Fairfax, VA, USA. Those of us who live in a democracy have much to be proud of, given the thuggish record of authoritarian regimes. But every democracy requires continuous engagement with securing liberty and extending the benefits to all of its citizens.

That is, if and when reason is allowed to prevail. Our society cultivates immaturity and a superficial intellectual engagement with issues. As it happens, we live in an age when immature behavior is rewarded, not penalized, and the deliberate distortion of opposing views becomes internalized and substituted for the truth.

The difficulties we experience when making the case for attention to the medical and legal needs of people born transsexual occurs within a punishing context stacked against any challenge to the status quo. That stack of givens originates from a cross-section of social and political elements. It includes the cynical manipulations of politicians on the Left and Right, the derisive and all-too-familiar dismissals from transgender activists, and — unhappily — silly conflicts cooked up by people born transsexual who haplessly turn on each other to prove who is the least transgender of all.

Clutching Old Dispensations

When we aggregate into groups, decisions must be made by individuals with limited knowledge, whether of facts or options. The accurate and timely exchange of information is crucial to the formation of a common base of fact to ensure informed and rational decision-making. However, groups that demand a rigid ideological view to qualify for membership make collective choices that are the result of pre-qualified interactions among many partially — and wrongly — informed participants that are impervious to facts.

This is a classic example of the human tendency to clutch old dispensations and reduce public debate to a kind of cultural doggerel: prepping an ox to be gored in the name of reminted traditional or even radical values (provided the ox belongs to someone else). No wonder good manners have deteriorated to the level of a bad television sitcom where the characters avoid intimacy, yell, and slam doors, aching for the deus ex machina to hoist them out of their self-made dilemmas. 

The Predation of Transgender Ideology

One part of the problem derives from insistence by TG activists that all of us are part of their group whether we like it or not. Any deviation from TG group norms is therefore viewed as separatist and irrational. The misplaced movement rhetoric is intellectually empty and very annoying, but no surprise given the prolonged adolescent behavior that hides under pedantic vocabulary. The atmospherics remind me of snooty high school cliques that enforce in-group mediocrity to avoid the challenge of growing up.

Early on, we at TS-Si were open to building meaningful coalitions founded on mutual respect to advance key issues in common without sacrificing principle. However, we long ago found the price of admission is way too high: we must validate the transgender without reciprocation.

This sort of thing fuels suspicions among TS folk who resist TG inclusion. Could the near-obsessive behavior of so many TG adherents have some cause beyond mere coalition-building? The TS folk suspect a darker motive is afoot, such as recruitment into causes with values they do not share (pick one: political sympathies, attitudes about family life, religion, differing opinions on equal rights, and so on).

And that is trying to see a wholly rational basis for the antipathy.

Now, I do not argue that "understanding of TG positions" is an easy task. There are important policy matters at stake, but TG activists commonly avoid rational argument and substitute invective for discussion. That leaves the heavy lifting to others. The effort is way too disheartening for serious consideration if the only outcome is a continuous validation of transgenderism.

Some people born transsexual persist in their coalition-building and I wish them well — provided they do not undermine the health and security of transsexuals for the sake of their ego-driven process.

Medical Necessity & The Leaking Umbrella

We have basic objections to linking the transsexual birth condition to both GLB and the "T" in GLBT.

• Linking up transsexualism to GLB reduces our birth condition to a matter of sexual orientation. Most of us are heterosexual anyway, a fact that becomes even more apparent among the post-op population. Some — as with Lisa and me — are in same-sex relationships. Many of us have families, work responsibilities, and so forth. In other words, we have lives.
  
  None of that means a thing when considering the rights of Gays and lesbians. We fully support equal rights for all, but sexual orientation is an entirely separate matter from transsexualism.
  
  
• Transgender activists have promoted a situation where TGs, policy makers and others typically assert that surgical correction is an option for a person born TS/HBS.
  
  Such pseudoscientific approaches to public policy are unscientific denials that turn policy makers away from our underlying medical reality. It has the consequent effect of characterizing corrective surgery as elective, merely cosmetic and not reconstructive. To make matters worse, some TGs go around claiming to be transsexual (the bogus non-ops).
  
  Ordinarily, we have no position on private belief systems unless they become the basis for destructive public policy.
  
