This is a comment submitted to my blog this morning on my post discussing my daughter’s desistance from her prior trans identification:
I’m forty. I came out to my parents at nineteen, from an Ivy League school. They took the same hard line you did. Now I’m a happy guy, on T, having shoveled off those gross chest tumors and gotten rid of the disgusting babymaking internals. The rape gash is no more; I happily penetrate my feminine, gay-leaning bi boyfriend of seven years with the genital I should have had at birth. And my parents? I haven’t spoken to them in years, and I couldn’t care less. Do you want your kid to feel like me? All because you want them to accept something that makes them miserable? If you really are a radfem, you should accept reality: celebrating female biology is like celebrating cancer. Read Firestone and Dworkin.
Regular readers know I don’t generally provide a platform for hateful and abusive argument in my comment sections. But on occasion, I do believe it’s instructive to highlight the self-hatred and vitriol that some people feel compelled to hurl at parents like me; parents who question whether the “community” their kids are thinking of joining is actually a healthy neighborhood.
- Does this “happy guy” think this spittle-flecked rant makes a parent like me feel guilty for wanting to protect my daughter from falling into a cesspit like this?
- Do gender therapists have any idea they enable a person like this to “transition” to a “man” who hates women to this extent?
- What happened to this woman that would make her detest herself so much that she would not only label her own amputated and re-purposed body parts as a “rape gash” and “chest tumors,” but also feel compelled to send filth like this to the parent of a teenager who actually decided on her own not to continue down the path of self-loathing?
- Why would a stranger, reading about a teen girl who has begun to accept her whole self, become filled with such venom?
- Why wouldn’t someone who actually cares about “trans” people celebrate a teenager who won’t have to endure years of injections and surgeries? It would be like a cancer patient becoming enraged when another patient goes into remission.
- What makes a stranger think that a mother who refuses to march in lockstep with the propaganda spewed by a close-minded cult is equivalent to somehow forcing her child to change?
- Is not speaking to one’s parents for decades and feeling indifferent about that supposed to be some indicator of mental health and a fulfilling life?
- Is mentioning they came from an “Ivy League school” supposed to somehow rationalize the crude and offensive words they want to assault me with?
- And a bit of irony: Telling me to go read books by feminist authors who pointed out the exact same extreme misogyny this “man” is spouting is proof of—what? Certainly not that celebrating female biology is “cancer.” What it is, is proof that the depth of self hatred women like this commenter experience, their extreme dysphoria, ought to merit serious attention from a psychologist.
- Does anyone reading this honestly think that hormones and surgery were the solution to this person’s troubles?
That a female could dissociate from her own body to the extent of proudly wearing the most hateful misogyny as a badge of honor should cause a lot of soul searching amongst those who purport to care about women with gender dysphoria.
Gender specialists? Are we to understand that hating femaleness to this degree is what constitutes manhood? Or a cure for dysphoria?
Because, trust me: although it is an extreme exemplar, this isn’t the first comment like this I’ve received. And it won’t be the last.
It’s interesting, in a truly appalling way, that both sides of the trans coin express a deep and abiding hatred of women. FtT loathe themselves, while MtT deride adult females as not doing “woman” right, or even as well as MtTs do. I would say that transmania is misogynistic at its core. That the level of self loathing expressed by this very sad, mutilated woman, is a feature of transmania, indeed, may even be its purpose in patriarchy..
I think that it is also interesting that the great majority of violence against transwomen and transmen is committed by men. Yet, ironically, it is women who are asked to provide safe restrooms etc. to the transgender community and it is women who are targeted and harassed when they express their resistance or unwillingness to give up their privacy and rare space. But who speaks out to ask men to end the violence against women (both transgender or otherwise?)
We hear so much about the murders of transwomen and transmen on the Transgender Day of Remembrance or during impassioned talks to promote the rights of Transgedner people , but the discussions of transphobia and transbashing are most often directed at women are rarely (if ever) directed at men – though it is well documented that men are responsible for the very great majority of violence, marginalization, discrimination and harassment toward the transgender community.
And so, in this way too – women are blamed and hated …
Yes, trans ideology is misogynistic to its very core, and from every conceivable angle. Why is this acceptable?
This woman wasn’t talking about you or your daughter. She was just expressing her pain. I’ve never thought of my vagina as a “rape gash.” She must be very traumatized. It’s very sad to see, and I wish her well.
Yes, I also thought something terrible must’ve happened to her. I am most upset about the activists and “gender therapists” who seem more interested in pushing transition than really helping a person like this.
