What is the Position of Feminists on the Sexual Assaults on Women in Europe Who have accepted Middle East "Refugees"?

I'm hearing CRICKETS: Chirp Chirp, Chirp Chirp...... In other words, STONY SILENCE.

.http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_why_feminism.html

http://theothermccain.com/2015/09/22/europe-imports-a-rape-culture-feminists-want-to-ignore

/http://www.infowars.com/feminists-mute-on-muslim-rape-epidemic-sweeping-europe/

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/03/swedens-feminist-foreign-minister-has-dared-to-tell-the-truth-about-saudi-arabia-what-happens-now-concerns-us-all/

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/why-are-feminists-refusing-to-discuss-the-cologne-sex-attacks/

http://humanevents.com/2015/09/21/america-must-listen-to-nations-experienced-with-muslim-refugees/

I simply cannot understand why Feminists are unable to stand up speaking out boldly and strongly against the very policies that will bring us oppression and violence that we have never experienced in admittedly biased culture that used to exist in America for many years. Are Feminists so willing to trade in our triumphs and victories in the gains in equality only to squander them to a radical left agenda? Are they willing to leave us victims to an agenda that places us in an even worse position ever dreamed of in a formerly oppressive western culture? It appears so. My only question is WHY?

Feminists were never supportive of transsexuals in the 1960's 70's, 80's or 90's. Feminists today do not truly care about our well being today or for the welfare of women in general all over the world. It is evidenced by their stony silence about the abuse of women in Islamic culture and their silence about the spread of abuse of women in the western civilization. It is evidenced by prominent female politicians who excuse the sexual abuse of women in exchange for their own political careers by enabling their husbands who serially abuse women. Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin come easily to mind as examples of modern feminist women who will put up with spouses who sexually abuse women in order to further their own political positions without regard for the chilling message it sends women in our culture today about what is acceptable in the way men treat women in relationships.

Hillary whines about an imaginary war against women here in America, while she remains oddly silent about the real war against women going on in Europe. She wants to bring these Middle East men to America when we have no way of vetting them or possibly hope to know what their intentions towards our citizens are. Judging from what is happening in Europe, my opinion that only disaster can result if we follow through with this folly. Hillary and her ilk can't even identify the threat we face for what it is: Radical Islam and we are the victims of Jihad.

Really, these Middle East men are not refugees, they are occupiers. They practice the age old terroristic act of rape as a form of warfare, to establish themselves permanently in Europe and then on to America. It is a form of warfare that has been practiced by conquering countries since the dawn of civilization.

 Modern or so called third wave feminists are trying to tell us that our identities as transsexuals lie on some type of blurred continuum of gender identity when the vast majority of us strongly identify as male or female, man or woman and not something in between. You find this sort of thinking of  us being something in between in the academic world or feminists, not in real life. Don't believe me? Check out the National Trans Equality Surveys. Modern Feminists in academia want to relegate us to something "less than" a man or a woman, though the majority of trans people know this simply isn't so.  By their complicit silence, they are selling us into subjugation by not taking a stand against forces that will relegate us to a level of treatment that isn't even human.


I would strongly urge you to engage in critical thinking in making your decisions about the challenges the United States faces in the upcoming national elections and in determining the fate our our future. Your future existence may be at stake.

The Dialectic of the Gender Continuum

 

 

“This is dialectics, its very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics. Ok. Dialectic logics is there's only love and hate. You either love someone or you hate them” - Photojournalist in the movie Apocalypse Now

 

One of the hotly debated topics among people categorized under the encompassing term transgender and some academics is whether gender identity exists on a continuum. I am not convinced that gender identity does exist as a continuum, but I’m open, as in most matters, to the power of persuasion and am willing to reconsider that position.  

 

 

My belief is that if a gender continuum existed, then some of the identities would be fractional representations of others and I posit that this is not possible. My position is that the various gender identities are discrete and have no relation to each other than that they are alternate gender identities. There are some gender identities that are synonyms for others. Some of them do not fit neatly into a binary, the prevailing organization of gender identities in western culture. If you ask the individuals who identify as being gender variant, one will find that the binary of gender identification is valid for most people. If one asks a person with a variant gender identity what their gender is, the vast majority of these individuals will say that are male or that they are female. If I am asked this question, I answer that I am a woman. The concept of the gender binary does not give me pause or create a sense of conflict with the prevailing dominant culture for me.

