For Females, Transgender Equals Being Recognized As The People We Are On The Inside

For females, being transgender means:

Let’s Do This Shit

 

Women need to take back the public Gender dialogue from the Genderists.

From Right Wing Conservatives to Transgenderists, all the members of the Genderist spectrum claim that certain unrelated traits, roles, abilities and proclivities are based on reproductive sex (or it’s facsimile). And they are forcing their sexist beliefs into law. Females are being driven back into the dark ages.

Help me with this. What initiatives would fix this mess?

What are some of the Gender Initiatives that those harmed by Gender (females) should be actively lobbying for?

1. Laws against Gender based marketing to children should passed, and enforced, including toys, activities, media including television film and internet.
2. Genderism should be eliminated from public education, and not on an “opt out” basis either. All students should take Home Ec and Shop, whether they want to or not. Sex based discrimination such as hetero prom requirements and sex based dress requirements for school photos should be outlawed as well. Sex-based differences in rules about clothing should be eliminated. The only difference based on sex in public schools should be actually based on biological sex (and in defense of females against male predation traditions) such as female bathroom facilities, female sports opportunities, female locker rooms, appropriate sex-based health care. Schools should be evaluated for sex-based equality in achievement, and departments which show a sex-based disparity should be fixed.
3. Violence against females should be prosecuted as a hate crime, with increased penalties.
4.  Curfews for males in areas where male crimes exceed female crimes by more than 20%.
5. Censure of advertising which exploits Gender stereotyping based on sex.
6.  Penalties for all commercial enterprises who exhibit sex-based bias in numbers of females represented, female beauty requirements, sex inequity in producers, directors, staff, crew, techies, laborers, associates, workers, management, executive boards, union members, etc. Penalties exist until inequities are corrected. Funds from penalties go to training females.
7.  States with more than 10% sex difference in representation should be federally penalized with decreased funding.
8. All overseas aid should be retracted for countries with more than 10% sex difference in government.
9. All laws enshrining  legal status for sex-based roles (“Gender Identity”) should be eliminated and replaced by laws against sex-based discrimination.
10.  200% tax on pornography, tax benefiting initiatives to support females out of porn.
11.  Huge fines for punters/johns, criminalization, and the money going to supporting females out of prostitution.
12.  Class action suit reimbursing Lesbians and Gays retroactively for tax penalties for sex-based tax discrimination.
13.  ?

Okay, help me out here. Add your legal initiative that will help fix this whole female hating/sexism/gender mess. Or critique the ones I’ve added. Let’s make a master list of what it would take to turn this shit around. A do-able, actionable, list of initiatives that we can lobby for.  Be realistic but visionary. Be concrete. Let’s make a list of goals to implement in 2012.

 

I HATE Being A Girl

The Price of a Woman: Females, Cloning and Stem-cell Research

Researchers use new strategy to bypass ethical and legal restrictions on female bodies.

This week the journal Nature [subscription only] published results of a cloning experiment conducted by the New York Stem Cell Foundation that succeeded in growing stem cells to the blastocyst phase inside an egg that still contained the donor’s existing nucleus. Another breakthrough for cloning and stem-cell research. But what is most groundbreaking of all, at least for females and those who care about us, is the fact that researchers bypassed medical ethics, the donor guidelines of the National Academy of Sciences, and the laws in some US States, and countries including Canada, Britain, France, Australia, Belgium, Italy and China to do so. And men are applauding.

Human stem cell and cloning researchers need eggs. Human eggs. Which only female humans produce, and which can only be accessed by subjecting women to invasive surgical “harvesting” procedures which are risky, and even deadly. Researchers have been successful in growing any number of things in human eggs. But they cannot create the eggs. In order to obtain human eggs, female donors must undergo a four to six week medical screening and drug and  hormone injection treatment designed to hyperstimulate her ovaries into producing more than the one egg typically produced by normal ovulation.

(Control Ovarian Hyperstimulation (COH)

COH is done using different protocols. The most common one is a long GnRH-Agonist (Lupron) protocol where the secretion of gonadotropin hormones is suppressed in order to prevent premature ovulation. Once optimal suppression is achieved, the next step is the recruitment of multiple follicles by daily injections of gonadotropins. Ultrasound imaging and hormone assessments are used to monitor follicular development. When the lead follicles have reached the appropriate size, the final maturation of eggs is done by HCG administration. Egg retrieval is scheduled 34-36 hours after HCG injection.)

