.

Everyone in McKenzie’s life supported her transition, including her work colleagues. It’s a happy tale of transgender success. Except behind the transgender success story is a story of a butch lesbian who was forced into transition by sexism and homophobia. This story may be a success for transgenderists, but it’s no success for lesbians. The idea that lesbians are really men is 19^th century homophobia. There needs to be more people brave enough to stand up for lesbians. We need to refuse to be bullied by the label “transphobic” and instead make people fear being called lesbophobic for harming lesbians. We fucking matter!

I wonder what would have happened if she had just worn the clothes and haircut she wanted to wear and gone to work like that? Would she have been accepted then? Could she have become the first butch lesbian judge? We’ll never know. She did not take that chance. She didn’t try to create change for women or for lesbians, instead she opted out and became a “man.”

McKenzie has many things to be proud of, like being a lesbian mom, being a lawyer, and being the first Métis judge. I want to be proud of her, I really do. I wish I could be proud of her for being an “advocate for the LGBTTQI* community,” as she is called in the article. But I’m not. That’s because I am pro-woman and pro-lesbian, and whenever a lesbian woman agrees with our sexist society that she is not performing the “womanhood” role correctly and that this means she’s not a woman, she is also opting out of being a role model for lesbians. A role model for lesbians would become the best lesbian lawyer she could be, and would keep being a proud lesbian even if the stupid haters are hating. There will always be sexist, homophobic assholes in the world—that doesn’t mean lesbians should stop being lesbians. An advocate for the lesbian community shows the world that lesbians are just right the way we are, that we don’t need to change or assimilate, that we have our own legitimate way to be women.

In a way, I guess she is a good advocate for the LBGTQWTF community, because this alphabet soup has turned into exactly the sort of anti-woman, anti-lesbian hate group who likes to see lesbians transition. McKenzie has become both a victim and a perpetrator of sexism and homophobia. She has become a role model for younger butches to believe they should transition, too.

I do not like to see lesbians transition. I understand who butch lesbians are. I know they are expressing their natural personalities, that they have female personalities in female bodies, that there is no disconnect between a natural dyke personality and a female body, and that sexism and homophobia are the forces that drive dykes into internalized homophobia and shame over not performing “woman” right. I know that dykes are performing woman right, because being a dyke is an awesome way of being a woman. Every time one of my lesbian sisters opts out of being a lesbian, my heart breaks again. I love butch lesbians as women and I will not call them men!