Skylar Kergil @skylarkeleven 5m5 minutes ago

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Transsexualism as expressed by Transsexuals (A Video Essay)

There has been a complex, heated, sometimes contemptuous and (apparently) controversial
debate raging on the ThomHartmann Message Board regarding the intersection of feminism and
transsexualism begun under the topic heading "Stigmatized Gender: Today's Taboo against Being
Who You Are."

Missing from the discussion has been input from transsexuals themselves and so, with that in
mind, I was motivated to create this (video) essay derived from my own impression of
transsexual narratives sans interruption and objection. Keep in mind that I do not represent the
comments by me as being necessarily the truth or undeniably factual but simply as my own
opinion and that to interpret any of those comments as more than my opinion is to adopt a false
construction. Others can make up their own minds as to whether they agree with my opinions
or not, this is not a treatise but only a presentation. Also keep in mind that, while the essay
includes narratives presented by transsexuals the essay itself does not and cannot represesent
the perspective of a transsexual as I am not a transsexual. It is only intended as a device
provided by a non-transsexual person or "cissexual" (me) to expose others who are also
"cissexual" to some of the video and literary expressions created by transsexuals which seldom
get represented in the "if it bleeds it leads" mainstream media.

--------------------

When we project our own gender-based assumptions and opinions onto other people's behaviors
and bodies, we necessarily erase the distinctness of their indiviual genders and sexualities...

As a transsexual I have been fortunate enough to have had the rather rare (and surreal)
experience of being perceived by others as both a woman and a man, as homosexual and
heterosexual, as feminine, masculine, and gender-ambiguous at different points in my life.
People treated me in vastly different ways in each case, and the assumptions they made about
my gender and sexuality often had little to do with my own identity and life history. As a gender
activist, I believe that it's crucial for us to finally recognize this massive difference that exists
between perception and personal experience. While I do not believe that there is an
impenetrable wall that seperates women from men, or queers from straights, I do believe that
one exists between our own experiential gender, which we live, feel, and experience firsthand,
and the genders of others, which we merely perceive or make presumptions about but can never
truly know in a tangible way. It is time for discourses in gender and sexuality to acknowledge
this great divide, to move beyond the insolent rhetoric of gender entitlement and one-size-fits-all
gender theories. We must stop projecting what we wish were true about gender and sexuality
onto other people, and instead learn to yield to their unique individual identities, experiences,
and perspectives.

excerpt from: Whipping Girl, A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of
Femininity – Julia Serano
Short Youtube-video poetry presentation by Ms Serano:
(link)
In one early skirmish, in 1973, the West Coast Lesbian Conference, in Los Angeles,
furiously split over a scheduled performance by the folksinger Beth Elliott, who is what
was then called a transsexual. Robin Morgan, the keynote speaker, said:
I wll not call a male "she"; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and
of surviving have earned me the title "woman"; one walk down the street by a male
transvestite, five minutes of being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he
DARES to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers' names and in our own, we
must not call him sister.