Critical Thinking, Questioning and Feminism do NOT equal "hate"!

Received (as you can see) this comment last night, rather than release it to where it was posted, I felt it more important to place it in a weekend discussion post.

This comment highlights what has long been the response by the general trans community towards anyone applying critical thinking to trans ideology. Under the general trans ideology and those that subscribe to it, like any cult you either drink the kool aid or GTFO! I have been painted as someone who is "close minded" for raising questions, spotlighting truths and injecting feminism into trans ideology, while most (not all) trans and trans minded are completely closed to even those within their ranks that raise similar questions or have similar concerns!

And lest we forget to mention those who have changed their minds about transition or de-transitioned, the trans community has and does attack these folks first and reject them outright second! As large as the trans community is, there isnt a single space created that supports those within the trans community to change their minds, not one! Those that change their minds are treated like convicted pedophiles by other trans folks, they are despised and not wanted in trans spaces, real or online. The are put on a "fake trans" list and warned from associating with for fear they cause other trans folks to question their trans position.

The only "hate" I've seen springs from the most insecure among the trans community, unfortunately these are the most vocal. The last I checked this isnt a fucking contest, there are no winners when we all suffer under patriarchy and its misogynistic systems. That some trans folks are open minded enough to recognize that is a good thing, that they are being attacked for that recognition is bloody fucking awful!
 
When you stop having questions, you stop growing as a human being, when you no longer grow as a person, you are nothing more than a corpse with a fucking heartbeat.

This is an open comment post btw.

dirt

Why I Blog

There seems much confusion about what exactly it is I actually blog about and why. I'm reminded of Plath's last interview regarding her work where she said she "cannot sympathize with these cries from the heart that informed by nothing except a needle or a knife or whatever it is". There is a failure, like Plath so beautifully noted about the confessionalists, a failure to not only not recognize the big picture, but a failure to even look for it! This blog IS about the big picture, it IS about the view from a hill and it IS about seeing the forest as well as the fucking trees!

I do not blog because I am Butch, I do not blog because there is some correlation between Butch and transmen, there is none. I blog because I am female, female in a world that has historically systematically worked to put things into place that ensure I think that I am nothing, ensure that I despise myself, ensure that I secretly or not, hate other women, ensure males stay in power, ensure I believe females have no power, ensure I believe females beyond their vagina's or other orifices for a stiff penis have no worth, ensure I do not question male authorities or men in general, ensure I police women who do question men and male authority...and the list goes on and on and on.

Feminist in the last 50 years have covered many needed areas, areas regarding equality in jobs, schools, colleges, areas of race and religion, areas of sexuality, areas both large and small. But the area of queer theory (and I stress theory), postmodernism and antiessentialism's bastard child, a child that is single handedly responsible for hyper femininity and its enforcement on women and now even female children, responsible for the eradication of Lesbian Studies, responsible for Womens Studies being on the endangered species list, responsible for malecentrism and heteropatriarchy in Butch/Femme spaces, responsible for trans trenders, responsible for transmen and transwomen in women's colleges, responsible for helping to maintain strict gender norms, again and the list goes on and on and on. Queer Theory is the biggest and worse backlash against feminism since before feminism began! This blog dares to challenge queer theory in all its forms, including the area of "transition", an area that feminism hasnt had the guts to challenge.

Due to aggressive/slanderous and sometimes violent (as you have seen here) male tactics, feminist/lesbians rarely challenge the trans community. This is an area that has suffered from a serious lack of feminist/lesbian critical thinking as a result of trans repercussions or fear of trans repercussions. I probably have a dozen and a half female friends who believe they must keep their friendship with me a secret only because they fear if they didnt they might lose their PC driven academic jobs. Why? Because I do dare to challenge the misogyny that informs trans development and trans "treatment" from the male medical machine as well as trans ideology!