  In this case, TG activists obstruct and people die.

All of this has resulted in a very tense situation that stymies initiatives to obtain research attention for TS/HBS folks, improve medical practices, secure legal protection, and provide a variety of needed social services.

Sometimes, distinctions make a difference. One of the fundamental reasons for identifying the transsexual population is to ensure proper medical care. People who obscure the differing medical needs of transssexuals do so at the peril of flawed outcomes for transsexual patients. As long as the surgery as option canard persist, it increases the difficulty of getting safe and sufficient regimens in place for hormones and surgery. This is particularly true of the vulnerable poor and dispossessed.

Mirror, Mirror: Who Is Least Transgender Of All?

Another belligerent debate is underway as various people who claim to be born transsexual assess who is and is not a transgender person. By extension, they judge the content of blogs, websites, news outlets, and more in terms of the perceived aid and comfort given to the transgender opposition. (For most, read transgender enemy.)

The skepticism and suspicion is born of frustration from communicating with hostile transgender activists who spread mis- and disinformation about transsexualism. Way too many TGs are in the habit of trolling the internet, trashing discussions, and manipulating information to fortify their biases.

Scanning the internet, I often find transsexuals taking ill-advised positions that were not well considered in the first place. The displayed attitude of the most energetic of TS/HBS zealots reveals a lack of in-depth consideration of the issues. By not carefully thinking through the situation, then just firing off rants and screeds when provoked, we wind up with representation that does far more harm than good. Saying that does not imply we should supinely put up with the TG nonsense directed at TS/HBS people, but it does argue for a calmer and more measured approach.

Too often, some TS/HBS adherents approach the problem with a set of pre-conceived notions that condition any attempt at understanding the situation of particular TGs. This is particularly true when the discussion is muddied by disagreements over such unrelated issues as abortion, age of transition, parenthood, employment, and equal rights without regard to sexual orientation.

So now many on the transsexual/HBS side have resorted to the means and methods of their traditional TG opponents and turned on each other. They accuse people of being transgender (or running a TG website) in their search for punishable apostasy. Sometimes, the accusations are based on no more than expressing common humanity with transgender individuals.

It escalates from there: TS-Si was accused of being transgender and supporting the GLBT umbrella because we exhibited at Pride in Washington, DC and transgender people were in attendance at the same event. This took on special urgency for the critics because of participation by gay and lesbian people. It hardly mattered that we were there to help counterbalance TG propaganda. Our support for gay rights, exploited sex workers out in the street, and others in need is enough to misrepresent us as TG. Wrong.

Civil Rights & Civic Intolerance

This intolerant trend has been in evidence for a long time, of course, but reached a particularly savage intensity in recent months. This matters first of all because it is wrong. Beyond that, it is counter-productive. And now, weary me, it has descended to the level of terminal boredom with the whole lot.

On behalf of TS-Si and myself, I can say without qualification that we support the civil rights of all people, without regard to class, ethnic origin, sex, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or any other arbitrary criterion. We implement our Mission Statement without deference to phobias and bigotries. I also can say that we are not a transgender organization, nor does our website engage in either transgender identification or sociopolitics. But we do recognize the human dimension and sympathize with those who are troubled — for any reason.

We receive a lot of correspondence — mostly routine and respectful — but some few folks have embraced the dark side of classist, racist, and homophobic bigotry. Some of our most offensive correspondence comes from post-ops who unfailingly target the straight male TGs as fetishists, sexual deviants, and perverts. Sometimes, the whole group of ordinary transgenders get painted with that brush, even those who are merely "masculine" females or "feminine" males trying to make their way through life.

We do not side with bigots of any kind, nor do we characterize the TG opposition as "deviants/perverts". And we very certainly do not endorse any of the destructive phobias. To the contrary, we step up and oppose bigots whenever and wherever they appear.

And our columnists, oh wow. Alternative viewpoints, even if only a matter of nuance or style, are punished by insecure transsexuals who demand their own recognition while engaging in bullying rhetoric against those with whom they disagree or mischaracterize. The contradiction eludes their ken. And if there really is some basis for disagreement, merely providing a reasoned riposte isn't enough. Some people with a transsexual history seem hell bent on demonstrating their adolescent resentment of adult conversation.

