What Sandeen Means by Diversity

In a fawning response to Mr. "Cristan" Williams silly attempt to sound reasonable, his fellow gender fascist, "Autumn" Sandeen replied "Yay for the diversity model of trans experience!" So, the question is, what exactly does Mr. Sandeen mean by "diversity model?" The answer to that can be found in his rather nasty response to Suzan Cooke over at Women Born Transsexual:

Suzan, you talk about being nearly sixty-five, and you talk about idolizing April Ashley.

The type of black and white transsexualism you espouse is basically a form of cognitive distortion.; the type of transsexualism you espouse has been diversified by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) — the organization formerly known as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) — you might want to read WPATH’s seventh version of the Standards Of Care.

Susan, there’s now way to say agreeably state this: you’ve become an anachronism. The transsexualism you espouse is no longer sustained in the current version of the standards of care for transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people. Whereas pervious versions of the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care were focused on those who needed vaginoplasties or phalloplasties to align their bodies with their gender identities, the current understanding of trans experience is one of acknowledging the diversity of trans experiences; the diversity of treatments needed for trans people to be comfortable in their own skins. But at the same time, these standards of care recognize that those who need genital reconstruction surgeries, to include vaginoplasties, aren’t requiring cosmetic surgeries, but necessary surgeries.

It’s not that many trans people need vaginoplasties or phalloplasties to align their bodies with their gender identities, but instead that not all trans people need vaginoplasties or phalloplasties to align their bodies with their gender identities. In your anachronistic view of transsexual experience, you fail to recognize that your personal trans experience of needing a vaginoplasty to align your body with your gender identity isn’t the universal trans woman experience.
California and Vermont now recognize this in their laws regarding gender identity and changing one’s legal sex. They have embraced the model the State Department uses for changing one’s gender marker on one’s passport as thestandard for changing one’s legal sex.

So does Argentina in their recent change regarding changing legal sex. And at the same time, Argentinean law now recognizes that a very significant number of trans people need genital reconstruction surgery as medical treatment for their gender dysphoria, and their laws now require that trans people who need genital reconstruction surgeries, to include vaginoplasties, will receives those surgeries as a legal right.

What you are espousing, Suzan, appears to me to be a black-and-white, highly defended version of trans experience. What you are espousing is a viewpoint that attempts to take your personal trans experience of needing a vaginoplasty and require it be the universal trans experience for all transsexual people — even when the currently accepted viewpoint of WPATH that treatment for gender dysphoria in individual treatment for trans individuals requires shades of gray thinking in determining what treatments are appropriate for individual transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people.

I’m quite aware that pointing this out isn’t going to change your point of view on transsexual experience. But I believe it’s important to again point out that your community viewpoint on genital reconstruction surgeries/sex reassignment surgeries are anachronistic viewpoints belonging to the sixties and seventies versions of HBIGDA’s standards of care.

And, don’t expect me and a significant numbers of our peers to embrace your black-and-white, highly defended viewpoint of transsexual experience. Call our viewpoints “bullshit” all you want, but at the same time realize your black-and-white, highly defended viewpoints are no longer in the trans mainstream — your viewpoints are no longer what HBIGDA’s follow-on organization WPATH embraces.. 

I identify, for the record, as transgender, transsexual, trans, and female. My legal sex will be changed by California the end of the month, despite what you believe about the importance of the ability for transsexual women to have vaginoplasties to have the ability to experience vaginal sex. 

And, I can comfortably live with that.

Well, this certainly seems to contradict what Mr. Williams is trying to claim.  In Sandeen's "diversity," there is really no place for classic transsexuals.  And yet, he tries to demand that we  accept the label of "transgender."  What he overlooks is the fact that, among other things, WPATH was taken over by kooks like himself.  Several years ago, when the name change was foisted on the organization, they moved away from their original purpose, and became more of an advocacy group for "transgender issues."  That does not make Sandeen's position the correct one, it is just part of the larger political battle.


The fact remains, Sandeen can identify as whatever he wishes, but he is neither a transsexual or a female.  As any number of people have pointed out, he is a rather delusion former enlisted MAN who is viewed by the U.S. Navy as mentally disturbed who has a fetish for wearing women's clothes.  His attempts to desexualize "transgender" are rather amusing, since he himself has an obsession with being "a woman with a penis," which is, quite frankly, something of a sexual perversion.


In fact, it is odd that Sandeen appeals to the Standards of Care in making his argument, as they state specifically "Gender nonconformity Is not the same as gender dysphoria."  While I don't particularly like the term "gender dysphoria," it is the one that was traditionally used by what was know as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, or HBIGDA before they went off the deep end and become "WPATH."  But even still, even they acknowledge that there is a difference between someone like Sandeen, who has neither the need, or the desire to correct their body, and someone like myself, or Suzan Cooke, who does. No, we are not anachronistic.  We are simply not anything like Sandeen, who, it should be pointed out again, wishes to be "a woman with a penis."  Sandeen in a recent posting even goes so far as to try to impose the view on women with a history of transsexualism that they "still have a penis."  And he wonders why transsexuals dislike him so much...


No, this is the face of what Sandeen calls diversity and Williams calls "inclusionism."