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Text of the page (random words):
ught up in the trans trend the more i find these women want to go to fest have had it in their planners and always think about it and so we have to be there for them to help them get to michigan to help them see the real truth of fest and to help them get past all the bashers and haters who will try to bring them down call them names transphobic for one and all of this in their supposed quest to let all people be free to be who they want to be all people that is of course but us but females because well they forget to factor in how misogynist their actions are how they are working against their supposed goals by protesting attacking and silencing women and by trying to dictate and push their version of identity onto others they are the ones policing gender by refusing to acknowledge that female born female is a gender is an identity is a real experience that deserves respect and again still i am tired of it see you dear friends in august we have to be prepared for anything this year after that low and dirty false press release i can only imagine what camp trans and friends have in store for us in their quest to take down fest and re create it in their image and image that doesn t include or welcome or respect us and yet they think they are successful anyway i could go on i m trying to write a letter to curve but at the same time i know it is hardly worth it they are really really biased against females probably because the editors girlfriend just transitioned or so i ve read somewheree either way in this current climate it isn t cool for any public lesbian or lgbt anything to stand up for michigan and for female born females and female born lesbians why i want to also say something about terms female is a term that indicates biology that speaks to an embodied experience as well as the social cultural and historical experiences that go along with it historically woman and female have gone hand in hand but in recent decades woman has become separated from female which is fine i ll give this term up i suppose if i must as long as i can hang on to female but men do not and can never become female so there is no such peron as an mtf more like an mtw just as women can never become male so ftm means female to man at any rate as hard as i try to understand all of this when michigan is attacked when the wrong terms are used and when the larger lgbt or feminist culture thinks it is ok to bash one group over another and this group being bashed just so happens to be the base group that kind of made it possible for all of the gains and opportunities that have shaped the lives of the group doing the bashing in the first place it really sucks for lack of a better phrase and personally i want us all to be able to identify as and be who we are where i have trouble with this is the means some chose to get to this goal by i don t see the need for surgery hormones and altering one s natural state physical physiological biological body to get to this goal it seems to me that in doing this the status quo is upheld the idea that there are two genders is reified that the grand goal of being who we are is supplanted by the short sighted goal of me being who i want to be and you being who you want to be as long as who we both want to be is something that is already out there and ok d by society just jumping the fence if you will but not working to take down that fence but then the majorly frustrating thing for me claiming that you and othes like you and groups like camp trans are deconstructing the fence when the f ence is just growing longer and higher and dividing more people there are some who are challenging this taking on gender working to create new ways of being and doing so in a way that is respectful of all people even females who want to be females i admire and applaud people who are taking this on who might not feel welcome anywhere because they are doing this not in trans groups not in women s groups not in straight groups not in gay groups but that is sign that what you are doing is having an impact and that you are truly being who you are and damn the man for trying to tell you that who you are has to be a man or a woman books that i have read recently have strengthend and influenced my thinking on this subject namely female chauvinist pigs by ariel levy sisterhood interrupted by deborah siegel and paradoxes of gender by judith lorber a sociologist because the struggle to tear down the barriors of gender is not a psychological one it is not an individual level me vs those other people problem it is a social and cultural issue without taking sociological factors into account you are just reinventing the wheel and making gender more powerful not less i am so happy when people bend gender when people do things to take the power away from gender but so far i have seen little of this actually happening i see people making a big big mess of things and calling it empowerment and calling it no labels and calling it lgbtqaits and on and on i feel that the movement both movements the lgbt and the women s movements have left me and are off somewhere running around in circles telling everyone to take t and do drag and include include include all issues and all people except for those people who actually want to say hey wait a minute there s something wrong with where you are going and where you are taking me and i don t think this is going to do anything good for women for men for anyone because it is so much easier to kick people like me out to silence people like me to call us transphobic than it is to say hey maybe we should think about this maybe it isn t cool to protest other women to say it is ok to wish for breast cancer to think doing drag is the be all and end all of gender deconstruction and womyn prior to recent years back in the 70s when michfest was created was intended to mean female because back then this was not an issue it was a non issue female meant womyn meant woman meant women and womyn female womyn was used to be the most radical form of female the kind that did not need men the kind that wanted to create their own female centered world i e the alternate spelling of the word and when you are at michigan a female at michigan the entire place is female centered which is another reason why the current wave of protests just don t work and are really upsetting to females if we let trans folk into our private gathering they ll never cease protesting and eventually everything with any relation to female biology will not be allowed because it will be accused of being transphobic and i have seen this happen with other events other conferences nothing is ever enough and it is only a victory for the camp trans type of trans when female born females have nothing left have no words to speak with cannot talk about getting our periods having babies having bodies at michigan there are tributes to female biology and body parts everywhere this is something that makes it michigan to be in a space where it is ok to celebrate the female body is to be in a rare place indeed this issue which is and should be a non issue will only be resolved when the camp trans like trans people admit and accept and respect that there are people who are born female that these people have bodies that these bodies come with experiences biological and social and cultural and that these experiences matter it will only be resolved once these campt trans like trans