We can and do publish dissenting views without necessarily agreeing with them, just as we can read with comprehension and respect the dissenter, even in disagreement.

The misbehavior of spiteful critics strains my equanimity. Well, we will not stop, nor will I pause and wipe the tears of every small-brained purveyor of immature nonsense, whether they be transgender or transsexual. We aren't here to win any awards, take any abuse, or focus attention on ourselves. What matters to us are the people who matter: individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, smoothing the way toward surgical correction.

I have no particular interest in people who demonstrate they have no brains at all.   

Ms. Sharon Gaughan is the Co-Founder, VP, and Executive Director of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as the Managing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website.  Ms. Gaughan's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.

 

Sharon welcomes your comments. You can use the public form below or send private correspondence via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.

Add this page to your favorite social bookmarking websites.

To create link towards this article on your website,
copy and paste the text below in your page.

<style type="text/css"><!--.quote {width:400px; padding: 6px; border: solid 1px #456B8F; font: 11px helvetica, verdana, sans-serif; color: #222222; background-color: #ffffff}.quote a {font: 13px arial, serif; color: #003399; text-decoration: underline}.quote a:hover {color: #FF9900; }//--></style><div style="float:left;padding:5px;"><img src="http://ts-si.org/images/stories/CautionThinIce.jpg" width="125" alt="" /></div><div class="quote"><a href="http://www.ts-si.org/looking-glass/20167-skating-across-this-immature-age" target="_blank">Skating Across This Immature Age</a><br />Monday, 28 September 2009<div align="right" style="width:400px"><p style="text-align:right;"><a href="http://www.ts-si.org/" target="_blank">TS-Si.org</a></p></div></div>

Preview :

Skating Across This Immature Age
Monday, 28 September 2009

TS-Si.org

Comments (16)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

You go girl, I moved on to my real life (husband, house,

28 September 2009     

I moved on to my real life (husband, house, kids, car, mortgage), but I keep track of goings on. It seems to me that too many post-operative transsexuals ought to know better. Instead, some of us set really bad examples. I would have punished my children for some of the crudities I see flung at other people. This web site is a national resource. I like your example - be a grown up and get on with it. Sharon, you probably don't remember me and the bad times in Chicago, but I sure remember you. You were so kind to all of us twenty years ago it saved my life. I only know of you now through this wonderful web site. I am so pleased and happy for you. Please stay online - we need you. And please give Kelly M my love. I cried when I read her article.

Karen Wright

Thank you, Karen, Good to hear from you again. I am so g

28 September 2009     

Good to hear from you again. I am so glad you are well and living your life. I have a deep down positive belief in people. We may go through hard times, but the human spirit prevails. I think in time, we will reach equilibrium and find a better way. It will happen in time, but it will take time. If you are still in touch with any of the ladies, please send my Love.
Sharon S. Gaughan

Thin Ice - Identity Politics - Didimo?, Kiaora Sharon Y

28 September 2009     

Kiaora Sharon Your assessment is, as ever, wise. There are ongoing research issues that you are aware of, whereas I am not. Nor would I necessarily understand the biological implications if I were aware of them. What I can see is that turning every aspect of this discourse into an 'identity' issue contributes significantly to the erasure of biological diversity. Once 'self identification' is given precedence over and above biology: once anyone who claims that 'self identification' has the same status as the possession of the variation, has that claim accepted, then the problems begin. Acceptance of the claim endows 'speaking rights' apropos the biological variation without the actual or 'real' experience of those who share the variation. It is inevitable that the stories of the self-identifiers will be different from the variants. The ingredients are: 1. The existence of the biological 'glitch'. 2. The existence of self-identifiers. 3. A discourse that heavily discounts the influence of biology and overvalues self-identification. 4. A psychological/sexological/theory context that reinforces ingredient 3. I throw this assessment open to TS-SI and its readership for discussion. To me it seems that identity politics are to biological diversity in human beings as didimo is to biological diversity in your local waterway.

