My Butch Career, a memoir by Esther Newton

I was absolutely delighted to read My Butch Career, a memoir by Esther Newton. I had never heard of Newton before but I saw a recommendation for this book and was intrigued. Esther Newton is an American lesbian born in 1940 who came out before Stonewall and was a part of the women’s movement and the gay liberation movement. She led a fascinating life and she is very skilled as a writer. There are many things that delighted me about this book, most notably these three: the fact that she wrote about all the social movements that interest me as a lesbian feminist, and how they personally affected her throughout her life; the fact that she wrote explicitly about her sexual feelings and some of her sexual experiences; and the fact that she wrote descriptions of her past that bring the reader right into the action—she wrote as if she has a photographic memory and can still capture every detail, both physical, emotional, and sensory, of the important scenes of her life. It was an intimate and moving read, and I found myself relating to her and appreciating very much what she shared.

One of the first things Newton wrote was a description of what ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ mean to her, and as regular readers know, this is a favourite topic of mine. In order to explain what femmes are, she compared them to Baby Houseman, the heroine of the film Dirty Dancing. I was resistant to this at first because why would you use a straight character to explain what a lesbian is? But after fully comprehending what she was explaining, I found this was an absolutely wonderful description. Newton thinks of a femme as a woman who is “gutsy and determined,” who will pursue the lover of her choice despite it being socially unacceptable. She understands that a femme has femininity but is anything but a doormat, and is actually quite subversive despite having a conventional appearance.

This leads me into telling you my favourite part of the book, which is pretty near the beginning, when Newton describes the first time she had sex with a woman. It happened when Newton was a young adult in college and she was attempting to dress feminine and blend in, and yet a femme woman spotted her and saw right through her disguise—saw that she was a dyke and that she was the masculine type. The femme was “gutsy and determined” just like Baby, and pursued what she wanted immediately. The tale of seduction was breathtaking and I read over it multiple times before moving on with the book. Today while writing this review I discovered that Esther Newton has recorded herself reading this passage and put it on her website—go listen to it!

I’ve always considered gender nonconforming women to be my heroes, but the way that Newton describes the femmes of the past makes me realize I should be in just as much awe of them. When I try to imagine being a feminine-looking college girl in the 1950s and having to spot butches, who were sometimes in feminine disguise as they didn’t feel free to express themselves properly, and make the first move on them, in an extremely homophobic environment and under pressure to marry a man, I think it would be extremely difficult and nearly impossible. After reading the story of Newton’s seduction by a young femme who knew what she wanted and went for it, I feel extremely grateful for every femme who’s ever done that.

I was thrilled to find out that Newton was a lesbian feminist during the second wave of feminism—what a time to be alive! I loved the way she described her emerging feminist consciousness:

“I was watching the Miss America pageant on television when suddenly from the balcony a banner appeared with two words: “Women’s Liberation.” I don’t recall seeing footage of the protests outside the hall, or the picture of the woman marked up like cuts of beef, or the crowning of a live sheep as Miss America. What I remember is my astonishment that women were protesting womanhood. There were other women out there, even women with long hair, feminine women, who were fed up with being good girls. As I saw it, they were joining me. I was no longer alone with my anger.” p132-133

It was beautiful to hear about Newton’s transformation from insecure girl to confident adult thanks in large part to the women’s movement.

Later, Newton got somewhat involved in the lesbian s/m movement that emerged after lesbian feminism had enforced a politically correct sexuality on the lesbian community. Regular readers of this blog know that I oppose the sex-positive movement on the grounds that it’s more positive toward abuse than sex. However, Newton is mature and reasonable and doesn’t demonize any group, not like the overly dramatic queer activists of today—she learned from and respected both movements and used what she learned from them to accept herself and express herself more fully. Come to think of it, I’ve actually done the same thing myself—after diving into a (purely historical, as the movements have already ended) study of the lesbian feminist movement and the “sex-pozzie” movement, I’ve also retained those lessons that I value and rejected those ideas that I thought were erroneous, and assimilated all I’ve learned into my conception of myself.

Before Newton accepted herself as a lesbian, she had a lot of relationships with men, and this was shocking for me to read. I had a moment of wondering if she is actually bisexual, but after finishing the book, I understand that she is truly lesbian, but pre-Stonewall life was so anti-gay that she feared getting kicked out of school and fired from her job if anyone thought she was gay. She felt she had to date men in order to survive. This was an important lesson for me, as a lesbian who came of age right around the time when same-sex marriage was legalized in my country, where GSAs are common in high schools, and where gays and lesbians can usually be out at work with no negative repercussions. Esther Newton is one of the people who changed things so that I can live the safe life I live, and I’m extremely grateful for her.

Newton succeeded in becoming an academic, after much struggle. I was moved by reading about how she struggled with sexism and homophobia on top of the usual setbacks and frustrations that occur when a young person embarks upon a career, and how she pushed herself through the pain and succeeded despite it all. She studied gay topics in anthropology when no one else was doing so and become a pioneer of gay and lesbian studies.

Newton is definitely a lesbian hero, and her story will inspire any lesbian, particularly those who struggle with being a non-conforming woman in a sexist society. Please read this book! Read it for the important lesson in lesbian history, for the gorgeous and sexy writing, and to celebrate one of our important lesbian pioneers.

How DARE the dykes think a dyke march is for them!

The Dyke Marches were started by lesbians for lesbians. The purpose of a Dyke March is to give lesbians visibility. According to Wikipedia, the organizers of the first Dyke March in Vancouver were the participants in a lesbian conference, the organizers of the first march in Toronto were a group called Lesbians Against the Right, and the first march in Washington was organized by the Lesbian Avengers. Note the use of the word “lesbian” in these groups rather than the vague term “queer women.”

The Lesbian Avengers formed as a group to give lesbian women a voice, since the concerns of women are drowned out within the broader LGBT movement. The Dyke Marches were one of their important projects.

A lesbian is a female homosexual. In order to be a female homosexual, you have to be both female and homosexual. If you are not female, or not homosexual, then you are not a female homosexual. (Have I explained this clearly enough so even the dummies can get it??)

The concerns of women are still being drowned out within LGBT, only now it’s even worse. Lesbians are no longer allowed to even state what a woman is or what a lesbian is without being called a bigot, and when we can’t even name ourselves as people we certainly can’t organize amongst ourselves or have a voice.

The silencing, slandering and exclusion of lesbians from spaces that are supposed to be for us is misogyny and homophobia. Or as some people say, lesbophobia.

When I published a guest post regarding the bullying of a lesbian woman who attended a Dyke March I got one troll who said the following:

“You folks are saying that as people with uteruses, you were harassed in your own space, but it was factually NOT your space. The March was a space EXPLICITLY for self identified women, including transwomen. Openly and clearly so. So you went into someone else’s space. Whether or not you were harassed and whether or not you thing transgender women are men or women is a different issues. The issue here is that you’re claiming a trans-inclusive space as your own. It isn’t. You can’t take it. You can’t lay claim to it. You can’t insist trans people work hard for their own spaces like uterus-owning women do…cuz this WAS a trans space.”

Angie the troll thinks that a march created by lesbians for lesbians does not belong to lesbians and that we have no right to lay claim to it. She thinks that lesbians are not allowed to insist that trans people create their own space. Lesbian spaces automatically belong to anyone who wants to identify themselves as belonging there, even if they’re lesbophobic men. This is spectacularly lesbophobic. Lesbians are allowed our own march, particularly the one that we created for ourselves, and we do not owe anyone else anything.