The brutal attempt to medically fashion a male or a female into an unnatural female or male is misogyny made real, this blog will continue to challenge and truth tell in hopes to spare just one female from the level of self hatred needed to transition, come what may.

dirt

Today's Poll-The Advancement of Lesbian Rights/Causes

If you would like to add a comment regarding today's Poll topic, you can do so here.

Happy Friday Everyone and Hope none of you are too stressed for the holiday!

dirt

Hate Speech, Slander and Ignorance from Trans Australia

Seems Trans Australia is trying to utilize FaceBook to have my blog "removed" from Blogger by staging an "event" to "lets get dirt's transphobia banned". Not only is this group ignorant of what my blog actually espouses, they are also quite ignorant of US laws and the First Amendment. Australians, I suggest you brush up on your US history! And yes, I did report this hate group to Blogger so that Blogger is fully aware of this hate group's malecentric silencing tactics. If you would like to report this hate group to FaceBook, email me and I will link you.

dirt

Edit to add-seems they are employing LiveJournal to spread their hate as well.

ps Please do not judge all trans people by this ignorance and hate.

The Male Medical Machine aka G O D ( a series)

Females have long since and continue to be portrayed as the "weaker sex", weaker both mentally and physically. Because of the portrayed mental weakness, women far out number (past and present) male mental patients in mental facilities and those who seek help out-patiently. Mental illness/weakness attributed to women has also historical been utilized to keep men in power and hold women powerless. This has been accomplished through mental confinement, mental torture and barbaric surgeries. An example from a single mental facility is the Stockton State Hospital in California:

Stockton State Hospital, originally called the California Asylum for the Insane, was built in the 1850s at Stockton, eighty miles east of San Francisco, and by 1950 housed over four thousand patients. It was the first state hospital in California to perform a lobotomy and between March 1947 and June 1954 a total of 232 patients were operated on.

The patients operated on at Stockton ranged in age from 19 to 88. Nearly eighty per cent of them had the diagnosis of dementia praecox (schizophrenia). Eighty-five per cent were women, even though men with the diagnosis of dementia praecox outnumbered women at Stockton. And twelve of the thirteen people who underwent a second lobotomy were women.

Four of the lobotomized women also had their clitoris removed. Braslow quotes from the case history of “Rose”, a young woman who was admitted to Stockton in 1944, underwent a lobotomy five years later, then had her clitoris cauterized twice and finally had all her teeth removed as she bit people.

Cultural norms provided by and enforced by men were and remain the primary factor for "mental illness" in women.

The diagnosis and treatment of women's mental health and illness in the United States have been shaped by cultural values about what constitutes a good and acceptable woman and have been used to punish women who fall outside the norm. In particular, a woman's body and its cycles as well as her adaptation to social roles have been implicated as factors that cause mental illness. As a result of these formulations, specific treatments have been designed "for women only." Generally, these clinical interventions have been directed at women's bodies or have taken the form of verbal prescriptions aimed at helping a woman live a more "feminine" life.
In the mid-nineteenth century, women were judged by the standard of True Womanhood. The True Woman was a faithful wife, a pious servant, and, above all, a good mother. Ironically, biological mothering, so central to a woman's identity as a True Woman, was considered in the nineteenth century to be a cause of insanity. One hypothesis linked insanity to prolonged lactation. One in eleven women diagnosed as "insane" in the 1850s reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown either during or after pregnancy.

Women who strayed too far from the domestic sphere were also considered to be at risk for psychic distress. A woman who overtaxed her delicate sensibilities by engaging in too much intellectual work was subject to "brain strain." Not surprisingly, this same work was not considered to be crazy-making for men, who were felt to have the natural endowments to engage in active intellectual efforts.

Researchers postulated that unfeminine activities caused uterine derangement which in turn caused mental illness.

