Trapped in a Loop

A "time loop" is common device in science fiction.  The characters find themselves repeating the same experience, over and over, seemingly doomed to forever repeat the same period repeatedly for eternity.  Sometimes, looking at the crap from transgender extremists feels much the same.  I keep having the experience of reading stuff, shaking my head, and thinking "They don't get it, and they can't see that they don't get it."

The latest version of this comes from, of course, the kooks at Shame on You Transgender Edition.  "Michelle" Spicer, who seems to have become he most prolific poster among those spewing ignorance on that blog starts off with this bit of drivel…

Have you ever noticed that when you are talking to a transgender woman that she is always 100% sure beyond doubt that she is making the right decision. She very well may be making the right decision, but it is not possible to be 100% sure about anything. We are humans and we have doubts, it's just part of human nature. Yet in order to toe the line in the transgender community, she is forced to maintain an impossibility to secure her position in the transgender hierarchy.

Now, I cannot speak to the experience of that non-existent entity known as a "transgender woman," but I would assume that, as usual, Mr, Spicer is referring to some random transsexual he has encountered.  Now, by the time a transsexual has reached the point of beginning transition, he or she has struggled through years of self-doubt, misery, and even self-hatred in some cases.  Most of us have suffered at least some form of abuse at the hands of others.  By the time we finally transition, we are generally quite sure we are doing the right thing.  But, something that has been lost along the way is the concept that transition is a trial period.  That is why it is, or at least should be, called the Real Life Test.  If it turns out to  not be the right choice, there is always the possibility to go back.  Of course, now, many kooks attack anyone making that decision.  Simply put, you have doubts, or if you don't need to transition to survive…then don't.

And again with this stupid "hierarchy" stuff.  Bunch of guys finding something to compete over.  There are no degrees of being a woman, and if you are a transsexual, then don't worry about the imaginary "transgender hierarchy," unless, of course, you really do want to link yourself to a bunch of guys in dresses…in which case, well, maybe you should think long and hard before you decide to have surgery after all…because there is no going back.

But then Mr. Spicer takes off on a really stupid tangent that should leave no doubt that he is not remotely transsexual…

I recently posted an article about hormones and I mentioned that hormone replacement therapy does not always cause sexual dysfunction. There was no end of transwomen ready to swear that they lost sexual function not only from the first time they took hormones, they lost sexual function on the way home from the pharmacy! Loss of sexual function happens over time and there are many transwomen who remain functional right up until the surgery. But you won't hear any of them standing up to say so, they are simply not allowed too. Not unless they want to risk losing face in a community that has little cohesion and offers even less help. Why do we have to keep up these pretenses? Why do transwoman have to argue about stealing the pink blanket from another baby hours after they were born in an effort to "out trans" the next transgender woman. The arguments are ridiculous and can make us look like delusional fools.

Okay, this bit of tripe is bad enough…but I checked out the article he refers to, and who led to the above is even worse….

Estrogen will kill your sexual function. More often than not this is certainly not the case. Your sex drive may change over time but your actual sexual function should not be affected until such time as you chose(or not) to have Gender Reassignment Surgery.

Okay, first off, it does not happen instantly.  That much is correct.  In my case, when I started out, I was on .5 mg of Estinyl (Ethinyl estradiol) which would be about the equivalent of 7.5 mg of Premarin, plus an injection of Depo Estradiol once a month.  It took about 6 weeks for my, uh, sexual function as Mr. Spicer puts it, to cease.  Oh, and after two to three months I asked my doctor to move me to more regular injections of Depo Estradiol, so he switched me to every two weeks.  Now, whether or not you lose the ability to have an erection and ejaculate (orgasms never went way) is dose dependent.  I imagine, like most male crossdressers, Mr. Spicer wants to keep having erections.  I was overjoyed that they were gone.  That is one of those significant differences that separates transsexuals and those who are "transgender."  Most men in dresses want to keep their penis, uh, fully functional.