Let me state something very clearly about men who identify as lesbians. A lesbian is a female homosexual, and no one born male can be a lesbian, since he is not female. When males use this name that belongs to women and does not belong to them they are appropriating our identity and erasing what a lesbian actually is. When men imply that lesbians should consider them as sexual partners that is sexual harassment, and it’s male violence against women. Men who identify as lesbians are lesbophobic.

The reason for Angie’s assertion that the Dyke March does not belong to dykes is that the organizers said it was a trans inclusive space in which transwomen are welcome. Angie does not recognize that a Dyke March should not be including lesbophobic men in the first place, and that this is a lesbophobic move on the part of the organizers. This should have never happened in the first place, because neither men nor lesbophobia belong at a march that is for dykes. Angie does not understand the amount of bullying that goes into making sure organizers of events put transwomen at the center of everything, nor does she recognize the narcissism and entitlement on the part of transwoman for needing to be centered in everything.

Angie has zero compassion for the lesbians who are forced to either boycott a march that was supposed to be for us but no longer is, or attend anyway and do our best to give ourselves visibility despite the lesbophobia present around us. She has zero understanding of how brave lesbians have to be to stand and assert ourselves in a lesbophobic environment. Angie has zero knowledge of the number of dissenting comments written by lesbians on various Dyke March Facebook pages over several years that have been deleted because lesbians are no longer allowed to voice our opinions on a march that lesbians created for lesbians. She has zero empathy for her sisters who are being hurt by this. Instead, she empathizes with the lesbophobic men who are forcing themselves into a space that lesbians created.

Angie continued:

“You can wish it were a space that is only for uterus-owning people…but you can’t say it was. You can’t say it’s yours because you wish it was. Just like if you organize an event specifically for folks with uteruses, people without then [sic] can’t just randomly lay claim to that event just because they wish it was for them.”

Oh, the irony! The irony burns like undiluted bleach on my eyeballs! Angie, for gawd sake, lesbians did organize a march for people with uteruses (who are attracted to people with uteruses*), and people did decide to “just randomly lay claim to that event just because they wish it was for them.” That is exactly what’s happening right before your eyes! Men who wish they were lesbians are claiming our event because they wish it was for them! How are you not seeing this?

(*Since I know some dummy will inevitably bring this up—Yes, women who have had their uteruses removed are still women. If you are a woman who’s had a hysterectomy, that doesn’t exclude you from womanhood. The fact that you had a uterus to remove makes you a woman.)

Angie’s solution to this conflict is not to tell the trans people to go march in the trans march that was created for them in order to include them in Pride—a solution which would be fair to everyone. No, her solution is to take the word “Dyke” out of the Dyke March in order to make it official that dykes are not welcome at Pride at all and that the trans deserve two marches while we deserve none.

“If the Dyke March changed the name of its event next year, would that help with this issue? If it was called the Queer Diversity March or something? Is it the fact that it has Dyke in the name that pisses you his off and makes you feel like it’s yours?”

Angie, you have some fucking nerve coming onto a lesbian feminist blog and suggesting that we should change the name of the Dyke March that was created by lesbians for lesbians to make it official that dykes don’t belong there. That is some incredible audacity and rudeness.

Then Angie makes a comparison to a white person attending a Black Lives Matter event that implies that women are on top of men in the sex hierarchy.

“I don’t attend Black Lives Matters events if I want to talk about my whiteness.…If I need a place where my white voice is welcome, I find one. I don’t go to an event that’s intended for people of colour, demand my right to take up space there, then become outraged when I’m not welcome.”

In the hierarchy of oppression based on race, white people are in the privileged position and black people are in the oppressed position. In the hierarchy of oppression based on sex, males are in the privileged position and females are in the oppressed position. Males attending an event that is meant for females and redefining it to suit their purpose is comparable to a white person attending a BLM event and taking over. In this situation, Angie, it’s the lesbophobic men who are acting like the white person in your analogy, and it’s the lesbians who are comparable to the black people. You should be out lecturing men not to take over women’s spaces, not lecturing women to accept men taking over.

Because Angie is totally confused about how systems of oppression work, she continues to compare females who exist under patriarchy to the oppressors in several systems of oppression:

“In 50 years, this’ll just be another civil rights movement, or LGBT rights movement…you guys will just be the extra paragraph…where the white people tried to keep black people down, and the right wing Christians tried to keep the gays down, and the men tried to keep the women down…”

In this quote, Angie implies that women who are having our spaces taken over by men are comparable to the men who are trying to keep women down. This level of stupid really hurts my brain. I have already discussed the racial oppression issue, and the other issue brought up is LGBT rights. Angie believes that “TERFs” are a group of people against the rights of a group called “LGBT”. She ignores the fact that a large number of the women who are slandered as TERFs actually are lesbians and we are slandered with this slur because we are pointing out lesbophobia and people don’t like that. Theoretically, the L in LGBT is supposed to stand for Lesbian, and so lesbians are certainly standing up for the L when we stand up for ourselves. To tell lesbians that we are against a group of people that includes us is ridiculous and nonsensical. To imply that lesbians who stand up for ourselves are just like the right wing Christians who are against us is mind-bogglingly stupid.

Angie, you are like a right-wing Christian, in the sense that you do not support lesbian rights and agree with the people who bully us. At this point, I think I prefer right-wing Christians over the Liberal homophobic types, because at least right wing Christians are honest about their homophobia, while Liberals pretend to appear to be gay-friendly while they’re stabbing us in the back.

Angie wrote one more comment that I’m going to address in another post, regarding “how do you guys intend on addressing the upcoming generation of transgender folks, who’ve transitioned much earlier than the current generation?” This will be an entire post of its own.

Angie I will allow you to respond to this post and the next one that address your comments, but after that you’ll be banned.

Let’s talk about who’s actually hateful and bigoted here

Well, folks, I am back from a lovely and relaxing trip and ready to address the stinking pile of horseshit that people crapped onto my blog while I was away.

I published a guest post by a woman who was harassed at the Vancouver Dyke March, and her harasser showed up in the comments to continue the harassment. It’s absolutely amazing to me that a harasser can get called out on his harassment and then decide that the appropriate response is to continue harassing. How messed up of a person do you have to be to think that’s a good idea?

Mr. Wanda Normous made a feeble attempt to claim that he hadn’t harassed anyone by reporting that he didn’t use a loud voice when talking to her. However, he admitted in his own words to engaging in the following behaviours:

• “follow around to counter your hateful message until you took it out of the park with you”
• “walk or stand immediately outside of your personal space with my terror breasts exposed.”
• “I used two tools to evict you”

In these quotes, Mr. Normous has admitted to following a lesbian around and being in her personal space with the purpose of “evicting” her from the march. This is clear harassment and intimidation.

Let’s take a moment to discuss who is actually hateful and bigoted in this situation. There is a trans march and a dyke march. No lesbians are on record as saying they do not think there should be a trans march. No lesbians have attended a trans march to intimidate anybody. Lesbians have not tried to take over the board of directors of a trans march and kick out the trans people from the march. This is something that trans people are doing to the dyke march, and it’s happening only in that direction. It’s not going both ways.

Speaking for myself, I have been to a trans march. While I was there I just stood on the sidelines and watched. I did not lecture anyone about what they may or may not put on their sign. I did not select a person whose sign I believed was objectionable and follow them around in order to intimidate them. I do not believe I have the right to dictate to trans people what they put on their signs in their own march, nor do I have a right to harass anyone. I believe it’s acceptable for Pride festivals to include a trans march and for trans people to show their pride about being trans. I do not wish to stand in the way of this.

All the dyke marches in every city that holds them have been taken over by queer politics and are now hostile toward anyone who understands what a woman is and what a lesbian is. Comments from lesbians are deleted from Dyke March Facebook pages in every city and marchers hold signs that say things like “No TERFs” to make it clear that actual female homosexuals are not welcome there. The Dyke Marches now cater exclusively to men and bisexual women who agree with queer politics.