During this period, two separate treatment approaches were developed specifically for female patients. The belief that an insane woman had something wrong with her "female organs" resulted in treatments such as electrical stimulation of the uterus, clitoral cauterization, and prescribed weight gain to prevent the ovaries from slipping out of place. Women diagnosed with psychological problems were subjected to a form of paternalistic behavior modification. S. Weir Mitchell, the chief proponent of what was called the rest cure, recommended that women who were suffering from emotional exhaustion take to their beds for a period of six weeks to two months. This solution served to make being ill sufficiently aversive so that women would readily return to their roles as wives and mothers.

First-person accounts by women who were institutionalized in insane asylums in the nineteenth century suggest that incarceration in a mental hospital was used as one means of forcing conformity onto women. These women felt that the reason they were declared insane was that they held religious beliefs contrary to those of their families and husbands, owned property coveted by relatives, or held controversial opinions not shared by members of their family. In some states, husbands had the legal authority to commit a wife to an asylum without a doctor's order; thus "unwanted" wives found their way into mental hospitals.


By the 1930s, psychoanalytic theory was a vital force in U.S. psychiatry. Early Freudian theory identified the castration complex and penis envy as core elements in female development. Even her eventual desire to bear a child was seen as a compensation for her lack of a penis. Early theorists speculated that the sexually assertive woman was really a frustrated man, a woman uncomfortable with her own inherently passive position. Lesbianism, which was linked to feminism, was also declared deviant. Freudian psychology defined both narcissism and masochism as particularly feminine disorders. Some psychoanalysts concluded that feminism threatened a woman's happiness, because a woman could not be herself when she was "imitating a man," that is, being assertive. These psychoanalytic explanations of a woman's psyche served to stigmatize and condemn independent and professional women at the time. Despite attempts to modify some of its elements, Freudian theory remained a largely antifemale force in U.S. psychiatry for almost fifty years.

Psychiatric diagnosis and treatment historically have been used as means of social control in the lives of women. Women who deviate from the cultural norm in terms of role, sexual orientation, demeanor, appearance, or race are more likely to be labeled deviant and to receive psychiatric treatment. As late as 1986, in the Revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published and developed by the American Psychiatric Association, two disorders linked to a woman's demeanor and to her female body were still under consideration for inclusion: Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder (characterized by anxiety, irritability, depression, and affective lability during a specific phase of the menstrual cycle) and Self-defeating Personality Disorder (a variant of the old female "masochism").


And how much "progress" has the male medical machine made? Lets look at the future changes to the DSM due out in 2013 with regards to gender norms and CHILDREN!

Gender Incongruence (in children) [1] (no I am not making up this "disorder)

A. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months duration, as manifested by at least 6^* of the following indicators (including A1):  [2, 3, 4]

1. a strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that he or she is the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one's assigned gender) [5]

2. in boys, a strong preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; in girls, a strong preference for wearing only typical masculine clothing and a strong resistance to the wearing of typical feminine clothing [6]

3. a strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe or fantasy play [7]

4. a strong preference for the toys, games, or activities typical of the other gender [8]

5. a strong preference for playmates of the other gender [9]

6. in boys, a strong rejection of typically masculine toys, games, and activities and a strong avoidance of rough-and-tumble play; in girls, a strong rejection of typically feminine toys, games, and activities  [10]

7. a strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy [11]

8. a strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender [12]

The male medical machine has now seen in its omnipotent wisdom to pathologize gender play/norms in CHILDREN and who will be stamped mostly with this ignorant misogynistic "gender incongruent" label? Female children of course! Because females have paid a heavy price for the removal of a few of our shackles, we are more likely, especially as children to break rigid gender norms. Girls are more likely to desire "boy" clothes and "boy" toys, more likely to play with boys, more likely to pretend they are male figures and thus more likely to be labeled, drugged and butchered as "gender incongruent" aka "trans" children. 


