His Own Worst Enemy

The man who would be king, well at least of the transgender fascists has been very busy lately.  Yes, Mr. "Cristan" Williams, who spends his time trying to prove that the modern transgender movement has been around a lot longer than it actually has is at it again, and he is doing a pretty good job of proving the things he has devoted himself to disproving.

In three recent articles, he has shown exactly the reasons true transsexuals want no part of the movement he attempts to force us into, and even ignores it a major leader's somewhat sage advice.

In the first article, he carries on about how Phillip Frye (not the character from Futurama, but Houston's best known transvestite) who was one of those who created a movement that no sane transsexual would want a part of was a major force in the early gay rights movement, and worked diligently to force the LGB to tack on the T.  Frye has done more than his share of damage to transsexuals.  He was one of the louder voices carrying the mantle of Arnold Lowman, aka Charles "Virginia" Prince that surgery was not necessary, and even undesirable.  He also pulled some absurd stunts that did more than a little to discredit transsexuals legitimacy, such as seeking out post-op "lesbians" in relationships with biological women to have them get "legally" married in Texas as a response to the Littleton case.  In another words, a woman was supposed to legally marry another woman.  But all the Texas authorities did was grin a stupid grin, and say, "Yep, as we all said, they're men, and they are jus' marryin' some woman...no problem."

Then he posts about Lee Brewster, a gay drag queen/transvestite who ran a specialty boutique for drag queens and transvestites in New York City until his death.  Brewster, like Frye was basically a transvestite who got a bit carried away, but who had no desire to actually be a woman.

Then he writes about Leslie Feinberg, someone who is really more butch lesbian than anything else, who played a major role in creating the modern transgender movement, the one he tries to claim existed long before, in the mid-Nineties.  But I have to love the fact that he quotes Feinberg in the following exchange from 1993:

Would you consider anyone who is a butch woman or an effeminate man to be transgendered?

Leslie: I think the point is not whether I would, but whether they would. What I think is that the gender community is forming a movement and starting to be visible and that more and more people will decide whether they are or are not gender oppressed.

So, Feinberg, a founder of the movement acknowledges that people have a right to be "separatists."  It was, is, and should be about "identity" not being forced to accept a label.  The only people I feel "gender oppressed" by are people like Williams, who try to tell me how I can view my "gender."

Ah, but there's more...

Some transsexuals regard being transsexual and being transgendered a being very different from each other and don’t really consider the term “transgendered” as being appropriate to their situation. Do you see there being a fundamental difference between being transgendered and being transsexual? 

Leslie: Well, in the literal sense, we’re talking about ether people crossing the lines of the sex they were mandated at birth and people who are crossing the lines of gender. So, of course, I do think there’s a very real difference between the lives of transsexuals and those who are transgendered, but that’s in the ten(sic) literal sense of the word. I also think that transsexuals who are read very easily on the street have very different lives than those who aren’t, but there’s becoming another use of the word “transgender” which is not so literal, which seems to me to be a kind of umbrella term to unite a very diverse population, and that’s the sense in which I use “transgendered.”

Now, I’m also very aware that language changes and that struggle shapes language, but it may be that there will be specific terms – the “transsexual/transgender” community or a term that we haven’t even heard yet, maybe “trans people” will come to mean anyone who crosses any sex or gender lines. So what I like about uniting us under this broad umbrella term is that it unites a group who share more in common than we differ.

Even from the beginnings of what Williams tries, falsely, to claim was around when it wasn't, Feinberg acknowledges that there are differences.  She wants to create a "community" but one born of identity, not forced assimilation.  And, quite frankly, it has pretty much failed.  Feinberg was wrong.  We don't share that much in common after all.

I agree that there needs to be an umbrella term for all of us, but the reason that some transsexuals don’t like that term — and I tend to agree with this — is that it at least has the implication that transsexuals don’t really change sex. So, do you acknowledge that that term at least has the potential to be used in that way?

Leslie: Certainly I’m not using the term to define anybody for themselves or to impose upon them a term that strips them of an important part of their identity, I think that frequently language doesn’t suit the needs of all the individuals of a community. I remember after the Stonewall Rebellion when the word “gay” first came into use that a lot of people were very angered because they felt it trivializes our oppression. Now the word “gay” has become very accepted. For some of us the word “lesbian” was very difficult to say because it sounded so close to slurs that had been used against us. So I think that the more that we grow as a movement and mature, the more our Ianguage will reflect accuracy and more of what each group within that community feels most expresses their identities.

So, there you have it, Mr. Williams hoist by his own petard.  The very actions he has engaged in, repeatedly, condemned by one of the founders of the movement he tries now to force down people's throats.  Even in 1993, the same issues were around.  One of the people most responsible for the modern use of "transgender" acknowledges the possibility of misuse, exactly the misuse that people like "Cristan" Williams and "Autumn" Sandeen, following in the footsteps to Phillip Frye and Arnold Lowman, engage in.