Joanne

..., Nice article. I think the way we often behave with

28 September 2009     

Nice article. I think the way we often behave with each other and toward transgender people on the internet is perhaps the best argument for keeping us in the DSM.
dianakat

Rock Snot?, Joanne, kore rawa e rawaka te reo kotahi. T�

28 September 2009     

Joanne, kore rawa e rawaka te reo kotahi. Tēnā koa*, kōrero mai anō. Do you mean Didymosphenia geminata? If so, it is he tirohanga ki tuawhakarere. Kia mākona!
Sharon S. Gaughan

Joanne, so what you are saying is ......, Joanne, So wh

28 September 2009     

Joanne, So what you are saying is that gender identity is the ugly sludge at the bottom that threatens to choke out everything else, resulting in an environment that is both lifeless and ill smelling. I's certain that the previous sentence would have sounded better in Maori but, alas, the Christian Brothers demanded I take three years of classical Latin.
Lisa Thompson

Where did I leave my windex?, An extremely lucid and bal

28 September 2009     

An extremely lucid and balanced accounting of the current state of affairs, Sharon...thank you very much. We (TS/HBS folks) really are no different in our cumulative or individual personalities from the general populace at large. That we all share a common birth anomaly seems to have precious little significance when struggling against the irresistible pull of our biases. Some of us wear rose-colored glasses, others blinders. Some of us harbor deeply held beliefs that horrify others. Where some of us are open to the human condition (in all its manifestations) and righting wrongs, others of us can focus on nothing but our own plight (real or imagined) and cannot see past our immediate horizon. The cohesive-ness of a transsexual agenda (if there is, indeed, such a thing) looks pretty fractured and tentative when held up to the light of scrutiny. Your very articulate and timely 'finger-wagging, frown-wearing, arms-akimbo' admonishment was long overdue; you are most worthy of the task and have shown once again your flair for fairness. I hope the fact that your points were extremely relevant, informative, and (hopefully) thought-provoking are not lost. We can all carry your momentum forward and learn something valuable in the process, namely the twin arts of listening and thinking - preferrably before speaking. Lest we end up stockpiling rocks, let's not forget about this glass house we live in. Now where the heck did I leave my windex?

Kelly

Rock Snot, ROFL Sharon You wrote: Didymosphenia geminat

29 September 2009     

ROFL Sharon You wrote: Didymosphenia geminata? If so, it is he tirohanga ki tuawhakarere. Kia mākona! Not even tangata whenua o Aotearoa, Sharon. I believe its a recent import from your great nation Teno Kotu Katoa Lisa. Those damned Christian Brothers (plus a few others) did the same thing over here too. Do you suppose it was the very same ones?
Joanne

Be glad, it wasn't Kudzu (which we got from Japan)..

29 September 2009     

it wasn't Kudzu (which we got from Japan)..
Sharon S. Gaughan

..., I'll simply say this: This has to be one of the si

30 September 2009     

I'll simply say this: This has to be one of the single best opinion pieces I've ever seen on this site. I am in absolute and total agreement. Kudos
Cathryn

Note to readers, This column, Skating Across This Immatu

02 October 2009     

This column, Skating Across This Immature Age, is mentioned in a new entry at Cassandraspeaks. The piece is by guest author Leigh Smith, entitled Are we Just Plain Wrong?
Sharon S. Gaughan

Ms, Hi Sharon You wrote: Be Grateful it wasn't Kudzu

02 October 2009     

Hi Sharon You wrote: Be Grateful it wasn't Kudzu (which we got from Japan).. Well, We sent you John Money ... I guess you've still got a legitimate grudge, rock snot, or no rock snot!
Joanne

Skating on thin ice!