At the end of this process an ultrasound guided needle is used to puncture the vagina, abdominal wall or bladder to gain access to each ovary, where the eggs are aspirated into the needle while the woman is under intravenous sedation or local anaesthetic. Prophylactic antibiotics are also given.

Since the ovaries are movable and not fixed in place and the tissues are very soft, a special extremely sharp needle is used, which increases the chance of damage to surrounding tissues, including bowel perforation, ureter perforation, blood vessel perforation with resulting abdominal bleeding (The incidence of serious hemoperitoneum (free blood in the pelvis or abdomen) in the two large reports of transvaginal ultrasound guided egg aspirations is 0.6% (about 1 in 200) with half of these treated with laparoscopy and the remainder requiring a laparotomy.)

Some of the risks and side effects of this procedure:

 ”The drugs used to hyperstimulate the ovaries also have negative effects, most notably a condition called Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS). Serious cases of this syndrome involve the development of cysts and enlargement of the ovaries, along with massive fluid build-up in the body. As noted in an article in Human Reproduction Update, “the reported prevalence of the severe form of OHSS is small, ranging from .05 to 5% [of women undergoing gonadotropin regimens]. Nevertheless, as this is an iatrogenic [medically induced] complication of a non-vital treatment with a potentially fatal outcome, the syndrome remains a serious problem for specialists dealing with infertility.”[1]

Also, as noted by Dr. Suzanne Parisian, a former Chief Medical Officer at the FDA, “OHSS carries an increased risk of clotting disorders, kidney damage, and ovarian twisting. Ovarian stimulation in general has been associated with serious life threatening pulmonary conditions in FDA trials including thromboembolic events, pulmonary embolism, pulmonary infarction, cerebral vascular accident (stroke) and arterial occlusion with loss of a limb and death.”[2] One Institutional Review Board (IRB) for Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts cited the risks as including “high blood pressure; fluid accumulation in the limbs; formation of blood clots which potentially could be dislodged from the involved vein or artery causing damage to vital organs such as lungs, heart or brain; intestinal problems such as decreased appetite, constipation; nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, difficulty in swallowing; intestinal bleeding, intestinal ulcers and polyps; thyroid enlargement; breast tenderness; hot flashes; bone, muscle and joint pain; anxiety; depression; blurred vision; mood swings; nervousness; numbness; taste changes; memory problems; lightheadedness; blackouts; and headaches.” [3]
“

 

““There’s no health-outcome data collected by anybody other than some voluntary reporting, and there’s no postmarket testing on how these drugs are being used,” said Susan Berke Fogel, co-founder of the Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, a project of the Public Health Institute in Oakland, Calif.”

 

Due to the invasiveness and risk of human egg harvesting, laws have been passed in many forward-thinking countries and states to prevent a class of impoverished females being economically exploited by researchers who would subject them to medically invasive and sometimes deadly surgical procedures. The same reasoning behind laws which prevent humans from undergoing other invasive medical procedures for profit. Organ donation, for example is considered medically unethical and illegal when the donor is paid, because such payment is considered economically coercive and targets poor people for exploitation in a manner that is considered inhumane. But unlike organ donation, the only humans effected by egg harvesting are female humans. And Wednesday’s published research shows that not only were the worldwide prohibitions against high-risk medical donation bypassed but the precedent is being applauded by male scientists and researchers.

From the LaTimes :

 “Another notable thing about the research, which was published in the journal Nature: The team paid the women who provided the eggs used in the study, a practice that has been forbidden by ethical guidelines from scientific organizations around the world.  Some ethicists have argued that paying women for their eggs might create an exploitative trade. But in this case, it may be the reason why the researchers were able to collect enough healthy eggs (they used 270 in all) to get their historic result.

 Teams have “tried to recruit donors on altruistic grounds and failed,” said New York Stem Cell Foundation researcher and study co-leader Dieter Egli, during a news conference on Tuesday.  “That’s why we knew it was not the way to go in New York.”

 Dr. Robert Lanza, a stem cell researcher with Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., told The Times that in his experience, it can take a year to get one donor, and perhaps five to 10 eggs, lined up.  

 “One year we put out an ad.  The problem was, we got these patients, they’d say sure, and then they’d see the poster down the hall about getting paid [to donate eggs] for reproduction,” he said.  “It’s hard to get volunteers.  At best you’ll get a handful of eggs.”