There is no logical reason why trans people need to be centered or even invited at all to a dyke march, since THERE IS A TRANS MARCH. A dyke march should center dykes.

What is happening here is that female homosexuals are being completely kicked out of Pride festivals; we cannot have our own march any more, we cannot even speak about our exclusion without being labelled bigots. It’s not just that trans people wanted their own march, which would have been fine, but they wanted every march to cater exclusively to them.

It is abundantly clear that the actual hatred and bigotry here is coming from trans people and is being directed at lesbians. Claims that lesbians are excluding trans people are complete reversals of the truth.

Speaking of lies, Wanda Normous wrote some real whoppers in the comments on my last post.

He has claimed that  “your desire to exterminate transwomen is plain” and that “you only care about hurting and excluding transwomen” and that “you’re just deciding for folks whether or not they’re women.”

Neither I nor the writer of the guest post gave any indication that we wanted to “exterminate” transwomen. In order for this alleged “desire” to be “plain,” we would have had to express it. This claim is purely a product of Mr. Normous’s imagination. Just for the record, no, I do not wish to exterminate anyone.

Neither I nor the guest writer has an interest in hurting transwomen. As for exclusion, I do think that transwomen should be excluded from the dyke march, however I do not think they should be excluded from the trans march. It’s pretty basic logic that the dyke march is for dykes and the trans march is for trans people. Having a march for each group does not exclude anybody—holding a march for each group is actually inclusion. Questions: If transwomen should be included in the dyke march, then why even have separate marches? Why not just make it one big march? And if trans people should be included in the dyke march, does this also mean that dykes should be included in the trans march? Why or why not?

A sign that says “dyke power is female” does not exclude anybody. It’s true that dykes are female. Stating a simple and neutral fact is not exclusionary.

Last but not least, the third lie mentioned above was “you’re just deciding for folks whether or not they’re women.” Nope! We’re not. Nobody can decide who is a woman and who is not. You’re just born that way. Nature and biology determine whether you’re born male or female. Nobody can decide anything about it. People can’t assign a sex to a baby any more than they can assign fingers or toes to a baby. Women are identifying the difference between male and female, but we cannot possibly decide it from our desire or will—nobody can.

I want to particularly highlight the following phrase from Wanda Normous:

“USELESS FUCKING TERF GARBAGE”

This is hate speech directed toward lesbians. Although Mr. Normous is very concerned that lesbians should not be allowed to represent a uterus on a sign because that is allegedly “hate speech” against him, he has no problem with calling lesbians “useless fucking terf garbage.” It’s very, very clear that Mr. Normous has serious misogyny issues. A misogynist and homophobic man who harasses and intimidates lesbians has absolutely no business attending a dyke march and he should be considered an unsafe person and banned from the event.

In contrast, I am a trans-critical writer who makes an effort not to use unnecessarily antagonistic language when talking about trans people. I never use the slur “tranny” and I even refrain from using the words “mutilate” and “delusional.” I believe in giving people basic courtesy and respect, in order to show that I am engaging honestly with issues and not just trolling. For a transwoman to show up on my blog and use this sort of disrespectful language when I have used no such disrespectful language toward him is very telling. Once again, the hatred and bigotry in this situation are coming from trans people and directed at lesbians; it’s a one-way street.

I did notice that Mr. Normous intentionally “misgendered” me by referring to me with male signifiers. This did not harm me in any way, because using incorrect grammar in a sentence does not cause people harm. I found it mildly amusing, but it really didn’t matter at all. However, I have to note that according to trans ideology, misgendering is “violence,” and so according to Mr. Normous’s own political position, he has committed “violence” toward me. Funny how the “violence” of misgendering only matters when directed toward transwomen; when directed at lesbians it’s not a problem.

The last point I’m going to cover for tonight is this:

“your narrative that women are only as good as their reproductive organs”

This is not at all the narrative that feminists present. It is a bald-faced lie to claim this. It is patriarchy that positions women as only good for reproduction and PIV sex. The entire feminist movement has been based on women’s knowledge that we are more than just wives and mothers and that we can do anything we want. Our work has been based on allowing us to control our reproductive capacity so that we are not reduced to our biological functions and can enter the workforce as men’s equals. To name the female reproductive anatomy does not reduce women to just their reproductive anatomy. Similarly, if I identify that I have ten fingers, that does not reduce me to just fingers, and if I identify that I have two eyes, that does not reduce me to nothing but eyes. This attempt at an argument is beyond pathetic.

Over and over I have witnessed transwomen behaving with masculine socialization (entitlement, dominance, and aggression), making ridiculously misogynist and homophobic statements, engaging in misogynist and homophobic behaviours, and telling bald-faced lies about feminists. I am absolutely not impressed and as long as they behave this way I will not be a political ally toward them. Although I would theoretically support some parts of trans activism, such as gender-neutral toilets and the right to wear the clothing one wants to wear, I cannot ally with people who are this hateful toward my demographic.

Over and over, transwomen demonstrate, with their own words and behaviour, that they do not resemble women in the slightest, and that they are particularly dangerous men. Feminists hardly have to call attention to the fact that transwomen are male; they do it themselves.

Anti-lesbian harassment at Vancouver Dyke March

This is a guest post by Katherine Jeffcott who attended the Vancouver Dyke March on August 5, 2017. She says:

I thought I would share my account of the dyke march in Vancouver, including pictures. As you know, I’m big on making women central in my feminism. So, I made a sign which stated simply “dyke power is female”. Here is me with my sign:

Well, we were marching, when this trans woman who was obviously a volunteer or a marshal, came up to me and yelled at me. She said my sign was transmisogynistic (because it doesn’t include male anatomy). Essentially the uterus offended this person. So she yelled at me, but one of my sisters quickly came up and put her arm around me, indicating I wasn’t alone. I kept marching. Meanwhile I was surrounded by other awesome women with amazing signs. Like this:

And this:

We weren’t saying anything against trans, we were simply focusing on women. Interestingly enough when the parade ended and we were in the park, this same trans person followed us everywhere:

They removed their top and followed us in a pink speedo where ever we went. We didn’t say or do anything to provoke this person. All we did was talk about women and female anatomy. Eventually I felt freaked out enough that my partner came and picked me up. I literally had shaky palms and was sweating. I was nervous until I saw my sisters with their sign that said Trust In God: Grumpy Old Dykes. Then I felt at home.

But my question to you is, what about women? Why are we being intimidated in our own spaces? What is it about our anatomy that is not acceptable?

What I love about being a lesbian

Today I’ve had cramps and bloating and I discovered a really good remedy for period pain is watching awesome YouTube videos of lesbians being lesbians. It makes me smile and takes my mind off the discomfort.

Here’s another video by Mainely Butch:

I noticed that almost everything she says about why she likes being a lesbian is butch- related. For example, she enjoys shopping for clothes in the men’s section and she enjoys the way straight women smile at her and the way men look at her when they see a beautiful woman on her arm.

The reasons why I like being a lesbian are not the same as this because I’m not a butch. I’m going to write about why I like being a lesbian and my perspective is both femme and feminist. I’m not sure what order these items should be in. I’ll write them in the order that I think of them but that’s not necessarily order of importance—these points are all important.

I love having sex with a woman. I did try sex with men when I was younger and it was boring and didn’t work for me. When I’m with a woman, she has a body that I’m really into and I love touching her so much, I can sometimes orgasm just from touching her. And she can bring me to orgasm as many times as she wants. I love that sex with women can feel never-ending, because you can be intimate in subtle ways throughout the day, kissing and casually touching each other, and then you can give each other pleasure in an unlimited way whenever you want. It doesn’t feel to me like we ever stop being intimate. And I love that it’s unstructured—you aren’t limited to specific roles or scripts.

I love having a “husband” who’s female. My partner does all the things a husband would do for a wife, like driving the truck, fixing furniture and appliances, etc, except she’s female. I love that I can live with a woman who can do everything a man can, and I love that we don’t need a man in any way. I love that she takes so much care with the things she builds and repairs and does a way better job than men do.

I love that I can go through my whole life not using any birth control. I don’t have to worry about the hormonal effects of the pill, or getting an I.U.D inserted, or being scared of pregnancy. I’m glad nobody is injecting me with semen and my vagina stays in its natural state all the time. I’m glad that sex is divorced from reproduction for me, and it’s just for fun and I don’t have to have babies.

I’m glad that my home is permanent female-only space. I can go home every day knowing that there are no men in my home, and I can display radical feminist books on my shelves and I can hold radical feminist meetings in safety and speak my mind and never have to explain or justify my beliefs to a dude.

I’m glad that my partner doesn’t think that certain tasks are my job to do because I’m a wife. We each do half the chores and what we decide to do reflects our interests and abilities rather than what sex we are. And speaking of household chores, I’d be really resentful if I had to do free labor in the home for a man. I’m glad that the time and energy that I put in around the house benefits another woman, rather than a man.

I’m glad that my partner knows what menstruation is like, so when I’m feeling hormonal she doesn’t make fun of me and think I’m crazy, she does helpful things and is nice to me, because she knows she has felt the same way.

A few points of Mainely Butch’s that I agreed with: women smell better, lesbians are powerful, women are better at conversation, women have intense passionate relationships, and women are smart!

The last point MB made is that being a lesbian is so good because it means being who she is. That was a beautiful note to end on and I feel the same way. I’m so happy to be in a gay-friendly area and to be able to live my life how I want. It’s beautiful!

The lesbian creation myth

Intro: There was a small conversation between two commenters here saying that we need a lesbian creation myth. Miep said that sounded like something I would write, and I thought, ‘indeed it is’! What I came up with is a story of the creation of life on earth which culminates in the creation of lesbians. It loosely imitates the Biblical creation myth while turning all the male-centered ideas into female-centered ones. Every radical feminist blog needs some Earth-Mother-Goddess-Hippy stuff once in a while, right? I am an atheist, and I wrote this purely for entertainment. It should not be taken as my literal beliefs–it’s just to make you smile. I very much enjoyed writing this, and if anyone else has a lesbian creation myth waiting to be written, I’d love to read it!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In the beginning, when Mother Earth created life, she first made tiny organisms that could withstand the harsh conditions of her newborn planet. Earth was cooling and creating solid surfaces of rock and water, and the Mother’s fertile spirit moved across the newly-formed land and oceans, leaving bacteria to flourish. She was pleased with her creation, since there was something living for the first time in the barren landscape. Then the Mother commanded, “Let there be photosynthesis,” and algae grew, and it began to use light from the sun to make food.  Once again the Mother was pleased with what she saw.

The Earth continued to change, and eventually there was an ample supply of free oxygen. Mother Earth saw that her planet was ready for more advanced life, so she commanded, “Let fish fill the sea, and plants grow on land.” An abundance of new life covered the Earth. The Mother saw how successful her small animals were, and she was encouraged. She knew she could do even better. She changed the conditions on her planet again, so her first creatures died out, and then she prepared the planet for the next era.

When her planet was ready, Mother Earth commanded, “Let there be giant animals to rule over the land” and many new species of birds, reptiles and mammals covered the Earth. They were greater and stronger than the animals she had made before, and she was pleased with her creation.  Mother Earth enjoyed her creation for a time, and continued to introduce new species whenever she was in the mood, and then one day she decided she wanted to make a more intelligent creature than ever before. It would have consciousness of its own life the way the Mother did, and it would have new abilities that other species didn’t have, like the use of advanced tools and language. She decided that the ape was a good prototype for her new primate, and she began to give some of them the new traits.

Her new species, which she called Woman, evolved quickly. She helped the species along a little but its genetic coding also helped it to evolve on its own. The species flourished and it grew in both number and power. It continued to improve until Mother Earth’s enemy, the Devil of Death and Destruction, noticed how well the creatures were doing, and decided to interfere. The Devil was a malicious and effective demon, who took it upon himself to destroy the lovely things that Mother Earth created. He attacked the male of the species, giving him a deeply-embedded desire to destroy everything Mother Earth held dear: her Women, her other animals, and her plant life.

Mother Nature did the best she could to stop the evil from spreading. She added extra compassion to some of her new creatures so they would have the desire to defend all life. She was pleased to see some of them make good progress against the Devil’s plan. But it wasn’t enough.

The Mother had created Woman in her own image, fertile and conscious animals who would create and protect life. But her creatures had to mate with the males of their species and some of the males had become quite evil, obviously causing distress to the women.  The Mother loved her women and wanted them to be happy, so she decided to give them a gift. She created a special kind of woman who would defy the Devil’s wickedness by not mating with his hateful brutes. Instead, they would mate with their own sex. This wouldn’t result in a baby of course, but it would result in extra protection for all of womankind, because of their love for the female of the species. Not only would they be immune to the Devil’s tricks, but they would protect other women from them too.

The genetic coding that turned some women toward their own sex also occurred in some of the males, and they too turned toward their own sex. The Mother considered this an acceptible by-product of her plan—after all, it wasn’t a whole lot of them, and it wasn’t stopping the rest of the species from procreating.

Once the woman-loving women were created, they began to defend all of womankind, as the Mother had planned. She was very pleased that her plan had worked, and finally took a day off to rest.

The evil encoding that the Devil of Death and Destruction created still exists in some of the male genes, but a league of exceptional women created in the Mother’s image are leading the battle against it, and expect to succeed before long.

Another lesbian feels like a guy

A reader sent me this video and asked for a post about it. It’s a short documentary-style video about a lesbian who identifies as a man and has no plans to transition. Here’s the video:

She says the same thing I’ve heard 100,000 times now from women who identify as men: “Ever since I was small, I always identified more with boys, I always kind of felt more like a boy.”

As is very common in stories of women who identify as men, they turn out to be attracted to women. Gender dysphoria doesn’t just randomly strike random women. A large majority of the women who “feel like a boy” are lesbian or bisexual. This makes it really freakin’ obvious that gender dysphoria in women is often related to the difficulties of being a same-sex-attracted woman in a sexist and heteronormative society.

This particular lesbian who identifies as a man doesn’t plan to transition. This means what she is experiencing is not discomfort with her female body, it’s discomfort with the feminine gender role. She’s okay with being female, she just “isn’t a woman.”

Dear readers, please raise your hand if you feel discomfort regarding the feminine gender role.

When dressing as a woman, Lauren feels like she is in drag and like she is putting on a character. She feels this way as an actress, but she seems to be implying that that’s the way she feels about being a woman all the time. This is also a comment I’ve heard before. Some people think that “being a woman” is an act that has to be performed, involving specific dress, appearance, mannerisms, speech patterns, and behaviors. This is not true. A woman is an adult human female, and the only way to be a woman is to be born female and to grow into an adult. Anyone who is existing in a female body is “being a woman.” It turns out that women can have any kind of mannerisms, appearance, and behavior. We can have any kind of personality and thoughts and feelings. Everyone with a female body is a woman, no matter how she feels or what she wears. There is no acting involved at all.

In the video, Lauren is shown on a bus “manspreading” across her seat. This is probably supposed to display her masculine mannerisms, although she looks like a typical woman and no one would mistake her for a man.