05 October 2009     

A few women who have become tired of being the subject of derision and misrepresentation have taken to speaking back against those who would claim, whether through fantasy or desire, to be like like us. To make our presence felt in the front rooms of those who play games and call into question the reality of a condition we are born with and they were not. I have written about these issues and this on line magazine has been gracious enough to publish what I have written. Something I hope will continue. In facing down our critics some of us have got into dialogue that was not our intention to enter. We have visited on line journals where the genuine difference of transsexual compared to transgender has been challenged and answered that challenge with clear statements that we are women simply women who were born with a condition and are not gripped by some psychological sexual fantasy. We have said repeatedly that we hate no one and that we simply seek to separate transsexual from the TG domination and umbrella. For making that statement and ones like it we have been described as, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, liars and a great many more quite unpleasant things. Those who do know me will understand that I am in fact none of those things. So instead of being silent and lying meekly down or staying silent we have fought back and will continue to do so. Perhaps tempers have become frayed when called these names. We have taken on board what Sharon has said here and will moderate our tone but it will not prevent us from speaking out against those who are attempting you obliterate and deny our existance. I wrote about "Transsexual War Of Independence" because I really believe we are in the midst of a fight for our identity, one of genuine women and men. Clement Atlee returned from Berlin In 1939 declaring "peace in our time" months later Hitlers Nazis invaded Poland and so began World War II. The time for appeasement has long since past, it has not worked. I say that now is the time we must establish a separate identity for all women and men who were born with this condition to unite and tell transgender you will not any longer be allowed to use us as justifiation for your existance. We are not going to sit back and let them continue to let TG dogma turn our truth to lies. We recoginise that TG has a right to exist but it will not be at our expense. In my opinion TS Si has done so much to reflect positively the identity of transsexuals and I respect Sharon and lisa and support your work in this magazine wholeheartedly. You are a much needed media and source of scientific information. We are simply attempting to take our message to where it will be heard and felt at it's most powerful.

evangelina

Evangelina, You are welcome here, of course you are. As

05 October 2009     

You are welcome here, of course you are. As it happens, I addressed many of your concerns in the discussion that accompanies "eScience: Semantic Web Platforms for Scientific Collaboration". In the comment thread to that article, "Kelly" made a wonderful reference to The Umbrella Wars. The phrase stuck in my head, as it rings so true without overweening self-importance. There, I touched on our own 20+ year struggle. I personally had seen this happen for many years, both in the support groups and online. Various groups of cross-dressers and transvestites had become accustomed to identifying transsexual venues, moving right in, and taking over. It was very much a male-domination thing - and very ignorant. We had seen many people with a transsexual history leave the scene out of disgust. Back when we came online with the predecessor to TS-Si.org, we declared freedom from transgenderism and aforementioned attempts at domination. This was not welcome among the various groups of cross-dressers and transvestites who had become accustomed to moving right in and taking over. We arrived with a positive message, reinforced by an ever-improving technical infrastructure. In parallel, the coincident emergence of convenient and standardized blog technology meant that other people like us could establish outposts insulated from TG takeover attempts. This also was a period when the full emergence of "non-op" justifications became widely disseminated. Some of this, of course, comes from naïve pre-ops still in their process. They grew up in those TG-dominated support groups I mentioned earlier that enabled TGs to hide behind our skirts. It is a crass TG manipulation of the innocent. The fallout has been terrible as genuine transsexual people extended their transitions to the breaking point. We have had a number of opinion columns that really exercised the TG activist critics, none more so than my piece in 2006, "What About Non-op Transsexuals? A No-op Notion". Most of the public comments were so bad we could not publish them at all, while even more trash came at us in the form of spam and outright attacks on our server. Something similar happened when we published "Drinking The Transgender Kool-aid®" by Lisa Thompson in 2007. Both columns are showing their age and may require some sprucing up, but still convey the essence of many disagreements between us and the TGs. We also still get some really nasty stuff over the transom over those pieces and others (most notably, some our "guest" columns). We shrug it off. But behind the opinion essays - and even before the website - there has been a working organization, located in Washington, DC, that has taken the message to the halls of legislative and executive power, public and private funding sources for research, the researchers themselves, and the public. Please remember: both Lisa and I transitioned in place, in highly visible positions, at a time and place when it didn't make the public prints (thank goodness), but did stir the pot. We continue this work. There are many roads to our collective goal. I am often taken aback by statements that seem to imply that there is one true path. Whether intended or not, the implication is that differing tactical approaches to the same strategic goal are mutually exclusive. I think not. We are very open to facilitating others because we recognize the enormity of the endeavor and the inherent limitations of any one approach, including ours. I will turn 68 soon; I never dreamed when I sprang off my own initial outrage so many years ago that I would still be here, still doing the work. Perhaps it is Kismet.

Sharon S. Gaughan

Loving wrapped in plain common sense, Bravo author! You

06 November 2009     

Bravo author! You made my day.
Anonymous

Anon, Thank you for your kind comment.

06 November 2009     

Thank you for your kind comment.
Sharon S. Guaghan

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | larger

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment