#transsisters

[dogdykesdoitbetter]

"Lesbians who Date Transsexuals" by Christine Beatty, from Issue #5 of TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, Summer of 1994.

Alt text below the cut.

[Alt text for first image: A screenshot of a digital newspaper page. The page is yellowed and has black text. At the top it reads, "Issue #5, TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, Summer 1994." A line separates the top text from the rest of the page. Big, bold letters say, "LESBIANS WHO DATE TRANSSEXUALS by Christine Beatty." The rest of the text on the page is smaller and divided into two columns. The first column begins in italics, reading, "Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Summer 1992 issue of Lesbian Contradiction and is reprinted with permission of the author."

The rest of the article reads as follows: "I know what to expect when I walk into a lesbian bar and order a drink. As I sit there nursing my glass of fuzzy-water, I will probably hear the buzz of at least one conversation turning to me. I am a male-to-female transsexual. And if that isn’t enough, I identify as a lesbian.

I am used to the varied reception from the lesbian community, and I am becoming at peace with it. Some of my sisters treat me as just that — a sister. Others react with neutrality or curiosity. And some of my sisters just hate my guts. They aren’t too thrilled with the gay women who accept me, either. Goddess help the lesbian hapless enough to be seen with me in public.

The women who react negatively to me, who don’t accept me as any kind of woman, can be very stubborn in their thinking. It doesn’t even matter to them whether or not I’ve had sex-change surgery. “Once a prick, always a prick” was how one lesbian separatist expressed her sentiment to me. Even though fifteen percent of genetic women are born infertile and/or have never had a period, the fact that I don’t bleed monthly and can’t bear children is reason enough in their eyes to exclude me from the community. Some of these women hate men so much they consider anyone born with a penis - whether they wanted it or not - to be “the enemy.” And some of them are so vocal that they sway other members of the gay women’s community. Political Correctness is still a formidable weapon which sometimes indiscriminately squashes human beings whose wants and needs are not politically motivated.

I have mostly come to accept all of this stuff. As a transsexual lesbian I have to be who 1 am, and 1 insist on taking my place in the lesbian community no matter who tries to reject me. I thank Goddess for my sisters who make me feel a part of the community. They know I have no choice of what 1 was born or how I feel, and they are open-minded enough to look past my chromosomes to the innate female energy that put me on this incredibly painful, difficult and treacherous path. I respect the strength of their conviction that allows them to welcome me in spite of how the less open-minded women mutter under their breaths.

All these dynamics tear me in several directions when I think of the lesbian I am currently dating. We haven’t tied the knot and aren’t planning on it. We date once or twice a week and have gone to bed a couple of times. No really big deal -- at least not to us. Yet I know what some of the other gay women must be saying about her.

They are calling her “bisexual” which isn’t true. They are probably also saying very nasty things about her, just because she isn’t prejudiced and closed-minded about me. I have so much gratitude for how she is able to relate to me as another woman. I am torn between my awe at her courage to be seen with me, and my fear of how she may be permanently ostracized by some women. Even the lesbians who aren’t very' PC may shy away from her, afraid of “guilt” by association or being torn apart by the mob mentality. They know that all of these women who have nothing better to do than gossip about her will tear them apart too.

This experience of being in a dating relationship with her has given me a lot of insight into the difficulties that an interracial couple must face. Prejudice, discrimination, fear and hatred are among the greatest enemies we face. Those who might be allies are afraid to face those enemies with us. They believe it is better for them to pretend they don't see us than to take a stand by us.

The gay community, especially the gay women’s community, is always in danger of becoming ineffectual because of infighting. It never ceases to amaze me how one minority can always find an even smaller minority’ within itself to dump on. Yet while we are spending our precious energy trying to find reasons to go off into our little cliques and hate each other, mainstream society — especially the conservative elements — are finding new' ways to turn the clock back to the dark ages for all of us. Instead of celebrating each other’s sisterhood and finding solidarity, we bitterly complain about what a wonderful women’s community we’d have if it weren’t for . . . you fill in the blank.

In the case of my lesbian date and myself, the “blank” seems to be those awful “men in dresses” with their penises cut off (or soon to be cut off) and those traitorous bitches who pretend to be lesbians while they fuck those “former” men. It seems to me we have a Nazi-like concern for purity here. My XY chromosomes and infertility earns me the badge of the enemy no matter what I have in my heart, mind or panties. And my girlfriend is now a “bisexual” because she’s fucked me a few times. This kind of fanaticism can be carried to even further extremes. When will it be decided that any female who is infertile is not a woman? What about those rare cases of women who are born with female genitalia but have XY chromosomes? When will we carry this extreme to sexual orientation? What if a woman has ever had heterosexual sex, does that make her a bisexual? How many exclusively lesbian encounters must she have before she is reallya lesbian? And on and on . . .

I would love to see some dialogue, some attempt to reach an understanding of these issues within our community. One of the “typical” female traits that so attracts to femininity is compassion. I wish my sisters who so hate or fear me could begin to see my dilemma for what it (continued on page 44)." End of alt ID for first image.]

[Alt text for second image: Yellowed background, black text. The top has bigger, bolder text that reads "Lesbians Who Date Transsexuals," and smaller italicized text that reads "(continued from page 38)". A line separates the title and the remaining of the article, which reads: "is. Maybe they could begin to expand their definition of female to include those like me. Maybe they could someday see the validity of my lesbian identity. And just maybe, by finding some way to see me as another kind of woman, they could also invite my girlfriend back into the lesbian community."

Below this is another line and more italicized text that reads, "Christine Betty is an author, musician and corporate computer drone who lives in San Francisco. Christine's latest books, Misery Loves Company, is a collection of short stories and poetry based on her experience as a transsexual and former prostitute and drug addict. She is currently assembling with her lover Rynata a 'modern metal' rock band called Glamazon." End of alt ID for second image.]

[campgender]

“The discussion of what constitutes a woman when all the women are not in the room produces just as skewed a result as the discussion that took place in the women’s movement about gender in which not all of the poles of the spectrum were allowed to be present for the discussion. No wonder people who were androgynous could say, ‘We don’t do that butch/femme stuff anymore’. We weren’t in the room. You can’t discuss a spectrum of sexuality if only these many people can come.”

from “Excerpts from ‘Sisterhood: Make It Real’” by Leslie Feinberg

Winter 1995 issue of TransSisters

[softtan4c3]

Halloween 2022 💕

[poutybeaniebaby]

[transgender-history]

Leslie Feinberg on trans exclusion in feminist spaces.

“We’re in danger of losing what the entire second wave of feminism, what the entire second wave of women’s liberation was built on, and that was ‘Biology is not destiny’. ‘One is not born a woman,’ Simone de Beauvoir said, ‘one becomes one’. Now there’s some place where transsexual women and other women intersect. Biological determinism has been used for centuries as a weapon against women, in order to justify a second-class and oppressed status. How on Earth, then, are you going to pick up the weapon of biological determinism and use it to liberate yourself? It’s a reactionary tool.”

From TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, issue 7, volume 1. 1995.

[jamieoh]

Last night was so fun! Hadn’t been out in a while so was good to go out and let my hair down 💕🥰 . . . . #sis #sisters #sister #friends #loveher #fun #happy #pose #selfie #moment #transgirl #transgender #trans #tgirl #tgirlsheaven #transsisters #transsiblings #jamie #chloe #corkcity #nightclub #nightlife #makeup #hair (at Cork) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3SJlCinvdQ/?igshid=579qqov1oqf0

[campgender]

So those are the questions that came up, and the whole idea of when we’re in a relationship, and we agree with someone to be in a relationship, well, things shift, and they shift gently, and we evolve into this wonderful dance. But then someone immediately does this drastic change. They’ve caught catastrophic illness. They get fired. They become a fundamentalist They become a Republican, or they become a guy. That really breaks out of the dance, and that nonconsensually shifts the identity of the partner, and you kind of go, “Wait a minute,” ‘cause the whole world is now looking at me like I’m a straight girl, and all the stuff that goes with that, and I’m femme anyway, so I have trouble in the lesbian community convincing some lesbians that I'm a lesbian because I like to wear dresses. And so now I wear dresses and I’ve got a boyfriend, so now they’re saying, “Sure Kate, you’re a lesbian! Yea, tell us another one’!”

Kate Bornstein in Fool’s Paradox: An Interview with Kate Bornstein by Davina Ann Gabriel

published in the Summer 1994 issue of TransSisters

[campgender]

from “S/he Who” by Mustang Sally (book review of S/he by Minnie Bruce Pratt) published in Summer 1995 issue of TransSisters

This part of the book absolutely sizzles. Here, Pratt articulates how the butch/femme thing cooks for her without mere reference to gender role semiotics — the usual failing of those neobutch/femme fans who take for granted a universal appeal for that dynamic. On dildo/vaginal intercourse, too, she transcends the mere statement of yang/yin to express something original about the desire to be filled by a woman lover. It's an example of how, as I've long thought, a pro-sex feminist could write rings around sex radicals whose work is not informed by feminism but places all the lesbian eggs in the sexual liberation basket. Best of all, this writing passes the ever-popular wet test with flying colors.

In that vein of feminist sex radicalism Pratt moves on to tales of how she and Leslie still manage to commit gender transgressions even among the butch/femme lesbians with whom one would assume they would be right at home. On a book tour with Leslie, Pratt finds herself assumed to be "just a wife,” instead of a writer and theorist in her own right, when she struggles to keep up with a busy book table; she is even dissed as a femme because she doesn’t sport the long nails with which she could open a shrink-wrapped set of books. In the lesbian wars over the appropriateness of butch/femme desire, the lines are usually sharply drawn; Pratt bridges the gap admirably, doing a great service to discourse on lesbian sexuality. She superbly affirms this way of lesbian passion while challenging it to keep from sliding into a complacency which can indeed coast on the heterosexual model.