For all the centuries of portraying females as crazy to render us powerless, for all the backlash against feminism, this monstrosity (gender incongruence) is by far the worse male medical tactic against females. It is an all out if you cant beat us, change us to men!

dirt

Topic Tuesday-Women Only Spaces

Todays Discussion topic is Women Only Spaces, feel free to comment however you like, so long as its on topic.

Some possible questions:

1) Do we need more women centered spaces?

2) How can we keep womens spaces, womencentric?

3) How can we nurture the women spaces we have?

4) What do you love about being in womencentric spaces?

5) Do womencentric spaces put YOU more in touch with your own womanhood?

dirt

Questions for Dirt, from a Reader

A reader emailed me some questions recently, given I regularly get asked several of them in comments, I'll answer them here in public.

1. Why does your blog revolve mostly around transgender issues? What is your motivation to be so vocal about this? My blog revolves around misogyny more than anything and how misogyny informs transition notions and Butch shame which can lead some to transition. And because queer/trans theory spawned by postmodernism/antiessentialism have nearly leveled the Butch/Femme community utilizing silencing techniques created by patriarchy, someone must stand up proud and say NO and I am that Butch.

2. Being a proud butch woman, why is it that you refer to yourself as "boi" and why is your picture at the top of your blog depicting a very male appearing chest if you are proud to be female bodied? (I'm not trying to be rude at all, I'm genuinely curious.) I've never referred to myself as "boi". The reason its in my nick/email is because 10+ years ago before gay.com had picture profiles, many Butches who chatted at the butch/femme chat room there would use "boi" to differentiate themselves from Femmes. My g/f at the time despised the term, so when we broke up a few years later and I was looking for a new email nick because my email/nick was closely associated with hers. On the way to work, Foreigner's Dirtywhiteboy song came on the radio and it hit me "dirtywhiteBOI"! Given my ex and I had to communicate through email over a house we owned together, using "dirtywhiteboi" was born to piss my ex off. I have kept it because I was quickly called "dirt" after using it for just a short time and I and other now generally refer to me as "dirt".  Regarding the pic, as a grown woman I dont see where the picture appears "male". My skin is much too smooth and my shape much too feminine. Most folks arent used to seeing pictures of strong, fit women, hence the leap to male. Take that same shot of any female swimmer, weight lifter or reasonably fit woman, and they would closely resemble mine.

3. Do you think, had you been born in the 90's and had grown up in this day and age, that you would think differently on the subject and feel more pressured to transition based on the "butch body shame/dysphoria" you describe? Had someone approached me after experiencing one menstrual cycle (age 13) and said this drug (T) would stop you from experiencing periods, but could likely cause you to go bald, develop cancer and perhaps be dead after taking it for a decade or so, I would have said "where do I sign up". Had I been approached after the age of 20, which was around the time I realized how unique I was as a Butch woman and how unique my mind was, I wouldnt have thought once about it, despite still having Butch Shame issues and some dysphoria issues. I never got into drugs of any kind, even pot, because I would never risk altering my awesome brain. Knowing that (T) does physiologically alter the brain and how it functions, would have scared the hell out of me. I'm me to the point that no one alive could EVER be me!

4. Do you think its possible at all to be genuinely transgender/transsexual and not part of the trend, or do you honestly believe it's a diagnosis purely made up by the "male medical machine?" No. Transgender/sexual-ism was created to eradicate homosexuality. Any gay or lesbian person who supports this barbaric treatment, supports the eradication of gays and lesbians. Even though many who seek transition are heterosexual, particularly males and now particularly trans trenders, society, including doctors, still believe this is an issues that affects gays and lesbians primarily.

5. Did you ever consider transition as an option for yourself at any point in your life? Or was that never an issue for you? No. It would have to have been an option when I was a child, therefore immature and ignorant, which it wasnt. Thank god!

dirt

Topics for Topics Tuesday

What would you like to see discussed tomorrow???

dirt

Who is Transitioning

When misogyny is the canvas of transition, it is EVERY woman's problem!

dirt