GLAAD celebrates Women’s Junior College Basketball player Gabrielle Ludwig: because He’s a 6 foot 8, 230 pound, 50 year-old Man.
December 6, 2012
GLAAD celebrates a new LGBT hero on their website today: a heterosexual 50 year-old, six-foot-eight, 230lb man embarking on his women’s junior college basketball career after having his California birth certificate changed to “female” on November 30.
Five days ago Robert Ludwig was just a man with a dream. Since Friday, he has “become female”. Five days ago Robert was a past-his-prime male athlete. Today he is a “female” athlete embarking on a new career.
GLAAD (Gay and LESBIAN Alliance Against Defamation) champions the rights of middle-aged men to compete against 18 year-old female athletes in women’s sports, as long as those men have declared strong internalized beliefs in sex-based stereotypes.
GLAAD strongly supports the rights of 50 year old heterosexual men to live out their fantasies parlaying male musculature into careers in women’s sports thirty years past their prime: but only if those men voluntarily adopt the sex-based stereotypes that are enforced without consent upon females. This is because GLAAD believes such sex-based stereotypes actually make women female. GLAAD does not support title IX rights for female persons, because GLAAD does not believe the female sex exists. Further, GLAAD does not believe in the worldwide reality of sex-based oppression of females, and actively lobbies against the rights of females to organize, meet, and compete based on sex. Instead, GLAAD believes in sex-roles. Blue is for boys, Pink is for girls.
Blue is for Boys. Pink is for Girls.
In the USA Today article that GLAAD applauds, their hero Gabrielle Ludwig refers to the 18 to 20 year-old young women on the Mission College basketball team as “a bunch of dysfunctional lesbians”.
Ludwig goes on in the same article to dismiss a female player’s complaint that it is unfair that he is eligible to compete against her. He states: “They have been in this world 18 measly years. This 18 year old has not the slightest clue what life is about. It’s when they grow up. If that comment came from someone like you [male reporter Eric Prisbell] , that would sting and I would need to find a home for that comment.“
The twice divorced father is an 8 year Navy and Desert Storm veteran now working as a Genetic Systems Engineer at Roche Molecular Diagnostics in Silicone Valley. Robert takes 12 credits of online community college coursework in order to qualify for the team. From the Mission College website: “We have excellent transfer programs and general education courses that will promote your journey to four year institutions and prepare you for higher level learning whether it is the California State System, the University System or a Private University. We also have exemplary signature programs that help to prepare you for the workforce in many areas: Nursing, Fire Technology, Hospitality Management, and many others. Mission can provide classes that will catch you up in math, English, ESL or other areas that provide foundational skills to serve you in any future courses.”
GLAAD’s hero Gabrielle/ Robert John Ludwig played men’s college basketball 33 years ago. California Community College Athletic Association’s bylaws limit undergraduate athletes to two years of competition, but Robert’s time spent competing as a man was erased because it applied only to his male athletic career, not his “female” one.
What does the team coach think? From the Sillicone Valley Mercury News:
”In time,” said Corey Cafferata, her coach, “she will be the most dangerous player in the state.”
There is no requirement, a league spokesman said, for a WNBA player to be born female.
Natalie Reed: Transfeminism = Mansfeminism
November 18, 2012
Nate ‘splains how feminism isn’t working for him
Natalie Reed: 5 Ways Feminists can help build Male-Inclusivity and Intersectionality
1) Be willing to confront instances of malephobia, female sexism, female normativity, female-centrism, female privilege and other forms of destructive bias where you find them (especially when you find them within feminist, activist or queer spaces), not through “call outs” or other toxic, self-defeating or abusive strategies, but by taking the opportunity for genuine discourse.
2) Don’t take a purely passive, reactive approach. Rather than waiting for things like someone saying something overtly malesexist, or a male person bringing up a particular concern, be willing to proactively introduce male issues, or male-relevant aspects of broader issues, to feminist discourse. Likewise, proactively treat possible consequences, perspectives and concerns relevant to men and male experiences as being not only significant but essential to all feminist issues and conversations.
