There Really Is A Difference...

Over the past two days, Suzan Cooke has again tried to cozy up to the gender fascists. First, Cooke posted an article that both attempted to redefine the term "transgender" and which basically claimed that transgender people can turn into transsexuals simply by having surgery. This sounds a lot like the silly, and imaginary, transgender hiearchy where one climbs the ladder. You may start out as a lowly transvestite, getting aroused by wearing your wife's panties. Then you might move up to a crossdresser, claiming that you are not really doing it for sexual reasons. Start living full time, and according to Cooke, you become a full fledged "transgender." (And here you thought that was what you were all along.) Scrape together the money, pop off to Bowers in Trinidad (she seems to take anyone) and you have now graduated to a genuine Woman Born Transsexual, even though the idea never even occured to you before you discovered the joys of your wife's panties at the age of 45. I mean really, this is just ridiculous.

Cooke even goes so far as to claim that "classic transgender people" are committed to binary gender and are not into gender transgression. Cooke has got to be kidding...

According to Cooke, the real difference between "classic transgender people" and transsexuals is simply the ablity to afford surgery. If you are lucky, you get to be a transsexual. Hit hard times, and sorry, but you are stuck being transgender. Of course, that is straight out of the transgender playbook. How often have we heard that they would have surgery, but gosh darn it, there is the mortgage, and the car payment, and the credit card bills, and the cost of popping off to all those conferences, and the Tri-Ess dues, and the donations to IFGE, and.....? Oh wait, according to Cooke, all those poor transgender types are oppressed and underprivileged.

Then, in later article Cooke seems to want to back off, and admit that maybe there is something more than luck, and classism, involved. I guess after pretty much being confronted by a round of angry comments, Cooke realizes that she is in danger of losing half of her imaginary coalition. So, Cooke now seems to say that...well, maybe some of them really don't want surgery, but....they are still poor, oppressed, and we should all still compromise and become one, big, happy family. In fact, Cooke goes so far as to begin making apologies for Charles "Virginia" Prince.

Sorry, but again, NO! We are not alike, we do not really share common goals, and let's be honest, if we give them an inch, they are going to take a mile. Personally, I am not interested in deconstructing gender, subverting the binary, or joining up with the likes of Jasper Gregory. Cooke can try will all her might to deny that this person is the very model of a transgender woman, but that is ultimately the perfect example of why I want no part of transgender or Cooke's proposed compromise.