So why does Lauren “feel like a man”? I can tell you right now. Lesbians often grow up feeling different from other women. We are often baffled at straight women’s behavior, and we often identify with the cultural stereotypes assigned to men. These days there is no on-the-ground lesbian community, so there is no way for lesbians to share their feelings with other lesbians and find out that we have similar feelings. Instead there is a “queer” community that is all too eager to label women who aren’t feminine and who vaguely and subjectively “feel different” as not-women. They can be nonbinary, or trans men, or genderqueer, or any other bloody thing. The message is clear: real women are feminine, therefore unfeminine women aren’t women. It’s the same old-school sexism that caused the last two waves of feminism, repackaged as “progressive.”

Here’s the thing: a lesbian is a female homosexual. If you are female, and you are exclusively attracted to females, you are a lesbian. Whatever feelings you have toward yourself are lesbian feelings. If you feel like hot stuff, you walk with a swagger, you like looking at the ladies, you want women to think you’re a stud, you like wearing comfortable clothes, you don’t fit into the same culture as straight women, but identify with men, you’ve always felt “different,” and you don’t meet the dominant cultural idea about what women are, then congratulations! You are a perfectly normal dyke. Your membership card’s in the mail. Welcome to the club.

Book Review: Tomboy Survival Guide

Last weekend I went to the library to browse through the queer books and I came across Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote. I’ve heard other people say this book is good so I thought I should check it out. Coyote is an accomplished writer and speaker and a queer Canadian icon. Tomboy Survival Guide is their latest book, published in 2016.

Coyote is a talented storyteller who writes in a vulnerable way, heart exposed, and I was drawn in immediately. By the second chapter I already had tears running down my cheeks. The title suggests that this book is a guide for tomboys, but what it actually is is a memoir that is as much about family as it is about gender. The stories are about growing up as a tomboy, being a butch lesbian, and being a trans person, and they are also about being from a loving family from Whitehorse, Yukon—a family that remains important and valuable throughout the author’s life. Western Canada provides a beautiful backdrop for Coyote’s stories, whether it’s the Yukon or British Columbia.

I have been enjoying the book immensely over the past week while simultaneously struggling with the question of how I can review a book by someone who I support on some levels but who has very different political beliefs from me. Coyote is pro-trans, and is against my kind of feminism. Reading through their twitter account recently told me that Coyote calls women “TERFs.”  I cannot discuss this book without addressing this political divide and I can’t get very far into a discussion of their work without making a decision about pronoun use.

Coyote’s pronouns are “they/them” but I do not agree that a butch lesbian should be called ‘they.’ Calling a female human ‘they’ is supposed to imply that she is not female, but is instead somewhere in between, and it disappears the difference between gender and sex. A butch lesbian is biologically female and has a masculine gender. I don’t believe it’s right to imply that a non-feminine woman is not a woman at all—that reinforces the idea that all women must be feminine or else they aren’t women. The idea that all women must be feminine or else they aren’t women is one of the things that harms all of us. I think that when you agree that a masculine woman isn’t a woman, you are agreeing with the bullies who think she’s not okay the way she is.

I believe with all my heart that the way to support a butch lesbian is to respect her masculine gender and her femaleness, and to appreciate them both as integral parts of her that are both significant in making her who she is, and to maintain that being female and masculine isn’t a contradiction that needs to be resolved but something to honour and respect as it is. I think that calling her “they” to erase her femaleness does the same thing that straight women do when they tell her she doesn’t belong in the women’s washroom: it’s kicking her out of womanhood because she doesn’t fit the feminine standard.

With all that in mind, I know that if I were to support Coyote by calling her “she” it would be taken as me not supporting her because she uses “they.” Therefore I am going to use a mix of pronouns to acknowledge both my position and hers. It is my intention here to promote their work and their voice without letting go of my own perspective.

Whenever I read a book written by a butch, I see my own partner among the pages. Coyote’s book really hit home for me because she is a Canadian lesbian and so are my partner and I. In fact, I know that we have mutual acquaintances and some of my friends have seen her perform.

One of the first stories Coyote told of her tomboy nature was being in swimming lessons as a kid and wearing only the bottom half of her bathing suit and allowing everyone to think she was a boy. My partner did the exact same thing when she was a kid, wearing swim trunks to the community pool because that’s what she felt comfortable in, and she kept doing that until the boys were harassing her and the lifeguard told her she had to put a top on. She was not happy about this.

Near the opening of the book Coyote wrote a wonderful description of being a tomboy. It’s not about consciously rejecting the feminine and trying to be masculine, it’s about having something different about you that exists in your personality and in your very bones that you would not be able to change even if you dressed in women’s clothes.

“I didn’t not want to be a girl because I had been told that they were weaker or somehow lesser than boys. It was never that simple. I didn’t even really actively not want to be like the other girls. I just knew. I just knew that I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I would never be. (p14)”

Later on when they described attending college to learn Electricity and Industrial Electronics I saw my partner in the pages again. One of the only two women among hundreds of men, they endured harassment from their classmates despite being excellent in the program.

It can be a minefield navigating the world as a masculine woman because you never know how people are going to interpret you or treat you. Coyote wrote about times when she was “one of the guys” and times when she was “one of the girls.” Although some of their college classmates harassed them horribly, they recalled a positive memory of one classmate asking their advice on how to do something nice for his wife. In that moment, Coyote was not a failure of a woman but an expert on womanhood.

Although it wasn’t the least bit funny for her at the time, I laughed when she recalled the time when a guy managing a tourist destination, hot springs in a cave, made her wear a women’s swimsuit while calling her “sir.” Sometimes people get hilariously mixed up when they encounter an ambiguous-looking person.

Four years before writing this book, and already in their forties, Coyote had top surgery. They called this decision “the healthy, happy thing for me to do,” (p170) even though it caused them to completely lose feeling in their nipples. They describes the numbness in a very poignant paragraph:

“They are beyond numb. They feel nothing. Sometimes I think I can feel the flesh underneath them, maybe I can feel pressure there, maybe. But I can’t feel her fingertips or her tongue, or her teeth. I can’t feel the cold lake or the warm sun either.” (p151)

Is it really a fair trade, to get the chest you want but lose feeling in your nipples?

It’s interesting that Coyote says the following:

“But my day-to-day struggles are not so much between me and my body. I am not trapped in the wrong body. I am trapped in a world that makes very little space for bodies like mine. (p170–171)”

I fully agree with this. No one is trapped in the wrong body. It’s not their bodies that need to change, it’s the way they are being treated that needs to change. It’s important to locate the problem correctly. Don’t blame something on your body when it’s not your body’s fault.

Throughout much of the book, Coyote doesn’t mention being trans, because in her childhood and young adulthood she didn’t have a trans identity yet. Near the end of the book, the trans issue starts to come up. She wrote about getting hate mail from both conservatives and radical feminists regarding her writing on transgender bathroom use. She reports both groups of people saying the same thing in their hate mail, which is:

“No offense, but, if I had to share a woman’s washroom with someone who looks like you, I would feel…uncomfortable.

And…

“Why don’t you just use the men’s room? (p224)”

Although I am a radical feminist, this quote does not represent my position at all. It’s not what anyone in my own circle of feminists says, either. We don’t want to see butch women kicked out of the women’s washroom, we think all women belong there. We aren’t uncomfortable around butch women. Some of us, like me, love butch women. We also think that single-occupant washrooms are a good idea in order to accommodate gender nonconforming people, or anyone who wants to pee alone. We don’t think that trans people should be kicked out of all the bathrooms. We don’t think women should be forced into the men’s room. I don’t know who emailed her, but they didn’t say anything close to what I would have said. My position is that everyone should be accommodated in washrooms, without forgetting that allowing the entire world into the women’s washroom does not properly accommodate women. Overly-broad gender identity laws that are based on self-declaration and no objective criteria allows anyone to announce they’re a woman and enter the washroom. This is not good policy.

There is another part of the book where Coyote’s pro-trans position bothers me. She printed a letter from a mother whose teenage daughter is transitioning to male. The teen first identified as a lesbian and then identified as trans. Coyote wrote a response to the mother which spoke of her daughter as if she were truly her son and would grow up to be a man. She didn’t leave any room for the fact that this teen could actually be a lesbian. That’s what you do when you believe in transgender politics, is immediately affirm someone’s trans identity and ignore the fact that the person is actually homosexual. Only a so-called “trans exclusive radical feminist” like me can see what is really happening here. An adult lesbian is refusing to call herself a lesbian, preferring to label herself as something other than a woman, and is affirming a younger lesbian who is doing the same. This is absolutely tragic. This is not what I want for the lesbian community. I want lesbians to be able to proudly declare their lesbian identity without falling prey to the ancient homophobic idea that lesbians are really men or that we’re failed women. I want us to carve out space for all different kinds of women to be ourselves without shame, and to show the world that women are diverse and beautiful in our differences. If it were me giving advice, I would have left the door open to this young woman actually being a lesbian and validated what she is probably feeling without jumping right onto the trans train.

For the most part, I loved Tomboy Survival Guide, and I would definitely recommend it. I was very moved by her stories and I thought the book was exquisitely written. I always appreciate hearing about what life is like for little tomboys who grow up to be butch. My criticism is that because of her pro-trans position, her writing is not as lesbian-positive as it could be. What I always hope to see in any book written by a lesbian is a positive lesbian identity and a pro-woman stance.

Compulsory heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence is an essay by Adrienne Rich published in 1980 that challenges the assumption that women’s innate sexual orientation is toward men, points out how heterosexuality is institutionalized, and presents lesbianism as a challenge to this institution. This essay is a part of the ‘lesbian feminist’ theory that lesbianism is a political choice made by women to challenge patriarchy. Although it is true that heterosexuality is institutionalized, and although many of the points made within the body of the essay are true, the basic premise that sisterhood between women is a part of lesbianism is incorrect.

My blog post is written with the assumption that you have read Adrienne Rich’s essay. If you haven’t, the full text can be found online.

Heterosexuality is institutionalized, but it’s also a real sexual orientation. We can separate the institution from the sexual orientation by separating aspects of culture from people’s personal feelings. The institution of heterosexuality can be found in religion, law, language, and the arts; it’s located in many patriarchal institutions that give men power over women, such as forced marriage, prostitution, and the lower wages given to women for paid labor. These are some of the things Adrienne Rich gets right. However, the romantic and sexual feelings that straight women feel towards men are real feelings, they are not mere products of socialization. Socialization influences our behavior but it cannot construct a sexual orientation. Neither can women construct a sexual orientation by changing their politics. Most women are indeed heterosexual; homosexuals are a minority group. Stating this fact does not limit straight women to a life of being abused by men; male violence against women is a product of patriarchy, not a product of legitimate human sexual orientation. After the feminist revolution, women and men will likely still bond together in love relationships, but they will do so on equal footing.

For most of the history of marriage, divorce was rare. A woman was literally a man’s property and the way he treated her was considered his private business. Women were strongly encouraged to marry men by everyone in their community, and they were stigmatized and discriminated against if they remained unmarried. Marriage itself is an institution; it is maintained by both government and religion, it is celebrated by entire communities and entire industries have developed around it (the wedding dress industry, the wedding cake industry, wedding planners, florists, etc). Until very recently, marriage was only for heterosexuals. The fact that heterosexual marriage is presented culturally as one of the most significant achievements of a person’s life, that their church, their government, and their community have an interest in validating, is part of the institution of heterosexuality.

When I attend a heterosexual wedding, I am amazed at how institutionalized it all is. The tradition of the white dress, walking down an aisle, formal dress, expensive flowers and decorations, and endless pomp and display, all seem to say “Look at us. We are heterosexual. Everyone celebrate and validate our relationship!” I find weddings pointless and frivolous. I have never expected nor asked for validation from my community for who I love; I don’t care what people think and I don’t need their opinion. My partner and I are legally considered common-law spouses; this is an arrangement that works for us because we are considered a couple when it comes to financial arrangements such as health benefits, but without engaging in the tradition of marriage. Thank you Canada for progressive laws recognizing same-sex partnerships! I have attended one lesbian love ceremony; it was more creative and individual and it didn’t follow the heterosexual traditions. I am guessing a lot of lesbian love ceremonies are conducted that way. Our love is not institutionalized, and our culture is created from scratch.

Women have traditionally been either kept out of the workplace, or paid lower wages for the same work, or kept in low-paying service positions (secretaries, waitresses, etc) because society as a whole regards women as wives for men, and therefore we do not need good wages or careers of our own. Our role is to be wives and mothers and any paid employment is seen as secondary to that role. This economic situation is oppressive to all women; it keeps heterosexual women dependent on men, which leads to their abuse, and it makes life difficult for lesbians, who do not marry men and instead support ourselves.

Not only does this economic structure presume that lesbians either don’t exist or don’t matter, but heterosexuality is often one of the requirements for female workers. Women have often been required to dress in a feminine manner, where the requirements for what ‘feminine’ means are dictated by men. Compulsory dress codes for female workers have often included high heels, skirts, and makeup, all designed to mark us as man’s “other” and to market us as sexually attractive to men. Thanks to the feminist movement, dress codes have been relaxed and many workplaces allow women to wear pants and comfortable shoes and to skip the makeup. Nevertheless, some workplaces still have such dress codes and women often feel obligated to dress ‘feminine’ at work as a part of a professional appearance.

When women are working in low paid service jobs, such as receptionists, secretaries, store clerks, waitresses, and the like, they are expected to behave in a pleasing manner at all times, they are expected to put up with sexual harassment, and flirting with male bosses and customers often results in advantages such as more tips or not getting fired. Sometimes women in higher-up positions are also subject to sexual harassment, and they are often expected to put up with it silently and are discouraged from fighting back. Women in the workplace will often have to behave as if they are heterosexual in order to get by.

Compulsory heterosexuality can be found in the arts. About 99.99999% of all popular songs are about heterosexual love; characters in books and TV shows are nearly always heterosexual, and often when homosexuality is mentioned in popular culture it’s mentioned as the punch line of a joke. The end result of being socialized in our culture is a belief that normal people are heterosexual and that homosexuality is just something weird to joke about. This has been changing in recent years, but even TV shows such as The L Word present a view of lesbians that appeals to the male gaze and does not reflect lesbian reality.

Sexual slavery is an institution of compulsory heterosexuality. There is a global epidemic of female sexual slavery which is more obvious in some places than in others. Groups such as Isis and Boko Haram kidnap women and force them into sexual slavery; these men do not care about the feelings, sexual orientation, or humanity of the women they enslave; for them, anyone with a vagina is seen as a sexual servant for men, both for the sexual pleasure and the babies that she provides to her male captors. Female sexual slavery is present in rich countries too; in the form of prostitution (whether filmed or not), incest, rape, and wife-abuse.

