Amy Dentata

Dear Housemates of Our Radical Progressive Queer Co-op

In general living here has been a wonderful experience, however I have a few issues I would like to address:

1. I believe in our fragrance-free policy, for the sake of allergies and sensitive noses. Speaking of unwanted scents, I also believe in showers. They don’t have to be daily, especially if you’re not physically active. They don’t have to involve shampoo every time. But they should be in your schedule somewhere, preferably after dumpster diving on Tuesdays.
   
   
2. You are absolutely correct that neither shaving nor keeping your legs hairy is empowering to women unless its by choice. However, after you choose to shave your legs in the shower, please also choose to get that hair out of the freaking tub.
   
   
3. While it’s totally true that nobody’s sexual orientation should be enforced or coerced or made into law, we do have an enforced law in the bathroom: When you replace the toilet paper (or more accurately, if you replace the toilet paper), make sure it rolls over the top, not down below. I don’t want to go on a treasure hunt every time I take a poop.

 And please, leave a backup roll. While I fully embrace the clothing-optional atmosphere of our body-positive home, I don’t want to shimmy down the hall with my ass hanging out in an emergency dash for TP.
   
   
4. Invisibility is an important topic: Invisible minorities, femme invisibility, trans man invisibility in the mainstream media… Just because the mainstream can’t see oppression doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Similarly, just because you can’t see dirt on the stove, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Get those corners, please. Scrub under all the things on the counter. Take them off the counter and clean under them.
   
   
5. It is totally unfair for the “G” and the “L” of the acronym to get their rights first and put off everyone else’s rights for later. On that note, when I ask you to dust the living room, don’t wipe down the two most visible and easy-to-reach surfaces and then call it a day. No surface is dust-free until all surfaces are dust free. Don’t be a slacktivist with the Windex.
   
   
6. I get it–I’m disabled too. You’re out of spoons, I’m out of spoons… However, the kitchen is also out of spoons, and I did the dishes the last ten times. You can see my chore points clearly marked on our handy-dandy co-op whiteboard.
   
   (Which I’ll note, does not keep score for every time someone merely wiped a damp rag across the table one or two times, without even applying pressure or soap, and called that “cleaning”. My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. Likewise, that wash rag will intersect with soap or else you won’t clean a damn thing.)

By following these simple guidelines, I believe we can create a more loving, supportive, and radical living space for everyone. We might even have a few less cockroaches.

Sincerely,
Amy

(originally posted on my main site)

CAN WE PLEASE GET THIS CIRCULATING (Debunk Re: Trans girl institutionalized in Germany)

inflateablefilth:

t-r-a-n-s:

About the petition:

First off, Alex is not going anywhere. Yes, Alex’s mother tried to regain custody of her child after she initially lost it and failed, but her father doesn’t have custody either.

The court ruled that way because they feared keeping it with either her parents while they argued would delay therapy and damage Alex’s health. Custody has been given to the child welfare services who will help Alex and make sure she can receive proper treatment like hormone blockers and such.

The official ruling also stated that Alex is not going to be institutionalized - permission for a forced admission has not been given by them and so Alex cannot be admitted against her will.

Also, the TAZ posted a correction underneath the original article where they correct the claim that the court ruled that “Alex can now be forcibly institutionalized”, saying that the court did not allow this at all and that she cannot be admitted.

They further more posted a statement by the Berliner Charite, the psychiatric ward Alex was supposedly meant to go to, in which they stated that they will not institutionalize Alex without her permission or that of her mother. They also couldn’t forcibly treat her without court permission and such has not been given.

In conclusion, Alex is not at risk to be forced to conform. She will be able to express her gender freely.

Sources:

The court ruling (sadly no English version): http://www.berlin.de/sen/justiz/gerichte/kg/presse/archiv/20120329.1450.368160.html

The TAZ article, untranslated version, first two paragraphs underneath the “Berichtigung” heading: http://www.taz.de/!90229/

(Translated version as linked in the petition, look for “Correction”.)

Oh yay :)

That is a relief.

[TW: Anti-trans hate speech] Radscum Receipts

freedominwickedness:

Since various and sundry defenders of radical feminism have taken it upon themselves to claim that trans* people are being “hysterical” and “delusional” when we say that radical feminists call for the outright eradication of trans women, let us examine actual firsthand quotations from prominent radical feminist leaders:

The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul⁄spirit⁄life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophilic invasion ⁄ elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes.

Mary Daly, “Gyn⁄Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism” (1978)

All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact, and appropriating this body for themselves. […] As the male-to-constructed-female transsexual exhibits the attempt to possess women in a bodily sense while acting out the images into which men have molded women, the male-to-constructed-female who claims to be a lesbian-feminist attempts to possess women at a deeper level, this time under the guise of challenging rather than conforming to the role and behavior of stereotyped femininity.