Clearly, Mr. Spicer did not like being confronted with the truth.  He no doubt has a doctor with enough savvy to put him on an appropriate dosage for a crossdresser.  Of course, you probably wouldn't tell the patient that, since many crossdresser, while easy to spot, are not always willing to give up that fantasy that they are "really" a transsexual, even though they want to keep their penis.  Then again, he may even have one of those doctors who follows the ridiculously low dosing regimen of the Clarke Institute, which basically puts patients on low dose birth control pills, and then claims that hormones have little, if any, actual effect on male patients.  Uh…yeah, and I imagine some of them are quite happy with that.  But no the transsexual ones.

If you take a proper dose of estrogen, you will see changes over time.  You will have breast development, which can be as variable as that of women born women.  Some have more than others.  You will see some changes in facial features.  Again, this is variable.  It depends a lot on what you had to start with.  In the case of Mr. Spicer, I don't know how long he has been on hormones, but the pictures I have seen of him are not promising.  You will also see some fat redistribution, and you body will take on a more feminine shape.  Again, variable.  I know one very well known transgender extremist who sports a beer belly any redneck could be quite proud of.  What some would call Dunlap's syndrome.  (My belly, done lapped over my jeans…) I don't know how much of that is how that person dresses, and how much is hormones (or the lack thereof), and how much is simply genetics, but that person does look kind of odd.

The bottom line is, hey, if you want to identify as "transgender" fine…be transgender.  Just stop claiming stuff like how you are just as much a woman as anyone else, and how you are just like a transsexual….  Just stop trying to tell transsexuals they are transgender, because I got news for you…if you buy into the crap Mr. Spicer spews, you almost certainly aren't.

A Complete Load of Crap

The kooks at Shame on You Transgender Edition posted a hilarious piece by Mr. "Michelle" Spicer, entitled Dating Transwomen Does Not "Make You Gay".  While the title is bad enough, the article is worse.  It is homophobic, and inaccurate.  It starts out with an accurate, but somewhat misleading idea..

Many of you have heard the myth that dating a transgender woman if you are a heterosexual male will somehow turn you gay. This has to be the most ridiculous type of rationale that I have heard of thus far.

Okay, you cannot really turn someone gay.  Granted, under certain circumstances, men who would otherwise not do so, may engage in homosexual behavior (the classic example is men who are incarcerated) but upon release they generally return to heterosexual practices. But…but then Mr. Spicer launches into this bit of absurdity….

Our sexual orientation does not change because of who we date, we date someone because of our sexual orientation. You can make love to a body but you can only date an actual person, it's the person inside you eventually fall in love with(if there is any kind of real love there) and a transwomans spirit is a woman!

Okay, keep that first sentence in mind…it is the petard this idiot will be hoist be, but let's look at that second part.  There is so much wrong here.  But for the moment, let's look at the final assertion…"transwomans (sic) spirit is a woman!"  Nope.  A "transwoman's" spirit is not a woman.  If it was, she would not be a "transwoman," which is an oxymoron, but would just a woman…which is anathema to so-called "transwomen" who cling to their manhood with a tenacity that puts a barnacle clinging to a boat to shame….

But, let's consider the part where Mr. Spicer really goes off the deep end…

Men who are attracted to transgender women are not automatically gay in any way shape or form. That is not to say that gay men cannot be attracted to transgender women, but the attraction itself does not change their orientation. If you are a heterosexual man the chances are that you are attracted to a transwoman because of her femininity, her personality and her spirit. There are fetishists of course, but they are attracted to a fetish and not the actual transwoman that stands before them. Using someone as an object is not considered dating them and does not come from any place of respect. This article is only concerned with men who actually want to date transgender women regardless of their surgical status and not treat her like an object. There is a difference between a "chaser" and having an actual interest in dating transgender women.