Agreed – and what is more complicated is that now Gender Therapists and other medical providers may feel more apprehensive about asking questions regarding the root of a persons’ dysphoria out of fear that they will be accused of questioning a child’s gender identity (Leelah’s law guidelines) or that they are invalidating the persons’ experience of gender and leaning toward “conversion therapy.”
This is horrendous. I’m afraid I don’t have sympathy for this person. Clearly they’re very conflicted/confused about who and what they are. As well as a raging MRA type misogynist. And yeah that probably came out of something bad, but this kind of behavior, no. The most traumatized person knows they’re not supposed to behave this way. This person was attempting to be intentionally hurtful towards you, fourth wave, because you talked about something they didn’t like. Noticeably it was about your daughter desisting. Not as far as we know prompted by all the critiques you make of the trans process including the medical practitioners.
The bit about Dworkin and Firestone comparing the female body to cancer has got me scratching my head. Does this person think that’s what they actually said? And if so does she think it likely that radical feminists would be super anti-the female body? Or is this person just lying and hoping to make you angry by taking down what she presumes to be Your Gods. Arrogating Dworkin and Firestone to the world of this female misogynist: “D&F totally agree with me and they hate you!” I guess so. So really not worth any further thought.
Wow! “Spew” is the word that comes to mind. You can almost feel the hatred, the bitterness. She may have aimed it at you, but I agree, it sounds like a lot of self-hatred. I think “happy” is likely not a very apt self-description. Unfortunately, she doesn’t sound like she is in a healthy mental state and shouldn’t be giving anyone advice.
Sorry that you are the target of these comments!
Reblogged this on Stop Trans Chauvinism.
Here’s my 2 cents. I think this is not a “former” woman’s authentic self-hatred. I don’t believe an FTM or any other woman wrote this.
This reads to me like a male (born male) troll’s handiwork. The repulsion at women’s bodies and biology is just classic male misogyny.
Women’s sexual traits as disgusting deformities of the inferior sex, which still, to his horror, fascinate him. Check!
It struck me as slightly odd too. There’s something weird about it. It’s not just the intense shame and scorn for her body being communicated.
Exactly. There’s not just shame here. There’s hatred. Deep-seated hatred of women. Misogyny.
FWIW the only people I’ve ever heard refer to women’s genitals as a “gash” are gay men.
I agree with this. I have met quite a few FtM trans men, and I have never heard them refer to women this way. The most I’ve heard in this manner is a friend of mine who had her breasts removed as they felt “alien” and described them as “two fatty lumps “. But honestly, in my experience, trans men rarely have such scathing, vile, horrendous hatred for women. I suppose it’s possible, but I’ve never heard it or seen it. Not even on Twitter or social media.
This sounds like the speech of a biological man.
OK, I’ve barely read Dworkin and I’ve never read Firestone, but I’ve read someone else quote Firestone where she seemed to be really gung-ho about the idea of growing babies in tanks. If that’s representative of her general line of thinking, it seems to me that Firestone wasn’t too enamored of women’s anatomy and women’s reproductive function. Hopefully I’m wrong and she changed her mind later. Yes, it’s shitty the way men use us as brood mares, but that’s just them warping and twisting nature. There isn’t actually anything wrong with women having our own damn kids, as long as we decide fully under our own power that that’s what we desire to do.
(Not that kids are damned, I’m just throwing in a little four-letter emphasis.)
Sooooo yeah. Maybe our friend here read that bit too and went, “A-ha!” I’m curious which part of Dworkin set her off, though.
“OK, I’ve barely read Dworkin and I’ve never read Firestone, but I’ve read someone else quote Firestone where she seemed to be really gung-ho about the idea of growing babies in tanks. If that’s representative of her general line of thinking, it seems to me that Firestone wasn’t too enamored of women’s anatomy and women’s reproductive function.”
I am not very enamored of the idea of growing babies inside my body, what with the dangers to health and all that. Baby-growing tanks, if possible, would be a nice way to prevent health issues. I’d still not talk about female biology in that way. So, even if Firestone wrote that, it does not follow that she agrees with this commenter.
Women need female anatomy for other things than giving birth. Removing the reproductive organs messes with the whole hormonal balance of the body.
Breasts are great, and vaginas are not “rape-gashes” – if anything, penises are rape-tools. It is men who use penises to rape. Vaginas have zero to do with it. Men rape other men, too.
I wonder if this person realizes that Shulamith Firestone was clinically insane?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/15/130415fa_fact_faludi?currentPage=all
If they do – do they consider that a bug, or a feature?