 To avoid exerting undue influence on the donors, the New York team paid them $8,000 for the time and burden of donation (which does pose risks), then allowed them to decide later if they wanted their eggs to be used for research or for reproduction. That way, the conversation about payment was already over before any talk about scientific research began.

 In an article that accompanied the New York study in Nature, medical ethicist Jan Helge Solbakk of the University of Oslo praised the researchers for their approach.  “The authors’ approach represents the first step towards acknowledging women as genuine participants — co-producers even — in the generation of new knowledge,” he wrote.

[embolding mine-GM]

“Co-producers even- in the generation of new knowlege”. Riggght. When no women agree to “partnering” with researchers unless they are paid $8,000, that is not a “partnership”. It is economic exploitation and unethical medical experimentation targeting the most vulnerable humans: impoverished females.

If this precedent is not challenged, open-season on economically deprived females by unethical medical researchers will become every day, including females who are killed by researchers collecting eggs. Researchers claim that at least 100 human eggs are required for each single stem cell line. That means that for every potential person treated with stem cells, TEN women must undergo this egg harvesting procedure. According to a press release jointly issued by The Center For Genetics and Society, The Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, Our Bodies Ourselves, and The Alliance for Humane Biotechnology, the legal limits on the number of eggs were also ignored:

“The authors of the Nature report note that one of the women from whom they obtained eggs for their work produced 26 eggs. Some fertility doctors warn that no more than 10–15 eggs should be extracted from a woman’s ovaries in a single cycle, because “when the egg number exceeds 20, the risk of OHSS [ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome] becomes high.”[i]

The authors claimed to have followed the guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), but they did not. For example, they offered a sum of money significantly higher than the ASRM guidelines allow. Nor did they follow the recommendations of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) that “the treating physician or infertility clinician should not also be the investigator who is proposing to perform research on the donated materials.”

Not only that, but the joint press release states that the women were put at risk and subjected to dangerous invasive surgical procedures for research that was totally hypothetical and had no supportive data – it was just a crap shoot:

“The authors speculate that with enough eggs, they might be able to produce genome-specific stem cells. However, they offer no discussion of any exploratory research in animal models. For example, what have been the findings, if any, of animal research seeking to identify the oocyte nuclear factor that they hypothesize?

“We cannot now justify the solicitation of young women to provide eggs for this kind of speculative research,” says Diane Beeson of the Alliance for Humane Biotechnology.”

 “Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, Associate Executive Director of the Center for Genetics and Society, says:

“This new form of research cloning, like the old one, still represents a highly speculative approach to stem cell research. We should not put the health of young women at risk, especially to get raw materials for such exploratory investigations.”

It’s the Wild Wild West in cloning research. And female bodies are the great frontier.

Women’s lives and health are just a necessary cost.

$8,000 each, to be precise.

 

 

Saturday Night Double Feature: Sexism Nostalgia

Coming this Fall on ABC and NBC.

NJ Appeals Court: Legal “Gender” Determines Obscenity

Phoenix Feeley

NJ appeals court affirmed yesterday that the government has a “moral” interest in enforcing unequal laws based on sex. In short: Male bodies are fine, Female bodies are obscene and must stay covered. Male chests are respectable, Female chests are pornographic. Male breasts = Moobs. Female breasts = Illegal Dirty Pillows.

Phoenix Feeley, a women’s rights advocate and (literal) fire-breathing performance artist and circus performer lost the appeal yesterday in her ongoing battle against charges incurred in 2008 when she was arrested –twice in one day- for removing her top on the beach like a male.

From the appeal decision:

The facts are essentially uncontested. On June 28, 2008, defendant removed the top of her bathing suit while sitting on the public beach in Spring Lake. Police officer Robert Zoino approached and asked that she put her top back on. When defendant refused, Zoino arrested her and brought her to police headquarters.

 After being processed and supplied with a tee shirt by the police, defendant was released. However, shortly thereafter, Zoino and another officer responded to a call of a topless woman at a street intersection near police headquarters. Defendant was again arrested and issued additional summonses. Police officer Michael Rutka found the tee shirt supplied to defendant hanging from the entrance door of the police department.

 Before the municipal court judge, and again on appeal to the Law Division, defendant did not challenge these proofs.2 Instead, she argued, among other things, that application of the public nudity ordinance under the facts presented violated defendant’s rights to equal protection under the fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, defendant contended that men were permitted to appear topless on the public beach, but women were not. Both the municipal court judge, and the Law Division judge, rejected the argument.