I contend that the problem with transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.

Janice Raymond, “The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male” (1979)

When a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho) it is as if he murders her and gets away with it, proving at a stroke that there was nothing to her. His intentions are no more honourable than any female impersonator’s; his achievement is to gag all those who would call his bluff. When he forces his way into the few private spaces women may enjoy and shouts down their objections, and bombards the women who will not accept him with threats and hate mail, he does as rapists have always done.

Germaine Greer, “The Whole Woman” (1999)

I have argued elsewhere that this surgery [GRS] needs to be understood as a violation of human rights for this reason. It is political surgery in the same way that lobotomies carried out on homosexuals in the gay-hating 1950s in the west have been identifiable as surgery for a politically oppressive purpose. […] When the degree of damage that the surgeons are prepared to inflict reaches the stage of breast implants, labiaplasty, limb amputation, or sex reassignment surgery, there is good reason to introduce legislation to stay the surgeon’s hand.

Sheila Jeffreys, “Beauty And Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West” (2005)

These are all direct, firsthand quotes from professionally published material not even offhanded remarks made in a moment of anger and/or taken out of context. Furthermore, they are quotes from prominent and widely respected radical feminist academics, not from random angry online feminists with no actual power or influence.

So there we have it. Radical feminists really do declare that the existence of trans women is an act of rape, murder, and necrophilia. Radical feminists really do demand that trans people be “morally mandated out of existence”. Radical feminists really do claim that medical treatment for trans people is a human rights violation which should be legally prohibited.

And those who claim they do not say these things are liars.

[TW: Trans hatred] The War on Radfems, it’s like the “War on Religion” except for… No It’s Exactly Like the “War on Religion”

“Let us be free to debate transgenderism without being accused of ‘hate speech’ - Researchers and theorists who question the practice of transgenderism are subjected to campaigns of intimidation”

- A real opinion piece posted on a real website

Ooh, the radfems (WTFfems? irrelevantfems?) are really taking from the religious right’s playbook now!

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I need transfeminism…

whoneedstransfeminism:

Because major anti-oppression organizations see fit to give transmisogynist feminists a platform to speak on anti-sexism.

TW: Discussion of sex offender

appropriately-inappropriate:

thecurvature:

Obviously the police officer who questioned and ticketed Paula Witherspoon represents a real structural problem. The idea that an agent of the state got to decide a woman’s gender for her and call her “disorderly” for abiding by her actual gender is not only ludicrous, but also structural violence.

But the cis lady who looked at another woman and decided she “looked like a man” on the basis of whatever transphobic bullshit criteria is the one who called that officer and started the police interaction. That is FAR from a neutral act in a world where trans* interactions with police so often turn discriminatory and even violent. And it is an overtly discriminatory act that she decided she got to be the Arbitrator of Womanhood and literally police who was and was not considered female. This, too, is cissupremacy. And it, too, is systemic and far from isolated.

Transphobia and cissupremacy are far from the sole domain of men. Cis women, we, too, are a part of it. We have an incredible ability to do harm to our trans sisters. It is our responsibility to keep each other from doing so.

With all due respect, Amy, Paula Witherspoon might not be the best example for your case here. She is, after all, a thrice-arrested paedophile and a convicted sex offender currently on parole (and one of the contingencies of that parole is not being around minors (<18). Often, minors 18 and under are present in washrooms and as minor females are Witherspoon’s target age….
Well. Gender aside, allowing a convicted sex offender unremitting access to their target demographic is… probably not the best idea.

If you’re looking for an example, Chrissy Polis might be a better one.
But trying to defend a three-time sexual predator is probably not the best move from a PR perspective.

I didn’t write the original post, so why are you addressing me? I didn’t know about her history until now. Thanks for pointing it out to me, though. It definitely makes the story less clear-cut, and could possibly be relevant to what happened.

The details of the arrest aren’t clear, from what I’ve found online, and haven’t been publicly released. If she wasn’t banned from using public facilities at the hospital, then there was no reason to arrest her. If she was, then obviously there’s a problem. Either way, it seems she was arrested specifically for being trans, and if that’s the case then it’s still a problem, even if this leads to a real criminal charge.

This is that tricky place where we fail as people if we completely erase a person’s humanity for having a criminal record, while at the same time we fail if they are able to commit those crimes again. Reoffense is especially troubling when it comes to child rape, and as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse it’s a topic I have intense feelings about.

What complicates this incident further is that we also fail as people if we allow the ends to justify the means in criminal investigations. The profiling of minorities is a big problem across the board. It gives me mixed emotions–if she is found guilty of violating parole, then it’s a good thing she was arrested. But it’s still a bad thing when trans people are targeted for being trans.

The whole situation sucks, basically. It’s fail from every direction. It’s like one of those crime procedural dramas with an ending that leaves you twisted in knots even though you agree with the verdict.