Okay, it is pretty much unheard of for a straight man to actually engage in a physical relationship with a "transwoman."  Likewise, if you are a pre-op, once a guy finds out you are physically male, the best you can hope for is that he doesn't totally freak out and become violent.  The relationship will probably end, at least with regards to any hope of romance, and you will end up broken hearted.  If you are seriously surgically tracked, you have two choices…date men who claim to be straight (but clearly aren't) or be celibate.  What they claim here is delusional crap.  It is simply believing the lies of men who are either lying to themselves or to everyone else.  If a guy is attracted to you, and you are physically a male, then that man is homosexual.  He may deny being such, but he is.  End of story.  He doesn't give one whit about your spirit, your femininity, or your personality.  He simply fetishizes "chick with dicks."  I've met my share, and I found the relationships very unsatisfactory.  He may pretend to "not treat you like an object," but if you are physically male, he is almost certainly going to.  And chances are, he will drop you like a rock if you actually do have surgery.  Shoot, I dated one guy who was a very wealth contractor.  He lived in what some would call a "MacMansion," had a pool and a hot tub, and drove a Jag.  I'm not a gold digger, but I am also not stupid…but the relationship ended quickly when he said "Don't have surgery…"  

Yes, for a while, I was a bit naive, and actually believe the sort of fairy tale Mr. Spicer is spewing here.  After learning what guys meant when they asked if I was "functional" (NO!  I have been on hormones for a while, and even if I was, what part of "I'm a woman," do you not understand?) I realized that most of these guys were not straight, and were pretty screwed up to boot.

Mr. Spicer ends with this bit of comedy…

Men who date transgender women are heterosexual men dating women, period. Simply because she is a different "type" of woman makes no difference to this writer. There are men who like French women, does that make them french? Simply because a man is attracted to a "type" of woman will not change his sexual orientation any more than it could change his nationality. The myth that dating a transgender woman "makes you gay" is ridiculous, damaging and causes the men who want to date us a great deal of shame. Transwomen lose out on dating and finding love because of this and that is just a damn shame.

Sorry, but no.  Heterosexual men don't want women with penises, and they certainly don't want to be topped by one.  There is only one kind of "woman" and men who date "transgender" women, as well as men who are attracted to pre-ops and so-called "non-ops" (a misnomer…if you are not going to have surgery, you are not a transsexual, so there is no need for that qualifier) are not heterosexual, they are perverts who fetishize the idea of a woman with a penis.  And if you think otherwise, you are lying to yourself, and very possibly putting yourself in serious danger, looking for a guy who doesn't even exist.

Highlighting The Difference, Unintentionally

The whole battle between myself and the cultists at Shame On You Transgender Edition began because I simply pointed out that I do not identify as transgender.  There are good reasons for this, and a couple of their latest posts show this about as clearly as possible.

The first was a fawning tribute to "Kristin" Beck, who apparently now styles himself as "Lady Valor."  Beck was a Navy Seal, a member of what is commonly called Seal Team Six, which was the unit that provided the men who took out Osama bin Laden.  Beck, like Mr. "Autumn" Sandeen, served twenty years, before leaving the Navy.

The second story was a rather telling piece, entitled "All You Need is Love," which states some classic transgender rhetoric (note I said transgender, not transsexual)…

As transgender women we have a tendency to dislike, or outright hate, our male sides. We loath anything that remotely reminds us that we were tragically born in the wrong body. The mirror can be an enemy because it reminds us that we are not perfect and we will always have male characteristics no matter how well we pass. What? You disagree? What is the shape of your pelvic bone?

Okay, dare I say it?  This is clearly a man, in this case, Mr. "Michelle" Spicer, speaking.  Only a transgender male would make such a statement…  This is straight out of Transvestite 101. Sorry, but this is what I make the differentiation that I am a transsexual, that I am a woman, and that yes, the kooks at Shame On You Transgender Edition are a bunch of delusional cultists.  The simple truth is, no one is perfect.  There is not a perfect man or woman, period.  Everyone has some flaws.  I had a friend who was a female to male transsexual who had a more masculine hip structure than I do.  He was short of stature, but his body shape was extremely male, and, contrary to some stereotypes, he had born a son (I remember reading a book on FTMs that basically claimed that no FTM ever would get pregnant) and had gone through some serious complications because his pelvis was too small for the child to easily fit through.  

You have to love how the more extremist transgender kooks, in order to cling to their manhood, even while proclaiming themselves to be women, love to focus on things like this. They want to beat post-ops over the head with their prostates, while ignoring the fact that women have the same gland, although it serves no purpose.  And yes, in extremely rare cases, women (and not transsexual women) can die of prostate cancer.  Of course, most doctors would not call it that…in women it is referred to as a Skene's gland, or paraurethral gland, and is, for the most part, ignored.  However, it is increasingly referred to, quite accurately, as the "female prostate gland."  Boy, are the transgender kooks going to hate that one.

No, the simple fact is, I don't have a "male side."  Then again, to be blunt, crossdressers don't really have a female side.  They have a fetish.  There is a clear difference between someone who grows up with a brain that is differentiated at odds with their body, and someone who simply wishes to play dress-up.

And this brings us back to Beck.  Beck claims to have "always" had a female gender, like Sandeen, and like Sandeen, Beck was able to not only survive in the military through basic training, all the while hiding this supposed "feminine nature" but in Beck's case, to also survive SEAL training, which is extremely intense.  And on top of all this, both Sandeen and Beck thrived in this hyper-masculine, testosterone fueled environment for the full 20 years needed to reach retirement.

No, in both cases, you have someone who was, quite probably, a very closeted cross dresser.  They are not transsexuals, they do not want SRS, and they are not really interested in being anything other than transgender.

You see, this is what underlies transsexualism.  It is not just about a desire to change one's physical sex to match one's brain, it is about wanting to be normal.  And transgender is about wanting to be different.  I have heard transgender people often express this view.  Some, such as Suzan Cooke will go so far as to attack people who are "normborns" as though that is a bad thing.  I have heard them say stuff like, "I would not want SRS, because then I would not be 'special.'"

If someone wants to choose to be "different" or "special," I suppose that is their choice, but they have to accept that society may not respect that choice.  And that brings up another major difference.  Transgender is a choice, transsexualism is not.  Although some try to make the claim that they were "born this way," transgender people choose their behavior.  Most had relatively, if not completely, normal childhoods, showing no signs of having an issue with their gender until later in life, and then beginning with, as stated above, fetishistic crossdressing.

So, the bottom line, again, is that there really is a difference between transgender (which is ultimately a highly subjective term that refers to a social/political construct that has no basis in reality) and transsexualism, which is a medical condition that is, in reality, unrelated to transgender in any meaningful way.

A Few Thoughts On Suicide

A couple of recent developments have led me to say a few words on this rather touchy subject.  The first is the rather silly claim by Mr. "Michelle" Spicer on Shame On You Transgender Edition that I have threatened suicide.  I don't know exactly where he got that silly idea.  It is possible that he is just lying, or it is possible that he is trying, rather desperately, to stretch my pointing out that his cult leader, Ms. "Mark" Cummings tried to nudge me in that direction.  I made it quite clear that Ms. Cummings' lame attempt was not remotely going to work.  Suicide is not remotely something I would consider.  But it was, quite obviously, what Ms. Cummings was suggesting.

In fact, I seem to recall some of the, uh, "investigative reporters" (it's hard to type that without laughing) at Shame On You Transgender Edition suggesting that my shining the harsh light of reality might "trigger" someone towards suicide.

And, of course, there is the kerfuffle about Mr. "Dana Lane" Taylor threatening suicide, and then getting bent out of shape when it was brought to the attention of his employer.  Apparently this has resulted in him being put on "disability" by his employer.  He was harassing various women online, and they called him on it.

Well, a lot is made about how so many transgender people supposedly attempt suicide.  Now, I can understand how a person who is a transsexual might be tempted towards suicide if they are thwarted in their need to transition.  But if a person has transitioned, and is facing issues that cause them to consider suicide, then perhaps they need to rethink their decision to transition.  Perhaps they need to consider if transition is working for them.  If transitioning does not make your life better, and it does not give you the ability to handle problems, then you are probably headed for disaster.

And if you are feeling suicidal, get help!

Great Moments In Transgender Silliness

I have spent so much time focusing on the kooks over at Shame On You Transgender Edition that I haven't had time to comment on some of the other silliness that has been going on.

First off, there has been the extreme silliness surrounding the movie Dallas Buyers Club, and Jared Leto winning Best Supporting Actor for his role as "Rayon," who is basically a drag queen.  But, we are told by the kooks, "Rayon" is a transgender woman, even though the term transgender was not remotely in common usage until years later than the period portrayed in the film.  And besides that, the character is completely fictional, added to the film  for "dramatic purposes."  

Now, the irony is, the same people who complained bitterly when Felicity Huffman portrayed a transsexual (who by the way, is very clear that she is a transsexual) in the film Transamerica, are now complaining that a man portrayed "Rayon," and that this gives "the wrong idea about transgender people.  Hmmm, I just don't see that, since, as pointed out many times, "transgender" is such a vague and meaningless term.

The complaints really took off when Jared won the Academy Award, and failed to "thank the transgender community."  Now, why he should, is beyond me.  For what?  For not even being around during the time portrayed in the film?  The whole thing is just incredibly silly.

And of course, Mr. "Cristan" Williams' Transadvocate blog continues to be a constant source of comedy, including:

• One blogger complaining that people actually think "Boys have penises, and girls have vaginas!"  The horror!
• Another blogger has realized that "Jerry Springer exploits trans women for ratings…"  Really?  I wonder why no one has ever noticed that before? (For those too dumb to really…that SARCASM!!!!)
• The surprising admission (for them) that Jan Morris, a well known transsexual, is not a "transgender" since they have an article about some dude who wants to be the "first trans person to climb Mount Everest."  For those who are not aware, Morris did it in 1953, before her transition.  Granted Morris, did not go to the summit, but was part of the expedition, and was the one who reported the news that Edmund Hillary had made it to the top.
• And an absurdly whiny post by Mr. "Dana Lane" Taylor complaining about Cathy Brennan's supposed harassment of him.  Actually, someone really should seriously intervene in Mr. Taylor's mental health crisis….

And of course, the boys, and girl, at Shame On You Transgender haven't failed to provide a few moments of silliness themselves.  They provided what would, otherwise, have been solid advice on make-up for transgender men looking to impersonate women (Seriously guys, are you trying to look like women…or clowns?) but then they had to act like idiots and include…

Remember that as a transgender person you are an ambassador for all of us. The first impression you give people can be the most important so take your time and do the make-up right. Too much make-up, well that's just a shame.

This is another example of why I want nothing to do with the transgender community.  I didn't transition to be an "ambassador."  Seriously, I guess the idea of simply being a woman is completely lost on Mr. "Michelle" Spicer.  It's all about being a man in a dress, and making sure everyone knows you are a man in a dress…

And Ms. "Mark" Cummings wrote another egotistical rant, including this bit of narcissism…

The truth can be hurtful and many will not accept it, they will turn around and create all sorts of justification, and make the truth barer a monster. Well guess what, pier pressure has never worked with me. I beat my own drum and couldn't careless if the message is not popular or rings right with many. I have my own mind and have never been a follower. So if what is written on this blog offends you, there might be a reason, and possibly something that you need to look into. What rubs you the wrong way, usually has a message or lesson for you. I know you are not going to agree and that is fine to, I am just stating my views and opinion as are all the writers on this blog.

It wouldn't be nearly as funny…if the didn't effectively contradict himself.  On the one hand, she admits she is self-promoting, but then she comes across as condescending…if you don't like what she says, it's because you are the one who is wrong, and you are just not getting the message she is trying to force down your throat…but hey, she is okay with you disagreeing, because she is just presenting "her views and opinions."  

It is one thing to suggest that people should read critically.  I hope anyone reading my blog does just that.  If you blindly accept everything I say, well…that is not a wise approach to ANYTHING you read.  Think about it, question it, challenge it, and then, if it stands up, accept it.  Of course, so often (and Ms. Cummings is a classic example) if they can't refute it, they get angry, and resort to insults.  Yes, I am blunt with people.  I don't play games and pander to delusions.  I point out that people are frauds, con artists, grifters, stalkers, perverts, and yes…even men (or women) when they claim to be otherwise.  I don't do this to insult.  I do this because some people need to be confronted with the truth.

The transgender community remains a regular source of truly silly positions.  While I keep hoping they will come to their senses…I'm not holding my breath.