All the above points are made in Adrienne Rich’s essay, and this is all true and expertly explained, with citations from other prominent feminists. These cultural factors all add up to heterosexuality being compulsory for women. Compulsory heterosexuality is real; it’s located in the way girls are socialized to believe that we will all grow up to be heterosexual, the way heterosexual love is romanticized but homosexual love is ridiculed and punished, the way heterosexual relationships are validated by religion and the state, the way heterosexual intercourse is considered the only kind of sex that is ‘real,’ the way lesbians are misrepresented in culture (either as objects of sexual titillation for men or as deviant, grotesque, and predatory) and because, in many countries, it is still illegal to be a lesbian. Attempts by transgenderists to enforce their belief that lesbians should be attracted to men who “feel female” is more compulsory heterosexuality.

Adrienne Rich makes a good point about the ideology of heterosexual romance being taught to girls as a form of grooming to prepare them for compulsory heterosexuality. This grooming is given to all girls; in straight women it can cause them to overemphasize the importance of male approval and relationships with men, leading them to put their own aspirations on hold in order to prioritize getting a husband. It also might make them vulnerable to abuse; because they are so eager for male attention, they are vulnerable to predatory men. In lesbian women it can cause them to doubt their own feelings for women, to push their feelings aside in an attempt to be ‘normal,’ and attempt heterosexuality even though they do not enjoy it.

Rich attempted to draw a parallel between women who refuse sexual slavery and institutions of male dominance with women who are homosexually oriented. This is a mistake. Women of any sexual orientation can refuse male domination and fight patriarchy. The sisterhood felt by women who are fighting for women’s rights is not homosexual in nature.

Rich describes women who are mistreated in sexual relationships with men who care for each other as sisters and provide each other the support they don’t get from men.

“It is the women who make life endurable for each other, give physical affection without causing pain, share, advise, and stick by each other.”

This sisterhood between heterosexual women is positioned as being a part of a ‘lesbian continuum.’

“If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not.”

There is no such thing as a ‘lesbian continuum.’ Straight women who support each other are not in any way engaging in lesbianism, because lesbianism is the state of having a homosexual orientation, not the practice of supporting women. A political lesbian is defined as “a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men,” and actually having sexual desire for women is not required. Rich’s ‘lesbian continuum’ theory only fits into the theory of political lesbianism, it is not relevant to female homosexuals.

Those of us who feel romantic and sexual desire for women do not experience friendships or political alliances with straight women as being points on a lesbian continuum. Only romantic and sexual love between women who are attracted to women is lesbianism. Heterosexual women do not experience lesbianism because they do not experience romantic and sexual attraction for women. This theory that presents bonding between straight women as being ‘lesbian’ in nature disappears actual lesbians. It is ironic that in an essay where the author laments the erasure of lesbians from feminist theory, she promotes a feminist theory that erases lesbians.

A critique of the institution of heterosexuality is important for both lesbian and straight women. For lesbians, this critique names the systems that enforce homophobia and that limit or destroy lesbian lives. For straight women, this critique lets them see how they’ve been groomed to put men first, and challenges them to put more emphasis on sisterhood and female friendship. This critique can be made without erasing the reality of sexual orientation.

The idea that heterosexuality is being imposed upon women by men is a misleading way to explain that men have created power structures that oppress women. Heterosexuality is the romantic and sexual attraction that women feel for men, it is not the name of the power structures that oppress us. The power structures of patriarchy such as the institution of marriage, female sexual slavery, and the wage gap, put women in a position of servitude, but any number of these women in a position of servitude might have a true sexual orientation toward males. These women deserve to be liberated from systems of power and so they may experience their attraction to men as men’s equals and form healthy relationships with them. It is not an innate sexual and romantic attraction that is being imposed upon women—one cannot possibly impose a sexual orientation on people—it is the power relations between the sexes that are being imposed.

It’s in our best interest to describe compulsory heterosexuality accurately. There are social institutions that make women dependent on men and influence women to overemphasize the importance of their romantic attachments to men, and these institutions need to be named and dismantled, in order for heterosexual women to able to have healthy romantic relationships. There are social institutions that celebrate heterosexuality while erasing or belittling homosexuality, and that force lesbians into the closet, or cause violence against us, and they need to be named and dismantled, so that lesbians can live our lives as lesbians.

The process of becoming woman-identified, that is, putting women first in our lives and our politics, is a good thing for women of all sexual orientations, but woman-identification is not the same thing as sexual orientation. There are straight women who work tirelessly for women’s rights, but this does not make them homosexual. There are homosexual women who work against women’s rights, and they are not woman-identified.

It is important for feminist theory to accurately reflect the reality of women’s lives. Feminist theory is the way that women make sense of their situation so they can work on changing it. Disappearing sexual orientation is not compatible with good feminist theorizing.

FtM Transsexuals in Society—Conclusions

This post is the final post in a series of posts based on the book Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society by Holly/Aaron Devor. My introductory post on the series can be found here.

The reason I read this book is that I saw it cited as a source in another book I was reading, and I was intrigued by the fact that a study had been done on 45 female-to-male transsexuals and had found that most of them were attracted to women. I didn’t know what I was going to find in this study other than that. As I read through it, I took notes and copied important quotes. Generally the reason I found a quote interesting is because it was homophobic or because it demonstrated social and emotional reasons why women develop a desire to be men. Therefore the blog posts I wrote about the book were biased toward my previous belief that gender dysphoria is caused at least in part by internalized homophobia and sexism. Although I had a biased selection process in choosing quotes to write about, I couldn’t have written about them if they weren’t there. The internalized homophobia displayed by the participants of this study was quite blatant and should not go unnoticed. The fact that they often reported their distress as coming from social factors (such as women being limited by what they can do in life) is also important.

This is a very large and comprehensive book, so I obviously did not cover everything in my reviews. Reading such detailed case studies about women with gender dysphoria gave me a better idea of what it’s like having that condition. Some people on “my team” (gender critical feminists) seem to think that gender dysphoria is the exact same thing as discomfort with one’s sex role. I have even heard a feminist say that most women suffer from dysphoria to the same extent as people who transition. This is not true; gender dysphoria is a distinct condition and although it overlaps with discomfort with the assigned sex role, it’s possible to have one without the other. If you take me for an example, I hate everything about the social construct of femininity. I hate makeup, high heels, fashion, prettiness, and dieting. I am not interested in having children and the idea of being a wife to a man makes me want to barf. I have never pictured myself as a bride and I don’t squeal over babies. I hate all the stereotypes about women and I usually hate anything that is marketed to women. (With the exception of chocolate, of course, I love that!) But despite my discomfort with the feminine gender role I still do not have gender dysphoria. I don’t feel uncomfortable about having a female body, in fact I quite enjoy my body.

It becomes clear what gender dysphoria is when you read about women who are entirely prepared to die rather than have another period. Although I find periods inconvenient I definitely don’t think it’s that bad. I don’t need to starve myself to stop menstruation until I can get a doctor to agree to give me a hysterectomy. It’s also evident a woman has gender dysphoria when she has a sex partner who she loves and enjoys being with but cannot handle being touched and goes numb instead of climaxing because she feels so strongly that her body parts are wrong. These things are not a mere discomfort with the feminine gender role, they go beyond that. What most women feel is a general dissatisfaction with their bodies because we feel we are “too fat” or “not pretty enough” when comparing ourselves to cultural ideals. That doesn’t mean we are dissociating from our female bodies to the extent that dysphoric individuals do. Everyone on “my side” should be taking a good look at what dysphoria is if they’re going to theorize about it.

My criticism of transition doesn’t come from a belief that dysphoria is not real, it’s primarily about the fact that dysphoria has social causes in many people and body modification doesn’t solve the real problem. Dysphoria is real and certainly needs to be treated; as I explain on a regular basis, women who are suffering from internalized homophobia, trauma, and sexism, should seek both individual therapy and women’s liberation rather than body modification. People who feel that nothing is going to work other than transition are free to transition; I’m not stopping them and I support their civil rights. The only transgender “right” I object to is the “right” to remove women’s rights.