3) Don’t assume any given issue is strictly, or even primarily, relevant to women. All feminist concerns are also male concerns, and vice versa. There are no feminist dialogues in which male voices “don’t belong”, or to which male voices have “nothing to add”. There are no social issues related to gender that don’t have consequences for male people.
4) Proactively seek out male voices, perspectives and input on all issues, not simply what you regard as “male issues” or situations where the value of such perspectives is immediately obvious to you. Come to us, rather than waiting for us to come to you.
5) Don’t treat the larger social conflict of gender as being dialectic or binary in nature. Don’t assume a unidirectional model of gender-based oppression.
In closing: Remember that sexism isn’t just about men oppressing women. It’s mostly about human beings oppressing each other and themselves. It works in every possible direction.
Nate is here to show those dang females how feminism can best serve men
[For sake of clarity I have replaced the word “trans” with “man/male”, and the word “cis” with “woman/female”. –GallusMag]
Read the original here, although I can’t imagine why you’d want to:
“My Husband’s Sex Change” – Surviving a Genderist Spouse
November 7, 2012
An excerpt from Christine Benvenuto’s forthcoming memoir on the experience of surviving a genderist spouse was published in TheGuardian this week. “Sex Changes: A Memoir Of Marriage, Gender And Moving On” will be published November 13 by St Martin’s Press. Recommended by “My Husband Betty” blogger Helen Boyd.
Her middle-aged autogynephillic husband of twenty years and father to three children is consumed with his male-privileged gender fantasies of what it means to be female and Christie records the results. Some quotes:
“Yet Tom was interested in my relationships with other women. Too interested. Whenever I began a friendship, he would edge suffocatingly close. One time he called a new friend in secret to ask for babysitter recommendations so he could take me out for my birthday. After that, he often found some pretext – it always felt like a pretext – of doing something nice, and got his hands on a friend’s phone number, calling for advice or information and asking her for secrecy. It felt creepy every time.”
“From his cheerleaders I learned that in the new political correctness, female solidarity is out. A man in a dress is in. Among women who consider themselves feminists, a man who declares himself a transsexual trumps another woman any day. One of Tom’s supporters would eventually sum up this perspective most explicitly: “He’s a transsexual. Anything he does is what he needs to do.”
These career women told Tom, and some would later tell me, that my wifely role was to support my man and to get my children on board with the project. My responsibility was to Tom. Tom’s responsibility was to Tom. In the Valley of the Politically Correct, being a transsexual means never having to say you’re sorry.”
“It is inescapable: for me there is something slightly creepy and more than slightly sad about a man in women’s clothes. Male legs in sheer stockings. The sight of Tom in an exact replica of a skirt that was once my favourite. It is creepy for one woman to copycat another, the stuff of thrillers. Creepier for a man to do the same. Creepier still if that man is your husband.
Looking back, I can say Tom was a wonderful husband, father, friend. Or I can say Tom was a fabrication. A fake, who didn’t want to be with me, he wanted to be me.”
Read more here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/02/my-husbands-sex-change?CMP=twt_gu
[bolding mine-GM]
ETA: This is “Tom”: http://www.metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/events/?ak=7811
I want to know how to accept myself as a woman.
October 21, 2012
Medusa. Bermini.
Sister you are not alone.
I don’t say that to comfort you, or to dismiss your genuine experience with a feel-good trope, or to make you feel “less alone”. I mean it literally. You are not alone. Your experiences are not personal or unique to you. This is an important thing to recognize in the process of “accepting yourself” personally. This is a really important point I think. What you are experiencing is not unique, and not personal.
When feminists said “the personal is political” they did not mean “our individual actions can impact the political sphere”, or “our speshul individual internal lives are important” (not implying that you, Syd are saying that here). They meant: the things we deal with personally, in isolation and silence, the things that feel like internal personal issues, are actually not. The war against woman is conducted against us individually. Daily. Personally. Picking us off one by one. Rooting us out with each misstep. With each transgression. Or for no transgression at all. She was raped because _____ (fill in the blank) specific individual singular particular personal speshul reason. Women are not raped because men are conducting sexual torture and war crimes against women en masse. She was raped because she neglected to lock her window. Because she met a guy from online three weeks before. Because she hadn’t heard news reports of a serial rapist in her neighborhood. Because she happened to live in that neighborhood. Because she was pretty/ugly black/white rich/poor old/young etc.
It is always personal. It is always singular. It is always unique. Speshul circumstance. And the system is designed to individualize, to single out, to personalize.
But you are not alone. And what you experience has nothing to do with you personally.
From your comments here I can tell you recognize that important truth on some level, intuitively if not consciously. This is a very important thing for women to realize and is the core of healing personally and individually from the mass assault against female humanity and liberation. A personal situation requires singular individualized INTERNALIZED and self-directed reflection and analysis of the personal specific singular factors involved. That is NOT what we are dealing with here. We are dealing with IMPERSONAL EXTERNALIZED FACTORS. We are dealing with a WAR against those humans born with (or assumed to be in possession of) the biological capacity of being impregnated, by those humans who lack that capacity.
Syd, my sister, what is informing your personal malaise with an impersonal war is the specifics of your experience of it. Let’s go there.
Like myself, you have tasted the forbidden fruit. When we “pass” as male, or are assumed to be male, we experience something most women will never experience: being treated as fully human. As humans, our fellow humans give our input due regard, our experience due respect, our overlord status as the ruling class due note. Both men and women defer, refer, and relate to us based on our expressed competence (as adjusted for our perceived racial and class status). Few women have ever experienced humanity. They experience the lack of it, and witness it vicariously, but they have never had the experience of humanity.
The experience of women like us is profound. Breathtaking. Like soaking in warm honey-tinged milk. My god.
Every woman on the planet would inject testosterone (or whatever the fuck) into their right eye to experience the day to day existence of being treated as a regular human that you and I have experienced conditionally, and fleetingly. What people call “male privilege” is actually the experience as being treated as a default human. A regular, normal, baseline human.
There is no male privilege. There is no white privilege. There is no class privilege. There is only the experience of being treated as fully human. Everyone should experience the “privilege” of being treated as simply themselves. As simply human. And what a wonderful experience that is for those of us consigned for a lifetime in the subhuman caste who can “pass” themselves into it. What a breath of fresh air. What liberation! What a delicious honey-tinged milk-bath of humanity. Where one is judged on one’s merits. Where what we say is taken to mean… exactly what we say. Yanno. Just normal fucking humanity.
You wonder why the elements (female biology) that impede your humanity cause your revulsion? Oh honey. You are sane, that is all. You hate the whole woman thing because you are burdened with sanity. You have personally experienced being treated as human. Something few women ever have.
You don’t have discomfort in groups of females. You have discomfort in groups of subhumans who have never experienced humanity. In a group of females who have tasted the forbidden fruit of normalcy you would feel quite normal and at ease I am sure.
Experiencing humanity is something reserved for males (and those who are assumed to be male). For now. Lets fight, and fight and fight and make that not so. Lets not individualize and internalize and personalize (and medicalize) the experience of those of us who have tasted the ambrosia of being treated as fully human. Reflect and work outward, not inward.
Medusa. Harryhausen.
Transgender “Feministing” editor Jos Truitt on how females are wrong about Rape, Reproduction, and Homosexuality
April 23, 2012
Jos Truitt “GirlTalk 2012″
“So apparently, I’m a Pretendbian. So in case you’ve been lucky enough not to hear, Pretendbian is this term radical feminist and transphobe Cathy Brennan came up with, for transwomen who are apparently “pretend” lesbians, trying to trick or force real lesbians into sleeping with them. She has put a list of pretendbians online and actually a couple of us are here tonight. This is all in response to the idea of the Cotton Ceiling, which Drew Deveaux termed for the ways transphobia and trans misogyny keep trans women from getting laid in the queer women’s communities. Read the rest of this entry »
RadFem4Dummies #8273691
December 7, 2011
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Who Are The Males Who Sneak Into Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival?
September 6, 2011
The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival is a weeklong private event produced annually since 1976 by and for people who are female. For the last ten years, groups of male transgenders have protested the existence of the festival. Not only protested, but terrorized and harassed and tried to sabotage and destroy the festival. Their reason for doing so is their strong belief that people born female have no right to congregate on the basis of that commonality. The male transgender activists have literally formed an encampment each year outside the perimeter of the Michfest festival grounds, which they patrol with weapons and plan sabotage missions into the camp- to write graffiti, to cut the water lines to the handicapped showers, to slash tires, to wreck tents, to flier the camp with pictures of their penises. Last year many of the male transgenders fled their own encampment out of fear of the growing violence of their own group members. Why are these men so angry? Why do they want to destroy a private women’s music festival? Why do they want to force women to look at their penises?
The answer is that these men are angry because they weren’t invited to the festival, because people born male are not invited. Transgender male activists believe females have no right to exclusively female spaces, such as female sports programs, female support groups, female health services, female educational grants, female schools, female fitness centers, female domestic violence centers, female homeless shelters, sex-segregated prisons, female camps, sex-segregated hospital bed assignments, female bathrooms, female reproductive services, etc.
They believe that females have no rights to any space or service or gathering, public or private, that excludes the presence of males, or that exists for the benefit of female fellowship, or for the protection of females from potential male predation. It’s true! That’s what transgender activists believe, and that is what they are fighting- sometimes literally with violence and terrorism – to enforce on females. It’s also worth noting that female spaces and organizations (whether public or private) that exist for Lesbian women are the target of most of the terrorism harassment and boundary violation of these women-hating, homophobic males.
Some of these male-supremacist activists violate the boundaries of female spaces in the most direct manner. They simply ignore the wishes of the women and insert themselves in female spaces in a hostile act of unwanted penetration.
Here is a partial list of incidents involving these men at this year’s festival, as posted by Graceaware on the Michfest forum:
“0.1. a female-born womon is told “I am more woman than you” by a trans woman
0.2. a trans woman’s detailed narrative about masturbating with her penis and cock ring is read aloud in a sex-for-one workshop for pre-orgasmic womyn, triggering the sexual trauma of one woman severely and upsetting and triggering several others. (Alice K)
0.3. a trans woman with a penis is seen nude at the shower by a woman born female and her four-year-old granddaughter
0.4. a trans woman’s erection is noticed at a party in the Zone
0.5.a penis is seen at the WOC Burlesque show
0.6. a WHITE trans woman wears a “Trans Women Belong Here” t-shirt to the WOC Burlesque show, offending womyn of color with the proclamation that she belongs in WOC space (Angel S)
0.7. a trans woman, seemingly high, wanders into the Teen Tent, causing a pre-teen to be asked by the other teens there to leave for her own safety due to her pro-Fest boundary t-shirt
0.8. the clothesline of a woman born female is stolen after she hangs up her shirt with “No They Don’t” on it (in response to “Trans Women Belong Here.”)
0.9. “IT WAS HERE” and the symbol for trans with an anarchist A in the middle was carved into janes at triangle.
0.11. many female butches’ sex and gender are questioned in the ONE place they used to be able to count on that NOT happening.
0.12. the stories of violation, trauma, and triggers on the Land as told by women born female are discounted and disbelieved.
