NYT: The trouble when Jane becomes Jack (transgender lesbians)

[pnwmom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/fashion/20gender.html

IN the most recent season of the lesbian soap opera, “The L Word,” a new character named Moira announced to her friends that, through surgery and hormone therapy, she would soon be a new person named Max. Her news was not well received.

“It just saddens me to see so many of our strong butch women giving up their womanhood to be a man,” one friend said.

The sentiment was a tamer version of what many other women wrote on lesbian blogs and Web sites in the weeks after the episode was broadcast last spring. Many called for the Max character to be killed off next season. One suggested dispatching him “by testosterone overdose.”

The reaction to the fictional character captured the bitter tension that can exist over gender reassignment. Among lesbians — the group from which most transgendered men emerge — the increasing number of women who are choosing to pursue life as a man can provoke a deep resentment and almost existential anxiety, raising questions of gender loyalty and political identity, as well as debates about who is and who isn’t, and who never was, a real woman.

Snip

[Not Me]

1. Can't we all just get along.

nt

[IndianaGreen]

2. There is prejudice in the lesbian community toward women that

practice bondage with other women, so it is not surprising that there is also downright bigotry toward the transgendered among gays and lesbians, just as we find it among the straight community.

The fact that something may not be "our cup of tea" does not mean that we have to deny people their rightful dignity and respect.

As to the specifics of the OP, gender "loyalty" is an idiotic concept when applied to a transgender man or woman, for their brains are hard wired to a gender that is opposite to that of their genitals. Their compulsion, if one could call it that, to bring their physical bodies in harmony to their "brain" body is perhaps the highest manifestation of gender "loyalty" that one can find.

If the "L Word" remains true to real life, the Max character and his female companion (if there is one) will be ostracized from the group. Max for becoming a man, and she for loving one.

We have a long ways to go in accepting the differences in our community.

[pnwmom]

3. What do you think about the controversy at all-women's colleges,

where some students are transitioning? Should they remain at an all women's college as a male? What about the issue of hormone treatments for a transgender male on a female sports team? Any thoughts about that?

For example:

http://www.fredbernstein.com/articles/display.asp?id=59

At Smith, the women's college in Northampton, Mass., students voted last year to eliminate female pronouns from the student constitution at the request of transgender students. "She" and "her" were replaced with the phrase "the student."

Laurie Fenlason, a college spokeswoman, said that "the vote was undertaken by the students as a gesture of good will toward a handful of fellow students."

But the change was not without controversy. "It contradicts the whole point of having a women's college," said Esi Cleland, a Smith sophomore. "I am opposed to it, because there's something to be said for a women's college, and a lot of us come here because we choose to be in an environment where women are the primary focus."

Students at Barnard have also been grappling with the implications of the fact that some students at a women's college don't identify themselves as women. A recent article in The Columbia Spectator about transgender activism was headlined "Can a Man Attend Barnard College?" "Trans issues," the article reported, "are gaining traction at Barnard."

[IndianaGreen]

4. I saw that episode on the Smith College female-to-male on a TV series

I think that we must respect people who nature has burdened with being transgender or inter-sexed (a topic that always gets me started on a rant against some physicians). A country like Cuba has recognized the human rights of transgender people to be treated like everyone else. How can we do less?

As to single-gender colleges and universities, a concept that I find strange in itself having been a graduate of a coed institution, I trust that the students and the administration can work these things out without engaging in the very sexism that drove them into going to those institutions in the first place.

[ikojo]

6. You're talking about the student at Smith profiled on

Trans Generation? What an awesome series. If you were unable to see it because your cable system does not have Sundance or Logo, I highly recommend the DVD. It profiled four students, of varying socio-economic groups including an immigrant who is very poor, and their experiences in college.

[IndianaGreen]

8. That's the one! I couldn't think of the name of the series, thanks

The very topic of their being accepted while transitioning at Smith was very interesting.

[ikojo]

9. Smith College was so uncomfortable with the issue

that the forbad filming on the Smith Campus. They could film only in and around Luke's apartment. Never mind that Luke was an honor's student who was rocket science smart and was going to graduate with all sorts of honors.

[Ayesha]

5. My friend just started dating a FTM

She has dated men in the past but now considers herself a lesbian, so it's a bit odd to me. But she's also into kinky sex and open relationships, both of which are utterly different from anything I'd be interested in, so to each their own. I absolutely support full civil rights for transgendered people and I would certainly never ostracize my friend or any other lesbian for dating a FTM. Personally, however, I wouldn't, because I'm attracted to women, not men!

I don't really think FTMs should attend all-women's colleges, if they truly want to be men. But by the same token, MTFs should be welcome! If gender really is psychological, we need to be consistent about it, and not make women's spaces for "everyone who isn't a man-born-man."

[ikojo]

7. There's a documentary that has been shown

twice today on Logo. It's called Gender Rebel and it's about lesbians involved in relationships with genderqueer individuals.

[NMMNG]

10. I just don't get the hostility

We deal with enough of it ourselves, why inflict it on other people?

[readmoreoften]

11. Because the NY Times really gives a fuck about us.

Nice way to manufacture controversy, NYT. The L-Word is not the fucking watermark of the lesbian community. It's a goddamn TV show. There are a lot of butch and trans-loving dykes out there who hate that character because he is almost universally viewed as a shallow portrayal of butch-to-trans emotions.

There is HARDLY an anti-trannie-boy "hate movement going on within the lesbian community". Are many of us depressed that there is so much "butch flight" goin' on these days? Yes, especially those of us who love butch lesbians. Do many femmes resent elements of the transmale community who DEMAND that a femme lesbian stop refering to herself as a lesbian if her partner transitions? (As in, "He's a man now. Stop feminizing him by saying you're a lesbian. Yes, you've been a lesbian for 20 years, but you're a straight woman now. Respect his gender.") You bet.

And, yes, there are a few lesbians who don't consider transmen as women anymore. Often these are the same women who didn't accept transwomen into the dyke community either. Big Whoop.

The NYT just wants a juicy story inside the lives of people it perceives to be sexual deviants. Load of GD hipster bullshit.