The trans community’s party line is that trans people are born trans and cannot be any other way. Their innate nature makes them unavoidably dependent on medical intervention to construct their “authentic selves.” Reading this book did not convince me that people with dysphoria are born inherently needing to make body modifications. In this study of biological females with dysphoria, most of them were attracted to women and quite homophobic, and almost two-thirds of them were abused as children, twice the rate of abuse of the general population. They demonstrated many types of faulty thinking, most notably interpreting their sexual desire for women as being proof they were innately male, and believing that it was wrong or sick for two women to love each other. There are obvious social and cognitive factors here contributing to their desire to be male.

Childhood abuse and homophobia don’t directly cause an individual to develop gender dysphoria. The effects of abuse and self-hatred can cause all sorts of illnesses, including alchoholism, depression, and anxiety. Whatever particular illness an individual is susceptible to is likely the illness they will develop after being abused or as a result of hating themselves. It seems reasonable to say that some people are more susceptible to developing gender dysphoria than others due to their innate personality, but it doesn’t follow that there is a one-size-fits all cure for that, and it doesn’t follow that body modification is inevitable.

If we consider for a moment the position that gender dysphoria is something innate that some people just happen to be born with for no particular reason, then how does that look when we look at who has this condition? Lesbian and bisexual women are far overrepresented among FtM transsexuals. So are women who have personality traits that are considered masculine, and so are women who have been abused and who have homophobic beliefs. If gender dysphoria was just a random neurological condition that happened for no reason, then why would it tend to strike masculine lesbians who are homophobic and who have been abused? The evidence I’m seeing suggests that social, emotional and cognitive factors are involved in the development of gender dysphoria, at least some of the time. If these factors are involved some of the time, it casts doubt on whether dysphoria can ever be separated completely from social factors. Because masculine lesbians are highly overrepresented among women with gender dysphoria, the position that gender dysphoria is innate turns out to be effectively the position that large numbers of masculine lesbians are born inherently male. Even if you explain gender dysphoria as innate, the belief that masculine lesbians are inherently or essentially male is century-old homophobia. Lesbians are women, no matter their personality or presentation. Some lesbians have gender dysphoria; that makes them lesbians with gender dysphoria, not men.

Most of the women in this study believed that they were born innately transsexual, either for biological reasons or due to having something along the lines of a “male soul.” The author calls them “born as females who were destined to become men (p561).” I still cannot buy into this statement, because male and female biology is real, and females cannot become males. People who transition usually believe in innate transsexuality even if there are obviously social and cognitive factors involved in the development of their dysphoria. Even some people who believe they are “true transsexual” end up detransitioning later on.

A small minority of three participants in Devor’s study believed they had become transsexual as a result of social factors. Ken said:

“What makes a person want to change gender? I wanted to be in control. Macho. Accepted. I didn’t want to live a lie anymore…I didn’t like my breasts. And I didn’t like having periods…It was a preoccupation. I wanted to be male. I wanted to take my shirt off and go to the beach. I wanted to get sun on my chest…I wanted to shave. Not my legs. My chin (p559).”

Brian said:

“I believe a very different parental interpretation of my childhood character could have changed how I defined myself. If my early creativity and expression had been reinforced for what they were, independent and undefined by traditional notions about body significance, I might not have found reason to despise my physical form so intensely…Some emotional scars are too deep to be overcome by pragmatic logic or psychoanalytic games (p560).”

Bruce said:

“It’s a mending of the ways for the emotional and psychological pain that I endured as a child. And that I think that…when I started to go through this…that was thirty years of my life of pain. That was long enough. That, obviously, no amount of therapy at this point was going to help me recover the loss experienced as a child over the loss of my body. That I needed to find a new vessel. I needed to create a new vesssel (p560).”

These three quotes demonstrate some of the points made by feminists about transgenderism. Ken is trying to gain the privileges only given to males in a patriarchy. Feminists wish to work together politically to free women as a group from oppression so that all of us can be accepted, taken seriously as people, and take off our shirts on the beach to feel the sun on our chests, because we are human beings and we deserve that, without being objectified by men who believe they have rights over our bodies. A few individual women “becoming men” doesn’t get us there, but us working together as women does. Real feminism means working on behalf of women as a class rather than looking for individual solutions.

Brian and Bruce demonstrate being severely harmed by abuse and female socialization to the point where they felt they had to opt out of femaleness in order to continue their lives. I believe that women who are traumatized need trauma therapy, not body modification. Body modification is a coping strategy, not a treatment.

The participants in Devor’s study, like many transgender people today, felt they could not continue in life without transitioning. Some of them described their “can’t take it anymore” moments, and the social aspects of their problems were evident.

Scott said:

“In the last five years…I was getting to a point where I was feeling so bad about myself…when somebody called me “she,” it just pissed me off, you know, maximum. Because I just didn’t want to play the game anymore. I didn’t want to have to sit with my legs crossed…I didn’t want to have to wear a bra…I felt awkward going out in public with my lover. People stare…I didn’t want to be identified as a lesbian. And it’s like it just finally came to a point where I was just really depressed and didn’t want to go out of the house (p376).”

Keith said:

“If I had remained living as a female…in that role and trying to fulfill the expectations people had of me to be a woman, I’m sure that I would have slowly killed myself (p376).”

Lee said:

“There’s absolutely no future in being a very masculine lesbian (p330).”

If women would rather kill themselves than continue to fulfill people’s sexist and heteronormative expectations of them, that is a sign that feminism is badly needed. Women should not have to fulfill sexist expectations at all. We should be able to stop “playing the game” and just be ourselves and know that we have a network of feminist comrades who will help us out when the sexists come along to punish us. This is where it becomes obvious that trans activists are working against the best interests of women with gender dysphoria. Trans activists are anti-feminist and are engaged in a never-ending quest to paint feminism as old-fashioned, bigoted, and dangerous, when actually feminism is the best strategy to end the sexism that harms women—the same sexism that drives dysphoric women into the “transition or die” position. Trans activists are homophobic—they disappear sexual orientation entirely and attempt to bully lesbians into beliving that their lack of interest in men is “transmisogynistic” and that they must include males in their dating pool. Knowing that homophobia contributes to gender dysphoria at least some of the time should cause trans activists to oppose homophobia, not to promote it. (Not to mention they should be against homophobia anyway, on the basis that homophobia is wrong!)

I truly believe that feminism is more helpful to dysphoric women than trans activism is, and I document the reasons why on a regular basis.

In a few rare cases, I have encountered women who don’t appear to have any issues with internalized sexism or internalized homophobia, and whose dysphoria appears to come out of nowhere. These people still represent a tiny minority among the dysphoric women I have read about. One person in Devor’s study, Simon, said:

“It probably would have been easier to have been a lesbian than it was to go through what I’ve gone through. If nothing else…surgically it would have been a whole lot easier to have been a lesbian. I still could’ve loved women, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue had more to do with my body and it not being the image that I wanted it to be than it had to do with loving women (p365).”

It was refreshing to hear from this ONE person who wasn’t obviously homophobic and who expressed that it would have been easier to be a lesbian. That actually tells me that there can be something to this that isn’t homophobia. I am completely willing to listen to women who would enjoy being lesbians if it weren’t for gender dysphoria, and who don’t believe that social factors caused their dysphoria. However, as long as the majority of trans people I encounter demonstrate sexism and homophobia, and as long as lesbians and bisexual women are overrepresented among transitioners, I am not going to believe that dysphoria is a neurological condition that people happen to be born with for no reason. That is not what most of the evidence suggests. The overwhelming evidence of social and cognitive factors makes me doubt that it’s ever an inborn neurological condition.