The GLBT Movement: Now with 100% Less Lesbians!
Recently, Baltimore County, Maryland has served as the latest backdrop in a legislative effort to enshrine stereotypes about Females into law. The legislation – adopted earlier this week to ban discrimination based on so-called “Gender Identity or Expression” – provides a legal remedy for individuals who face discrimination in employment, housing and certain public accommodations based on their “gender-related identity or appearance … regardless of (their) assigned sex at birth.”
The legislation – which the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has peddled like Harold Hill since the late 1990s – never really tells us what identity is “gender-related,” as such a question cannot be answered without resorting to sex stereotypes (remember sex stereotypes? Those things that limit the progress of Females?) Questions like “what is a gender-related identity” confuse the “civil rights” narrative that the Trans Community has wielded like a Billy club to get the Gay and Lesbian Community invested in their cause.
A recent article in the Baltimore Sun, Transgender bill stirs fear, controversy in Baltimore County, describes the Baltimore County effort and finds a new spokesperson in Jenna Fischetti, a 47-year old who claims to be “always on guard.”
“My head’s on the swivel,” said Fischetti, a freckled brunette.
Awww, Jenna. Welcome to Womenhood! Females have all been socialized since birth to “know” that we are the class of sexual objectification, the class of second-classness, the class of catering to Males. We have been “on guard” since forever! But now that YOU “know it,” it’s worth talking about! Onward!
The article goes on to describe Jenna’s struggles:
When she slips into a public restroom, she tries not to talk. If she makes eye contact with other women, she smiles and nods. For Fischetti, using the bathroom is just one small part of a daily struggle for social acceptance. She says she lost her job after she began living as a woman. She can tick off a list of women like her who’ve been attacked — even killed — because of who they are.
Because of “who they are.” “Women like her” – meaning, of course, heterosexual men who have lived a life as a Male, have children with their wives, and then decide to transition. And speaking of women who have been killed, three women are killed EVERY DAY by an “intimate partner” – and that number doesn’t include the random asshole men that murder us. But DO GO ON!
The Sun continues:
When Fischetti lived as a man, she worked in the auto industry, as a salesman and finance manager. She always drove a new car. Today, she takes the bus and the light rail. She makes $8 an hour at Kohl’s and lives in Baltimore City with other transgender friends.
Dear Sun Reporter – Females make less money than Males on average. If Jenna now makes less money because Jenna mimics Female reality, perhaps the bigger story might be how Females as a class make less than Males? Oh, and Females use public transportation at greater rates than Males. It’s not a “civil rights violation” that Jenna has to take the bus – it might be other things (such as economic oppression) but it’s not “her gender identity” that necessarily causes that.
Continuing on, the Sun article notes that
She sensed she was different at age 6. Someone brought a pile of hand-me-down-clothes to her family’s Laurel home. She gravitated toward a jumper. When she played G.I. Joe‘s, she always devised a back story for the figurines, the way little girls do with dolls.
Any number of children play with dolls as a child and don’t play with them “the way boys do” or “the way girls do.” This is called “imagination” and “creativity.” This “talent” does not make you Female or Male. But the startling lack of analysis on the Sun reporter’s part only gets worse:
Fischetti emphasized that gender expression is not about sex or anatomy. She shows gender in the way she moves her hands, in her soft voice.
That’s right – the way you move your hands “shows gender.” The sound of your voice “shows gender.” Gender identity – the way your hands move and the way your voice sounds, “regardless” of your biological sex. If it’s that easy, who needs surgery!?
Stereotype, stereotype, stereotype.
This effort to replace Sex as important unifying category with Gender Identity finds support, of course, from “science.” Chris Kraft, a psychologist at the Johns Hopkins Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit and a described “expert on gender issues,” notes that “(m)ale-to-Female transgender people often face more stigma than someone who is Female-to-Male.”
“It’s much more of a violation to leave a Male role and identify as Female,” Kraft said. “Sadly, we’re in a misogynistic culture still, and we don’t understand why a man would want to become a woman.”
HOLY COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. Noting that our culture is misogynistic while simultaneously being blind to the misogyny inherent in the Whole Trans Shtick. I don’t understand why any person with a brain and an ability to read buys this whole Gender Identity concept, but, hey, I’m just a “Woman.”
Oh, but there’s more. The Sun article, which spends a great deal of time discussing bathrooms, quotes Sharon Brackett of Gender Rights Maryland, who notes that not all transgender people undergo sex reassignment surgery and that “every time a transperson goes in the bathroom, they’re wondering, ‘Am I gonna get beat up?’”
Forget about what Females might think the same thing every time they have to use a bathroom (because, yanno, Females face sexual assault as a lived reality), forget about all Females who don’t fit Jenna’s perception of how a woman should move her hands or sound (hello, Lesbians) – we should all bow down to a myth to make Transgender people feel better.
The political reality – as unfortunate as it is – is that GLBT organizations, supported by so-called “women’s” organizations like the Women’s Law Center of Maryland, will continue to push this garbage Gender Identity theory until we submit to the notion that there are “ways of expressing” or “ways of appearing” that go along with biological Sex. Given this political reality, and given the mainstream media’s current unwillingness to critically examine Gender Identity (indeed, opposition to Gender Identity places you squarely in the realm of Right Wing Religious Wingnuts), one approach taken by feminist activists is to narrow the potential for harm for Females by limiting the DEFINITION of Gender Identity. One such definition would provide that “Gender identity” means a person’s identification with the sex opposite of the sex assigned at birth, as evidenced by an intent to medically transition in accordance with the current standard of medical care.
This definition makes NO reference to sex stereotypes (“gendered appearance” and “gendered expression” are only understood BECAUSE OF sex stereotypes) and also requires actual objective intention to transition (thus excluding the hypothetical “man in a dress” predator who wears a dress to access sex-segregated facilities). Transgender people – including Jenna – CANNOT transition without medical intervention. Further, this definition requires some showing beyond a mere subjective statement to assert membership in the class. Thus, this definition meaningfully limits the class to an identifiable class of people.
But that’s probably too much to ask Heterosexual Men turned Lady to do, eh? Much easier to bludgeon Females with the Gender Club.