Nietzsche was too and died of sphyllis, lots of clinically insane men lauded as great and innovative thinkers
All I can say is that this person must have suffered a lot of trauma that has not been dealt with. Her self hatred and misogyny, which we don’t know the reason for, but which clearly led her to ‘transition’, will still be there under the surface, constantly ticking away ready to surface again if ”triggered”. Unfortunately, you were in the firing line for her projection this time.
Why aren’t psychotherapists saying to these people that they will need to do a lot of work to get to the root of their problems? If ever there was needed an argument for ”gate-keeping” and against ”self-determination” then people like this are surely it.
I read this response, and like most of you, the sense of her self-hatred at first overwhelms. What happens to so many to make them dissociate from bodies that, despite dualistic Western imaginings, are inseparable from their minds? Obviously, causality varies, but one does wonder: what 40 year old adult calls a vagina a “rape gash” aside from a rapist or the raped? If this presentation is merely the adoption of a male personae, it is strikingly adolescent –obviously intended to offend –in its feigned indifference towards that which any mature person would consider to be serious life circumstances: “shoveled off”; “gross“; “couldn’t care less.” One wonders whom she’s trying to convince. Is it she, herself, or the actual adolescents who frequent the Reddit sub whence she came? I suspect it is both.
Altogether, I think, this is not about 4th Wave or her daughter at all. It is, as Purplesagefem said, about her own pain and her attempt to justify her own decision and its resulting social and physical consequences after having confronted the reality of one who has faced similar circumstances and appears to have chosen differently. Regardless of the body mods and the hormones and the false bravado, she will always be aware of her possession of the “cancer” of “female biology” and she will always wonder if others recognize it, as well. It is, after all, twenty years later and she still feels the need to denigrate the sex which she has attempted to opt out of. This is not a sign of adjustment or integration or the behavior of “a happy guy.” How much better it would have been had she received the care that she needed to resolve the source of her dissociation and the cause of her current pain.
“what 40 year old adult calls a vagina a “rape gash” aside from a rapist or the raped?”
Right ? It’s odd language. Then again maybe on second thought it’s not that odd, it goes with the trans* view that women are fuck objects. If you are a man who was raped as a child, then you must be a woman and naturally must feel like you have a rape gash. If you are a woman who was raped as a child and doesn’t want to acknowledge it, well you have to say that you’re not a woman in order to say that you’re not a fuck object.
Neither Dworkin nor Firestone said anything close to “female biology is a cancer.” That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Accepting reality means accepting the body you are born in regardless if you “fit in” with what male defined gender roles say you should. This is one of the worst cases of internalized misogyny I’ve ever seen (providing this is actually a transman and not just another abusive MRA getting off on trolling feminist blogs).
Doesn’t read like a “happy” anyone to me. At all.
As for “do you want your kid to feel like me?” Erm … do I want my kid to think that posting on blogs telling strangers about their sex habits is a productive endeavor? Trying to impress readers with the Ivy League pedigree (subtext: I’m So Much Smarter Than You)? Trying to impress/scare with how much they hate their parents? No, I do not.
Why do we need to know how/who this person “penetrates?” In addition to all the other “kind” sharing going on here?
Any subculture where any of this digital behavior is considered a happy/healthy response is not a subculture where I would want any kid of mine, male or female, hanging out.
Good Lord. The world is in such a mess. I’d really prefer that my kids would have enough emotional energy to try to do something positive out there.
If this person is for real, then yeah, this level of bodily dissociation is a sad thing.
OTOH, if this person is out there enjoying watching us all in a flurry over their behavior? Eh. Whatever. Enjoy, person. Merry Christmas. sigh.
While it’s possible this comment came from a man pretending to be a trans-identified female, I happen to know the lair where this individual emerged from. It’s an online community of trans-identified people specifically established to jeer at and harass anyone who questions ANYTHING about transgenderism. They submitted another, equally misogynistic comment which I didn’t publish here.
It’s the Internet, so you never know who someone *really* is. Unfortunately, though, I’ve heard close to this level of self-hatred elsewhere, even (previously) from my own kid. And I’ve seen plenty of online forums where natal females who identify as trans gather to egg each other on in denigrating everything about the female anatomy. I know all trans-identified females don’t spew this kind of misogynistic vitriol. But as several commenters here have noted, a woman who has been abused or otherwise traumatized might be more likely to angrily reject her own body as a defense mechanism against more pain.
I didn’t know that. How sad this is.
Sick.
WHAT THE FUCK “rape gash”? This person should not be allowed within 100 feet of any (other) woman, their hatred of women sounds outright dangerous.