In a thorough written opinion, the Law Division judge cited extensively to our decision in State v. Vogt, 341 N.J.Super. 407 (App. Div. 2001). Noting that “defendant . . . [may have] present[ed] compelling policy arguments in her brief,” the judge nonetheless concluded he was “bound by the holding of the appellate court because both the factual circumstances and the regulations in question in Vogt and in this case [we]re indistinguishable.” He found defendant guilty of two ordinance violations, imposed an aggregate fine of $750, and this appeal followed.

Defendant argues that we should depart from continued reliance upon our decision in Vogt because it “unjustifiably sanctions arrest and prosecution based on gender.” The argument lacks sufficient merit to warrant extended discussion in this opinion. R. 2:11-3(e)(2).

The ordinance in this case provided in pertinent part:

[I]t shall be unlawful for any person to appear or travel on any street, avenue or road, beach, waterway, alleyway, driveway or any area of private property open to public view in the Borough or appear in any other such place in the Borough in a state of nudity; in an indecent or lewd dress or garment; or make any indecent exposure of his or her person; or urinate in any of the above described places except in public restrooms.”

She was charged with two counts of Public Nudity, one count of Dressing and Undressing in Public, two counts of Disorderly Conduct (later dismissed) and one count of Obstruction.

According to her blog she was:

Detained for over 6 hours

Sent for psychiatric evaluation

Physically abused by cops

Legal procedures not followed

Patient confidentiality not permitted

Left with no money, phone, or ride 3 towns and a 3 hour walk from where I was.

Feeley has been fighting for years against antiquated sex-based clothing laws that discriminate against women, and has put her safety and freedom on the line to do so. In 2005 she was wrongfully arrested and detained in Manhattan for walking down the street bare-chested, even though New York City had repealed its discriminatory sex-based clothing laws in 1992. She won a $29,000 settlement for that illegal arrest.

“In another country, a woman can’t take a scarf off her face without getting stoned to death,” she says. “What so different about the two?”

From yesterday’s NJ appeals court  decision:

“In Vogt, supra, 341 N.J. Super. at 416-17, we concluded that “there [wa]s no constitutional right for a woman to appear topless on a public beach,” and “[r]estrictions on the exposure of the female breast are supported by the important governmental interest in safeguarding the public’s moral sensibilities, and th[e] ordinance [wa]s substantially related to that interest.” Id. at 417. We further noted that distinctions based upon gender must satisfy an “`intermediate’ level of scrutiny,” i.e., “the distinction must be justified by an important governmental interest that is substantially accomplished by the challenged discriminatory means.” Id. at 417-18 (citations omitted). “The burden of justifying the classification is on the state, which must show that the claimed justification is `exceedingly persuasive.’” Id. at 418 (quoting United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533, 116 S.Ct. 2264, 2275, 135 L. Ed. 2d 735, 751 (1996)). We determined that “the ordinance satisfie[d] both the federal and state tests for equal protection.” Id. at 417.

Defendant has presented no principled reason for us to depart from our holding in Vogt. We therefore affirm.”

(All Bolding mine.) In other words, women’s legal rights to equality are based on safeguarding arbitrary cultural sex discrimination traditions. The court’s obligation is to uphold sex-based social customs, even if discriminatory against females.

THIS is why mothers are harassed in public for FEEDING THEIR CHILDREN. And it is why 15 year-old girls want to undergo THIS procedure:

"Top Surgery" for Women

Can There Ever Be An Alliance Between Transgenderism and Radical Feminism?

Can there ever be an alliance between trans and radical feminism? Can you imagine any way in which the interests of genderists and the interests of women can co-exist? Or even align?

As a jumping off point I am posting this thoughtful comment left by a male transgender addressing this very question.

Soran Says:

September 7, 2011 at 12:15 pm e

Warning…looooooooong post.

I’m not sure if there’s a quote feature, but…

SheilaG wrote: “Soran, that was a thoughtful comment. And perhaps T is a poison. Whatever it is, it is unfortunately M to Trans are attacking the very group that finds them horrifying in the extreme.

So the best that can come out of this, is for all male to trans to work on MALE society…. to challenge male authority, to leave women alone.

Male who transes will know that like Columbus, you bring harm to the native peoples. When you enter female land, female sensibility, you still cannot escape the male …. and no, you don’t have benefit to bring radical feminism, you have ruin intentional or not.

Attack the patriarchy of men’s worlds, challenge them. Leave born women to our own liberation from male anything.”

Wow, I really have to apologize for the long-windedness below. I don’t have a great deal of emotional intelligence to apply to my situation. The radical feminist critiques of trans culture help me apply my analytical intelligence instead. It’s calming, in the same way as being around other trans people (especially those who don’t like the ‘community’). The trans community weirds me out because of the high heels and the makeup and the drag shit, and radical feminists are the only other people who seem to see this. It’s utter doublethink, but it sucks less than thinking that I’m obligated to deform my feet to be myself. For me, the radfem criticism of trans culture has taken the pressure off.

I can’t vouch for other transwomen, and I don’t know what they mean by ‘woman.’ I don’t know what I mean by ‘woman’ in reference to the one in my head, beyond the body I think I should have. Any ‘gender role’ can only be described in stereotypical terms that simply don’t ring true for me. This is a strictly biological aversion for me. I don’t mean that I’m ‘neurologically intersex’ or whatever. I think that’s a possibility, but for now I’ll stick with what I know.

For all of human history, a rather stable proportion of the population has ‘known’ (at least in the sense that I know my mind exists) that they could not sanely carry out the physical sex role assigned to them. By this I don’t mean BS gender roles, but the act of carrying the organs themselves. This population will never disappear. Like comic-book mutants, it’s moot whether they should exist because ‘normal’ humans will keep giving birth to more. It’s also moot what the cause is, because we can’t prevent it. There are other people who reject traditional gender roles but not their genitals, but I’m not talking about them.

So am I woman, or man? Wait a minute…lemme take off my Anglo lenses (I suppose my black ass should do that more often)…

Oh! It’s a false dilemma. The transgender population does not have to subscribe to Western ‘transgender’ ideology in order to reject their birth sex. Obviously most do, but that’s the Anglo lenses. Some Native American cultures see us as a third sex with a specific role that bridges the divide between men and women. In Thailand, a kickboxer named Nong Tum continued to fight and beat men after her ‘transition’ from man to kathoey (‘ladyboy’). I wonder how interested in women’s space she is.

I think I could be very grateful for a third-sex role. I think I could find more peace there than as an American-style Transwoman®. I think trans women reject the third-sex role for what they perceive as female ‘privilege’ (passing on patriarchal terms) and a larger community to be part of. I think I lucked out here in that I’ve always been a loner, so that’s not as hard for me. For the rest of this I’ll still use the term transwomen, because that’s the closest Western description I have for men who ‘should have been born female.’ By this I do not mean that I *am* female.

The group won’t disappear. But the ideas (western transgender ideology) are horseshit. So…maybe the group can get new ideas. I realize this isn’t your problem. I’m not asking you to solve anything, but I do consider your perspective necessary to this task.

As trans women have had the harmful effect on women that we’re discussing, I think that such a reformation should be treated as ‘with-women-or-against-them.’ By this I mean that however possible, trans culture should consider itself obligated to take cues from radical feminism (on issues where they would otherwise be sure to conflict). If radical feminism changes, it shouldn’t be to better fit trans culture, but to better use it. Trans culture should be subordinate to natal women, and in a pathetic cargo-cult fashion I think it tries to be.

Reason numero uno that I think trans culture should learn from radfem culture: A mutual enemy (patriarchy, whether trans women realize it or not). If women aren’t safe and free, I’m not safe or free. I think trans women should operate on this assumption, especially when it’s false (in order to check their own male privilege).

Reason numero dos: In this culture, a person who considers ‘hirself’ a third sex will feel compelled to use the same medical and therapeutic services as a Barbie-doll transwoman. Whether this is a good thing or not, it will happen. Since the money is already flowing, I think the harm can be reduced by applying radical feminist reasoning. I also have to admit that yes, I myself want these services. If I’m going to do that and add to the demand, the least I can do is tell my therapist that I’m not there to learn gendered stereotypes.

As for OCD, most trans women I know are rather messy. Especially their cars. Beats me.

Not that I’m qualified, but I feel that the above comments are saying that a man is obligated to carry a working penis. You can’t tell me that radfems saying ‘what about the menz’ and mourning some guy’s balls isn’t kind of funny.

TRIGGER WARNING – the next paragraph pertains to rape, and it IS offensive.

PIV is natural (like rattlesnake venom and hurricanes). Rape (not consensual PIV, but rape) is the natural mode of reproduction for half of the life on the planet. Ducks are engaged in an evolutionary arms race to see which sex can convolute its genitals more, to either facilitate or prevent rape.

The evolutionary psychologists are right IMO (and aren’t trying to excuse anything, largely – laymen are doing that). It’s nature that’s wrong. And I don’t mean that sarcastically. As animals, I think patriarchy is in our genes.

By evolutionary standards, Warren Jeffs is perfect. Utterly perfect, alongside the shark and the Venus’ flytrap. He created an entire culture to spread his seed, and when he could no longer do that he self-destructed. His is the standard to beat among living things, in terms of natural selection. Conscience would have been an impediment.

But we have gained abilities beyond those of other animals, and obligations beyond them as well. Lions are entitled to patriarchy because they can’t question it. As a human I have the ability to propose that our biology itself is obsolete. And I reject it. Apparently involuntarily. What I mean is that patriarchy is a symptom of a more fundamental problem – the existence of a 50% male population. You don’t need ten men to provide DNA for ten breeding women. Or a hundred women. If men find themselves in a role where they’re expected to turn wrenches during the day and be used as communal sperm dispensers by night, I don’t think they’ll mind too much.

And joy of joys – it’s easier to neuter or hormonally feminize men than to ‘fix’ women who’ve had enough fixing.

Maybe nature does have a conscience, lol. Maybe Nature (look Ma, no balls!) has decided that men have cultivated enough farmland and should start putting down their weapons, eh? That would explain why there are so few f-to-trans and so many masochist men and voluntary eunuchs and ‘sissies.’ Not to mention the deterioration of the Y chromosome, or the fact that an active process is required to maintain it once an embryo turns male.

Of course, one must ask what magical genetic programming I assume all women have that I am missing. I don’t know. I suspect that Nature’s role for women (derailed by accidental overbreeding of male children) is to create communities, which are defended and supplied materially by men. In a sense, that women are the head and torso, while men are the arms and legs. Now imagine a person whose limbs attack them and drag them into trouble against their will. That’s humanity.

I’m thinking of your statements about acting upon male space vs. female space. First, here’s what I can tell you about the privilege I have. As it stands now I present on most days as a man. A feminine man who’s frequently called ‘she’ and ‘her’ and ‘Miss’ even when I’m in dad jeans and a tucked-in gray polo shirt, but a man. A six foot, 230lb mulatto man. So people generally leave me the fuck alone. Until I open my mouth and they realize I’m not Antoine Dodson. Then suddenly I’m Mr. Very Articulate African-American Gentleman Friend of Mine. Colorism works to my advantage. “Good hair” fetishism works to my advantage. Truth be told, I get my ass kissed even racially.

But I worry a lot about other trans women. Many trans women aren’t part of the community at all, and many of these have such feminine bodies (without any type of treatment) that they can’t pass as male. Some are almost unaware of trans culture or don’t understand it. I see them all the time in the Hispanic community. For these and many other trans women, acceptance from natal women is the only safety they have (and many get that acceptance without a second thought).

I remember one woman I saw on the train, whom I didn’t ‘clock’ until some man did. She was maybe 19, 5’4″ and 110lbs, and dressed for a casual day out, nothing I don’t see on lots of young latinas. She froze solid in absolute terror when this man started asking her if she was ‘a dude.’ I asked the guy why he didn’t mind his own fucking business and proceeded to keep his attention on me. Then I sat between him and her. That was all I could do, and then she was alone again when she got off at her stop. I think she felt just as alone when I was sitting next to her. All I could offer was basic physical safety, and she probably couldn’t be sure of that.

Imagine how much genuine love this girl would have for any natal women with whom she could travel in a pack. Said natal women would probably laugh if you asked them whether they feared the trans girl. That pack is a female space that I hope to find myself in one day, but you are right – if I push my way in, it will disappear. For one, my own mind is not yet part of that space.

And if I find a safe third-sex space, will I be comfortable with women there? Will I be comfortable with men-born-women there?

Staying away from Michfest, etc. is easy. I don’t understand what it is that trans women think they can ‘soak up’ there. Yes, my psychology is bereft of female socialization and estrogen. It’s also missing memories of moonlit summers on the French Riviera, and a Ph.D in computer science.

But what a trans woman gets by barging into a WBW space is not female socialization. It’s women responding to what they see as a man. If someone’s going to play safari and ‘study’ WBW in their ‘natural habitat,’ they could at least realize that pushing themselves into the situation changes the dynamic.

As for challenging men in their space (the streets, office, home, the moon), I don’t think trans women will be properly qualified to ‘represent’ women’s interests unless they are listening to women. Otherwise all trans women can bring against patriarchy is uninformed Nice Guy mentality.

My only suggestion to radical feminists is this: I hope that men who want to ‘disarm’ themselves eventually become useful to you, and I hope that women gain the ability to control the male birthrate.

ALL non-abusive comments which are thoughtful and which relate to the feminist topic of THIS post will be approved. Comments like “Go fuck yourself” will not be approved. For those who have already posted responses to this comment on the other thread feel free to re-post them here. Please keep nested comments to a minumum, instead quote the portion of the post you are responding to when possible.

Another “Brain Sex” Theory Bites The Dust

Finally, the cause of sex differences in spatial abilities is found: It’s caused by female-hatred in male-supremacist cultures. No surprise to women, big surprise to genderists and other male-supremacists who cling to the sexist “Brain Sex” theory as if it was the Rock of Gibraltar. The way white-supremacists used to cling to the “Negroid Brain” theories of yesteryear.

From Live Science:

“At least one notable gender gap in abilities between men and women may be due in part to culture, a new study finds.

According to the research, women in cultures where men are in charge score lower than their male counterparts on a test that measures the ability to rotate objects in the mind’s eye. But in communities where women are at the forefront, the gender gap disappears.

Many studies have found that women are generally worse at this task, called spatial ability, than men. Some, like former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, have suggested that such innate abilities might be the reason that women are underrepresented in science and math careers. Summers drew fire in 2005 for suggesting as much during a conference on work force diversification.

The Karbi and the Khasi

The gender gap in spatial abilities shows up across cultures, but little is known about how much of spatial abilities are really inborn and how much are shaped by culture. That nature-nurture schism is important in debates like the one Summers sparked, because if the difference is cultural, it suggests that discrimination and stereotypes might be to blame for the lack of women in high-level math and science positions.

To find out, study author Moshe Hoffman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego’s Rady School of Management, travelled to Northern India to visit two very traditional tribes.

One tribe, the Karbi, is patrilineal, meaning that men own most property and inheritance always goes to the oldest son. A second tribe, the Khasi, is matrilineal. The youngest daughter inherits the property in Khasi villages and men are forbidden to own land.

The advantage of going to rural India to study these two tribes is that they’re biologically and geographically very similar, Hoffman said.

“We have this beautiful control group where they live literally right next door,” Hoffman told LiveScience. “These villages are kind of interspersed with each other, and the tribes diverged genetically only a few hundred years ago.”

Hoffman and an interpreter went to eight villages, some Khasi and some Karbi, and recruited 1,279 volunteers to complete a four-piece puzzle of a horse while being timed. All of the volunteers got a day’s wages just for showing up; to motivate them, Hoffman offered another fifth of a day’s wages if they completed the puzzle in less than 30 seconds.

“In some of these villages, almost the entire village came up,” Hoffman said. “Most of these people work in the field all day long, which is pretty strenuous work, so if you were a mother you would come up with one baby strapped to your belly and one more grabbing on to your leg.”

Culture and gender

Across both tribes and genders, people took about 40 seconds, on average, to complete the puzzle. In the patrilineal Karbi tribe, men completed the puzzle 36 percent faster than women. But in the matrilineal Khasi tribe, women and men were equally good at their task.

What that shows, Hoffman said, is that “even while holding biology constant, there is an effect of culture on the gender differences in spatial abilities.”

 

Read the whole article HERE.

 

 

 

“Work It” coming soon to ABC

Always “Crying”

82% of Female US Senators Sign Letter to Saudi King: Let Women Drive

Wow! 82% of Bipartisan US Senators agreed on something! How often does that happen?

Here’s the ironic portion of this post: only 17% of the United States Senate is female. AND- this is the highest percentage EVER in this country. That’s right, only 17 women in the US Senate. And of those 17 women, Three DECLINED to sign a letter in support of the rights of females to DRIVE in the only country on earth where females are still prevented from driving. This is our “post feminist” world, peeps. Where even mentioning Women’s Equality in this country is greeted with the same regard as a discussion of a fart in the room. Where the biggest concern of “feminists” is whether someone thinks they are a man-hating Lesbian. Where every suit, every haircut, every shoe, and every photo of a female candidate is scrutinized through the filter of the male gaze and the performance of gender submission . Where males pass laws stating that female people don’t actually even EXIST. So before all the Westerners reading this feel so dang “liberated” compared to our sisters in Saudi, look in the fucking mirror first.