people alert themselves to the similarities between their current tactics and that of the patriarchy when they see how misognist their actions are and when they stop doing these things stop protesting womyn stop trying to take take take and learn how to listen and respect in all of this world in all of this issue i would have less and less anger towards camp trans like trans people if they would stop think and leave michigan alone it is clear beyond a doubt that their goal is not to be included in the fest but to destroy the fest entirely which is not going to happen michigan is private females literally own the land females would attend fest if there were no concerts if you had to bring your own food if there was nothing there but some land and a thousand other females and one more thought here s what i hear from the new trans genderqueer thirdwave movements when the men can be women and the women can be men we will all be equal and gender will be meaningless and to me this is fundementally flawed because the point of feminism to me is this when men are no longer valued higher in society just for being men and when men and women are both granted the same rights given the same respect treated in the same manner when men and women are seen and treated as equals the power dynamic that is gender will no longer have power men will no longer have power over women both will be equal and gender as a category of power will be meaningless my version is about more than dressing up more than about drag more than about jumping from one category to another and more than the post modernist i perform therefor i am mentality it is about social structrual change and about power michigan exists because of that power dynamic because of the power and the value given to men to males just because they are men and the lack of power and the lack of value assigned to women just because they are women just because they are born female the analysis of camp trans and others who protest michigan is serverly lacking any mention of power any reference to the realities of gender as a power dynamic until this power dynamic is systemmatically attacked which would mean people at camp trans would have to stop attacking females and start focusing in on issues that are really oppressing trans individuals until there is no more power dynamic between the mere categories of man and woman male and female michigan will always be a vital and necessary space that provides women with power with value and with the fuel and energy to go out into the world and work to make it a better place posted in uncategorized 2 comments much ado about the gendercator july 30 2007 in case you needed some evidence as to what it is that is pissing lesbians off so much and forcing us to go underground where we can nurture each other and fuel our own movements once again amazon womyn are gonna rise again info on the gendercator from catharine crouch s website the gendercator trt 15 minutes super 8mm mini dv the gendercator is a short satirical take on gender and social norms the story uses the rip van winkle model to extrapolate from the past into a possible future in 1973 a group of hippie women are celebrating billie jean king s victory over bobby riggs they are partying in the rural woods outside of bloomington indiana our heroine sally is a simple minded sporty type who overindulges at the party and passes out under a tree sally wakes up 75 years later in 2048 to discover amongst other social changes that feminism has failed utterly and completely sex roles and gender expression are rigidly binary and enforced by law and social custom when sally chooses to dress in flannel and jeans the doctor at the emergency room calls in the gendercator a government official who informs sally that butch women and sissy boys are no longer tolerated gender variants are allowed to chose their gender but they must choose one and follow its rigid constraints sally is baffled by this brave new world all she wants is to do her own thing but her own thing is seen as problematic sally is a simple minded stoner indoctrinated into 70s feminism she is no poster girl or freedom fighter just a gentle tomboy dropped into the future with a tendency to respond in slogans such as sisterhood is powerful nurse nancy locates some of sally s former friends they are 100 now but because of advances in the medical profession they are still healthy and thriving the friends tell sally they heard she moved to california and that s why they never looked for her one of her friends appears to be a man and tells sally they made me do it they ll make you too they explain to sally that in the early 2000s the evangelical christians took over the government and legislated their strict family values legally sanctioning only one man one woman couples advances in sex reassignment surgery have made it possible to honor an individual s choice of gender and government policy sally is comfortable in the middle of the genders an unacceptable choice in 2048 director s note the gendercator is a work of satirical fiction a satire is not a prediction of the future it is a commentary on contemporary social trends a satire takes these trends to their logical extreme to emphasize their underlying logic the gendercator is a comment on 1 the rise of religious fundamentalists as a political power all over the world all of whom declare homosexuality to be a sin 2 the medical advancements in plastic surgery and 3 the culture of individuality which posits that individual choice is to be celebrated as the highest good and therefore cannot be criticized controversy about my original director s note many people have expressed discomfort with my original explanation of the motivations for making the gendercator i would like to take this opportunity to clarify some of my ideas and concerns the original paragraph read director s note things are getting very strange for women these days more and more often we see young heterosexual women carving their bodies into porno barbie dolls and lesbian women altering themselves into transmen our distorted cultural norms are making women feel compelled to use medical advances to change themselves instead of working to change the world this is one story showing one possible scary future i am hopeful that this movie will foster discussion about female body modification and medical ethics this remark is not about transpeople it is about women my understanding of transsexuality is that it is a rare condition a medical condition of gender dysphoria a person s exterior body does not match their interior sense of self causing serious social sexual and mental problems this person is a transsexual not a woman or a man my statement was not meant to question the validity of this condition but to call attention to the increasing number of young women who are taking testosterone or undergoing voluntary mastectomies to enhance their masculinity these are women who formerly identified or would be considered by the lesbian community as butch lesbians if we situate this in terms of the larger culture s misogyny it seems to be a rejection of the female part of the masculine female why does a woman do this most often the reasons given are to avoid harassment rape and ridicule as a gender variant it seems to me that what is also going on but has not been explicitly addressed is the desire to avoid being perceived by the world at large as female or to avoid the label of lesbian some may do this because it enables t...