🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2mlk26$19k@magic.erg.sri.com>,
Elizabeth Zwicky <zwicky@magic.erg.sri.com> wrote:
>This strikes me as being a difficult question to deal with on a lot of
>fronts, but this particular formulation is problematic
>
>In article <2mbjbo$1jb@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> wat@athena.Eng.sun.com (William) writes:
>>	What is the nature of female rejection of TS's?  Cases that I know
>>of are: the woman who stabbed the 7 yearr post op TS up in the North
>>Bay for not being feminine enough; The threats of violence and 
>>vandalism against TS's at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival; and
>>a rule at the Ecstacy club also stating only "women-born-women".
>
>You are assuming here that there is a single phenomenon causing these
>events, and you're giving a name to that phenomenon - "female
>rejection of TS's" - that strongly suggests that it is common to all
>women. I think the real situation here is a lot more complex, but I'm
>willing to let the simplification go by for a while
---
	Clarification: female rejection of TS's = rejection that is done
by females -- but in no way did I mean to imply a all or even a majority.
In fact, if I had to guess, I would think TS's would be more accepted
by women than men -- but that is only a guess.


>>	Especially with the title of the Womyns's Music Fest, we see
>>evidence of rejection men with a dislike of the masculine.  There
>>may be similar feelings at the all-woman safe-sex club.
>
>I think that equating the spelling "womyn" with a rejection of men and
>a dislike of the masculine is missing the point. The point is to
>define women as something other than people-who-are-not-men. Much as
>a woman can love her husband dearly, but keep her own name, women or
>womyn can be quite positive towards men without wanting them to be
>ever-present and defining. Making this kind of statement is apt to
>make it difficult to get along with feminists, whatever your gender or
>theirs. 
---
	As was already pointed out, they chose the name myn spelling to
separate and reject the masculine.  In my own personal experience,
those who insist on the 'myn' spelling usually have strong
anti-male feelings.
>
>>	Anyway, so what we have with TS's are beings that are drawn to
>>being feminine and repelled by the masculine so much (in themselves) that
>>they need to switch their physical sex.  It would seem with such a
>>desire to escape "the masculine", TS's should be well accepted in women
>>only places.  Not only are they then women -- but they are women by *choice*,
>>not by accident of birth.
>

>Furthermore, a lot of the point of woman-only space is setting up a
>space free of people who have been acculturated the way men are in our
>society. It's not just about reduced testosterone living, or a lack of
>male genitals; it's much more complex than that. The TS that I know
>best, at the time when I knew her, believed in a vision of what it
>meant to be female that was not about femininity as such, but that
>still struck me as dangerously oversimplified, and she believed that
>she was more like a woman than like a man, while behaving like a man
>in most of the ways that annoy me most. (Leaving the toilet seat up
>never bothered me that much, but being unable to find anything gets to
>me.)
---
	I wouldn't disagree with this, however, by the being able to find
things criteria, I was the female in my last relationship.  She often
misplaced things.  This points out an important point.  What does
one use for a criteria?  It is quite conceivable in this day and age
for a girl to be raised as a tomboy and be very masculine and a boy
to be raised in a protected manner and end up being possibly meek,
shy and 'feminine' -- in the stereotypical usage of those words.  


  Other people in this thread have had similar experiences, of
>people who thought of themselves as women, but had "male"
>characteristics that in context seemed unsettling and possibly
>unpleasant.
---
	No doubt true -- I also know women who have decidedly "male"
characteristics.


> I don't think it's fair to believe that a person who grew
>up as a man in our culture is ever going to behave like a person who
>grew up as a woman in our culture.
---
	Quite true, but no two women are likly to behave the same
either.  It is likely there is going to be an overlap of behavior
between the two sexes -- it is that grey area we are examining.

william
---
    When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be
    free.
                                    -- Charles Evans Hughes