Speaking of our sisters in Saudi Arabia, the ongoing courageous battle to obtain the simple right to drive a vehicle continues. After dozens of women took to the streets last month on June 17^th and drove without arrest, and many women driving since, authorities seem to be –at least half-heartedly- cracking down.

A woman was arrested last week for driving herself to the hospital while suffering a hemmorhage, and authorities intend to file charges. “According to the newspaper, the unnamed 35-year-old was arrested in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, then released with her father as her guarantor.

The woman said she had to drive because she was suffering from a hemorrhage and, “in the absence of public transportation” and no driver of her own, she had no other way to get to the hospital, Okaz said.”

According to the same article two other women were arrested in the crackdown last week.

But Saudi women stand firm in their resolve to win their rights by their own doing, and their fight continues. Manal Al Sharif, who was imprisoned for nine days last month for posting a video on YouTube of herself driving was intitially reported as giving up the fight for Saudi women’s right to drive. Reports said she was silenced and forced to sign a paper renouncing driving, and promising silence on the topic. But last week in her first published interview since her release she told the BBC ”We won’t stop until the first Saudi license is issued to a woman.”

The BBC states: “Manal al-Sharif, one of the organisers of Women2Drive, says they have been contacted by 1,023 women who want to drive – and by 192 women from across the country who are willing to teach them. They are now looking to recruit volunteers. “Women want to drive and they are taking actual steps towards that,” said Ms Sharif.”

Hilary Clinton has come out in support of the right of Saudi women to protest for and win their rights to drive.

And yesterday 14 Female US Senators sent a letter to Saudi King Abdullah. Here is that letter:

“July 26, 2011

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques

Dear King Abdullah:

As women members of the United States Senate, we write in support of the increasing number of Saudi women and men calling for the removal of the driving ban on women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As you know, Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world with such a ban on women driving, and maintaining such a restriction stands in stark contrast with the commitments your government has made to promote the rights of Saudi women.

We appreciate that the government of Saudi Arabia has taken steps to advance women’s rights. For example, we were pleased to see the appointment of the first woman deputy minister in Saudi Arabia and the establishment of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology—the only university in Saudi Arabia that allows women to study alongside men and where women are allowed to drive motor vehicles on campus. These are important steps, but more must be done and lifting the driving ban would be a critical step forward.

In June 2009, the government of Saudi Arabia accepted the majority of the recommendations put forward by the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review, including to “[a]bolish all legislation, measures and practices that discriminate against women… In particular, to abolish legislation and practices which prevent women from participating fully in society on an equal basis with men, including… limitations on freedom of movement, the prohibition on women driving and restricted access by women to work, public places and commercial facilities.”

Given this commitment, we strongly believe it is time to abolish the prohibition on women driving once and for all, especially in light of Saudi Arabia’s role as a newly elected member of the board of UN Women—an entity dedicated to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women worldwide.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.” And according to the Arab Charter on Human Rights which Saudi Arabia ratified in April 2009, “Every individual residing within the territory of a State shall have the right to liberty of movement.” The prohibition on women driving motor vehicles, even in cases of emergency, makes it impossible for citizens to exercise a basic human right.

We strongly urge you to reconsider this ban and take an important step toward affording Saudi women the rights they deserve.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Mary L. Landrieu
United States Senator

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Patty Murray
United States Senator

Olympia Snowe
United States Senator

Claire McCaskill
United States Senator

Barbara Mikulski
United States Senator

Jeanne Shaheen
United States Senator

Maria Cantwell
United States Senator

Kirsten Gillibrand
United States Senator

Debbie Stabenow
United States Senator

Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator

Kay Hagan
United States Senator

Susan Collins
United States Senator”

———————————————————————————————————

*The three Senators that did not sign to support the rights of Saudi Women: Republican Lisa Murkhowski, Alaska. Republican Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire. Republican Kay Baily Hutchinson, Texas.

Thank you to the esteemed Female Members of the Senate who support the rights of Saudi Women to drive like human beings, not objects waiting to be picked up. And Thank you to our Saudi Sisters for showing us the bravery and persistence of women who drive under threat of arrest. Keep it up! You are winning! We support you!

Take Your Breast Implants And Shove ‘Em!

Awesome Graffiti left outside Calgary Radio Station 90.3 Amp in response to their

dumb-ass Breast Implant Contest:

Good Job, Taggers!