hi, wanted to post two excerpts from âMy Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounixâ an essay/speech by Susan Stryker (highly recommend reading, itâs really good), which i read back when i was still an english major and which upset me to the point where i had to stop reading for a while.Â
this part is about a letter to the editor of a queer periodical which was published at some point in the early (i think) 90s
Referring by name to one particular person, self-identified as a transsexual lesbian, whom she had heard speak in a public forum at the San Francisco Womenâs Building, the letter-writer went on to say:
âWhen an estrogenated man with breasts loves a woman, that is not lesbianism, that is mutilated perversion. [This individual] is not a threat to the lesbian community, he is an outrage to us. He is not a lesbian, he is a mutant man, a self-made freak, a deformity, an insult. He deserves a slap in the face. After that, he deserves to have his body and mind made well again.â
On January 5, 1993, a 22-year-old pre-operative transsexual woman from Seattle, Filisa Vistima, wrote in her journal, âI wish I was anatomically ânormalâ so I could go swimming⊠. But no, Iâm a mutant, Frankensteinâs monster.â Two months later Filisa Vistima committed suicide. What drove her to such despair was the exclusion she experienced in Seattleâs queer community, some members of which opposed Filisaâs participation because of her transsexualityâeven though she identified as and lived as a bisexual woman. The Lesbian Resource Center where she served as a volunteer conducted a survey of its constituency to determine whether it should stop offering services to male-to-female transsexuals. Filisa did the data entry for tabulating the survey results; she didnât have to imagine how people felt about her kind. The Seattle Bisexual Womenâs Network announced that if it admitted transsexuals the SBWN would no longer be a womenâs organization. âIâm sure,â one member said in reference to the inclusion of bisexual transsexual women, âthe boys can take care of themselves.â Filisa Vistima was not a boy, and she found it impossible to take care of herself. Even in death she found no support from the community in which she claimed membership. âWhy didnât Filisa commit herself for psychiatric care?â asked a columnist in the Seattle Gay News. âWhy didnât Filisa demand her civil rights?â In this case, not only did the angry villagers hound their monster to the edge of town, they reproached her for being vulnerable to the torches. Did Filisa Vistima commit suicide, or did the queer community of Seattle kill her?
and like,, of course people say this shit now, but to see how much transphobia was the dominant ideology in queer organizations in the NINETIES is fucking sickening. a lot of these people are still alive and they have trans blood on their hands just as much, if not more than cishets.Â
so whenever people, especially cisgays, talk about how many young queers are so reactionary (true and important), unlike our queer elders, who we must respect and defer to, i think about Filisa and âIâm sure the boys can take care of themselves.â and i think about how she and probably thousands of other trans people were SUPPOSED to be my elders and how they fucking killed them.Â
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