🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <crdCMv921.I0L@netcom.com> crd@netcom.com (Craig Dickson) writes:
>Before I actually answer what you've said, one note: Please don't
>cross-post so enthusiastically. SIX newsgroups?? I'm replying from
>soc.bi, and as I don't read alt.transgendered, soc.women, or
>alt.feminism,
---
	I xposted it from alt.transgendered.  If I hadn't xposted it to 
other news groups, you would not have responded.  I felt that the topics
would best be discussed by input from people in the news groups I posted
to.  I mean I can talk about feminist or women's issues in a vacuum, or
I can xpost the topic to groups where I might actually *get* their 
opinion.  Posting in a vacuum or talking to people who think too much
like me isn't instructive -- we just all sit around saying "yeah, that's
right, yeah."  End of discussion.  *grump*.  Not very interesting or
informative.


>That's one way of looking at it, and I won't dispute it. Another way
>of looking at it, which I also will not dispute, is that these people
>were raised as males and taught male ways of viewing the world and
>conducting themselves, and their life experiences are thus quite
>different from that of people born female. This was the explanation
>I heard for the exclusion of MTF's from the Michigan Womyn's Music
>Festival.
---
	This is a very valid attitude.  It seems very similar to whites who
want to ban blacks or asians from various activities since they were not
raised *as whites*.  It also would be similar to men's clubs who want
to exclude women because women, not having been raised as men -- just
aren't the same as men.  Etc.  There is no doubt that people with different
backgrounds will be different and have different perspectives.  A woman
raised in japan or the phillipines will have a very different attitude
and background about a woman's place in society than a woman raised
in the US.  TS's, it would seem, would also have a very different attitude
toward feminity -- loving and relishing it so much that they irrevocably
chose it over their birth sex -- in fact many feel that they are truely
not complete and whole people without aligning their body with their
spirit.  I guess I would hope for understanding of this choice/necessity
from groups that have equally been the victim of enforced societal roles
and stereotypes.  

>I think I could summarize my
>position by saying that an MTF "is" a woman, but somehow not quite
>in the same way or to the same degree as a born woman. Maybe that's
>not nice or fair, but I think it's reality.
---
	True, but women do come in all different shapes sizes and backgrounds.
There are certainly some women that are more masculine in their behavior
than many men.

william
---
    My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe
    to be unpopular.
                                    -- Adlai E. Stevenson