0.13. in the “Allies in Understanding” workshop, a wbw who was paired up with a trans woman (Tobi H) asked the trans woman if she was trans. Tobi said yes. The wbw did not want to discuss the issue with a trans woman, she preferred to discuss it with another wbw with the opposite opinion so she did not engage. AT the end of the workshop Tobi said that the wbw she was paired up with “made assumptions about her” and therefore chose not to engage.
0.14. A trans woman elbowed a wbw in the breast as she shoved her way onto the dance floor at Night Stage (Alice K)
0.15. a wbw was harassed late at night by several trans women who followed her on the path and said things like “how does it feel to be the last one out late at night?” as the shone flashlights in her eyes.
0.16. a wbw at a fire was harassed by a trans woman who tried to press her into a conversation about the Issue, and would not take no for an answer, forcing the wbw to leave the fire.”
Who are these men that ignore the boundaries of women and expose themselves to four year old girls in women’s showers at a private women’s festival?
Let us start the list:
Alice Kalafarski
Alice Kalafarski – attends a pre-orgasmic workshop for women- many of whom are healing from male sexual predation and violence- he shares a graphic description of using a cock ring to beat his meat. When women attendees are traumatized he poo-poos them, and laughs. (Horrifyingly, he claims to volunteer at a rape crisis center) Says he snuck into fest because it was where “Michfest was made for queer women to celebrate their shared sisterhood and give each other lots of orgasms” and he wanted to see if he could find a lesbian to have sex with. Refused to perform the two work shifts all attendees are required to perform as condition of attendance. Interrupts a ritual goddess ceremony to announce to the women that “goddess stuff is silly”. Pushes women out of the way to force his way onto a crowded dancefloor- elbows one of them in the chest. (More incidents will be added as they come to light).
Tobi Hill-Meyer
Tobi Hill-Meyer- Calls himself a trans butch lesbian (“TransDyke”). Protests flyers posted at fest honoring butch women as discriminatory, because the flyers didn’t mention that “men can be butch lesbians too”. Says: “Lisa Vogul hasn’t changed her stance saying that trans women shouldn’t come. But the fact is, we are coming.” Allowed other men to use his armband so they could enter without paying “I know that at least one person was re-using my arm band and I was under the impression that there were some other folks who re-used an armband or two or three as well.”
Gemma Seymour
Gemma Seymour - A heterosexual man and father who trans-itioned into genderism in his forties: “I was born a woman, from a woman, and will always be a woman. My cunt may be only in my head for the time being, but at least I don’t use it like a dick.”
*UPDATE: Gemma is now claiming he has never ever set foot into Michfest, only encamped at the perimeter and stood at the gate. More info will be posted when available.
*UPDATE: Gemma Seymour’s Michfest “walking stick” :
Annie Danger
Annie Danger- Penned the widely distributed “Open Letter to my friends who go to Michfest” where he asks attendees to ““Please do things while you’re there that show me that you really respect my body. My life. My womanhood.” And states: “I feel hurt and I am writing because want to trust that you have my back as a transwoman. I am having a hard time separating your attendance of MWMF and your silence with me about this issue from your level of respect for me; for my body.” You can see what he means by respecting his body And what he means by his “womanhood” if you skip to the six minute mark in the following video which he posted on youtube in children’s section (since removed by moderators). *Warning- not for children or weak stomachs! *Second warning! Really, you’ve been warned! Once seen can never be unseen!
Skip to 6 minute mark. HERE.
June Day
June Day
June Day / Angel N. S. – Self-described “Queer kinky trans redheaded pornstar” and Software Engineer. Male who performs in Tobi Hill-Meyer’s (above) lame and women-hating, lesbian-hating Porn movies. Seen in the Zone and at Daystage. Wore “Trans Women Belong Here” shirt into WOC space.
——————————————————————–More to be added—–
Michfest attendees have tried for years to discuss, talk, explain, ask nicely, converse, dialogue, and mediate with these men. They have tried to get the men to respect the boundaries of their private space- one week a year for females to gather at a private event for females only. Well guess what. It hasn’t worked. These men will never ever respect the boundaries of women, or respect the rights of females to congregate according to their constitutional rights as human beings. To these men, people born female are NOT human beings, and have no civil rights. No amount of talk will get them to respect the experiences and rights of those who are born and raised female in a male-supremacist world.
I’m going to continue to profile these men so that a list can be compiled before next year’s festival. I will add names and pictures to this post as they come in. Perhaps a separate website can be created to track the trespassers and identify them. Perhaps photos of the trespassers can be posted around the festival next year so the men can be escorted off the festival grounds. Perhaps next year womyn can photograph all the trespassers during festival so we can compile a complete list of predatory males.
When a man won’t take “No” for an answer, women must take whatever measures are necessary to protect their boundaries, their rights, and themselves. Enforce Boundaries, don’t just ask for them, because your requests are being denied.
Washroom Dilemma
August 24, 2011
This Is What Privilege Looks Like
June 23, 2011
Male? Check. White? Check. Upper class? Check? Hetero? Check.
Howard is a business development consultant from Phoenix Arizona who flies frequently via US Airways as a high mileage executive preferred customer. For years now he has been entertaining himself by traveling in his tiny underwear and high heels and various sexualized female gender coded crossdresser ensembles. There are whole websites devoted to collecting photos of him in various airports over the years, and many a YouTubes. He has been accorded the nickname “Terminal” by afficianados and is regarded as something of a folk hero.
Well Howard is getting his 15 minutes of fame this week after someone linked Howard’s behavior to the incident of College football player Deshon Marman getting into legal trouble over refusing to pull up his pants that were hanging off his ass and his ejection from a US Airways flight. “Look at the carte blanche the white guy has to run around in sexay underwear while a black guy gets kicked off a plane for having his ass hang out of his pants” is the refrain. “look at the privilege”.
Not only has Howard been well treated as a preferred flyer while exhibiting his satin ensconced Nutts to the public, and has posed for pictures and videos which litter the internet, but when his 15 minutes of fame started he requested that media outlets not publish his NAME –even though his name is already ALL OVER THE INTERNET (and he gives it out freely to those photographing him). That’s somewhat surprising. But what is downright shocking is that the media RESPECTED the REQUEST of the public exhibitionist!!! Now THAT, my friends, is PRIVILEGE.
Can you imagine the treatment a woman would receive wearing these travel clothes? What about a 65 year old female executive with a droopy flabby gut? Would she be a preferred customer? What about a poor woman? A Black woman? They would all be frikkin treated like dirt- at the very least. More likely they would be intercepted by law enforcement. Or beaten or raped. Or given a psychiatric evaluation. And would the media withhold their name which is plastered all over the internet at their request? Hell’s to the No.
This is what Privilege LOOKS LIKE. “Terminal” Privilege. I just thought you might want to have a look.
Of course, I believe everyone should have the right to wear whatever they want and be treated like gold. Should “Terminal” be stopped? Of course not. Privileged men should dress however they want in a free society – not that my opinion matters on the subject, or yours, or anyone’s you know because it’s Men, especially Rich White Hetero Men who make those rules.
And speaking of privileged men- the male transgenders, especially those who have pursued voluntary medicalized disabililty (removal of healthy endocrine systems etc ) in order to bolster the superficial illusion that they are actually female are livid- livid I tell ya! That a male would dress in whatever gendered clothes he wants without upholding genderism (by claiming that if he wears female gender markers he must actually be female). Heresy! Get your wig on NOW, mister! How DARE an American wear whatever he wants- it’s transphooooobic for males to wear skirts! It’s transphooobic for gays to perform drag shows! It should be outlawed! Only those who claim to be the other sex in their “brain reproductive system” should be allowed to break the rules of gender! Obey! Obey! Obey!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNtBRSOnxRw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLNiTUW7Daw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHijOvU2MUY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15JkOhhxrtg