 

 

I did a review of the literature on pubmed.gov, a database of world wide medical journals sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. It leads me to wonder if this is a theory only found in scholarly disciplines such as sociology. I could not find any articles in NIH database supporting a theory of a gender continuum. Similarly, a search of the Social Welfare Institute yielded one article solely devoted to people with gender identities other than their assigned birth gender and any other references were termed in the context of “LGBT”.  The paucity of scholarly research is more than a little alarming to me. The only books or articles mentioning the concept of a continuum or spectrum were those with a feminist philosophical perspective. I used the University of Ohio library database to research the gender continuum theory.  (I could have used my Alma Mater’s library at the University of Alabama, but in the interest of objectivity….) When I read feminist theory applied to academic subjects I keep in mind that “third wave” feminist theory is a sociopolitical theory that in many instances incorporates the ideals of Marxist political theory. Marxist theory lends itself well to the blurring of identities. This is quite a contrast from other theories in my own profession. Other schools of thought in the field of mental health, such as Behaviorism for example, are notably apolitical. The notion of a gender continuum is far from a universally accepted concept in academia, yet proponents of the concept of gender identity continuum would represent their model as being universally accepted. There is no scientific basis for feminist ideology being any more valid than capitalism or socialism. It is simply a strategy for organizing a society, just as socialism and capitalism are strategies for organizing societies. 

 

 

 It is such a sensitive issue that one would think I had also declared that the world is flat and the earth is the center of the universe. It’s almost heretical to hold the view that gender does not exist on a continuum. To suggest it does not will certainly invite or at least open myself to quite a bit of invective, as it has in the past when I have voiced an opposing view on such matters. Arguments for the existence of the gender continuum mix biological realities with social constructs and arrive at conclusions that do not stand up to the rigors of scientific inquiry. 

 

 

Consider the Hierarchy of Sciences. At the top is Physics, followed by Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Economics and Political Science. The further down the rank we go, the less precise the science becomes and there is less certainty in the results of each discipline’s research. The areas of my expertise lie in the application of the disciplines of Psychology, Sociology and to a lesser extent Political Science and Economics. 

 

 

To the end that I might be persuaded of the existence of the concept of gender being a continuum, the best approach is to engage in dialectic. I had avoided the philosophy courses in the department of religion and philosophy (to my detriment) as an undergraduate, but I did take a course in the philosophy of behavioral sciences my senior year and in graduate school when I selected a course on the philosophy and ethics of social work in the doctoral program I attended. 

 

 

 First, we need a common language in order to discuss this topic. Words mean things. They have specific and generally fixed definitions over the course of time. Among the criticisms I raise about feminist theory is their assertion of the relativity of the meanings of words. They insist that language can be bent to serve the present need to meet an ends. Thus we have the “reclamation” of words that are considered to be pejoratives.

 

 

What is dialectic?   Dialectic is a term used to describe how people who have different views try to persuade each other to their side. It is through dialogue that hopefully the truth will emerge. In classical philosophy, dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is controversy, that is, the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments respectively advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). It is the practice of arriving at a conclusion by the exchange of logical arguments, usually in the form of questions and answers.   

 

 

A continuum is defined as a continuous extent, series, or whole. It is a set of elements such that between them there is a third element. It is any compact set containing two elements, though critics of the gender binary do not recognize this fact.  A continuum has an order. Here lies the problem for me. What is the order of the various identities under the umbrella term transgender? What is the relation of each element to another and their distance from each other? One Quarter? Three Eighths? Is a gender queer half of a transsexual? This is a meaningless concept. 
 

In discussing whether a gender continuum does indeed exist, my position is the null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is defined as a statistical term meaning that the proposed hypothesis cannot be proven. In this case, the null hypothesis that is held forth is that a gender continuum does not exist.  
 

The alternative hypothesis I propose is that set theory explains the existence of various gender identities in a meaningful way. It does not make the presumption that all gender identities are either related or interrelated.  Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects that may or may not have properties in common. For instance: At the extremes of our political system you have extreme liberals and extreme conservatives. The only thing they have in common is belonging to the set “political orientation”.

 

The word “transgender” was first used by John F. Oliven M.D. in his second edition of Sexual Hygiene and Pathology.  His rationale was that sexuality was only tangential to the person who identifies as transsexual. Virginia Prince also began to use this word in the December 1969 issue of the magazine Transvestia. By the mid 1970’s transgender became an umbrella term. At the same time, the term “transgenderist” (TG) became popular in the vernacular to specifically describe people who were living in a cross gender role who did not intend to have genital reassignment surgery. In 1979 Christine Jorgensen rejected the term transsexual, as she stated that her issue was gender identity not her sexuality. She referred to herself as a “trans-gender”. 

 

 

The term “transsexual” originated in the medical and psychiatric communities. Virginia Prince drew a sharp distinction between transgenderists and transsexuals. She did not consider these two entities to be related. 

So with these parameters for our discussion, I would like to begin by asking, what are the poles in the continuum of the umbrella term “transgender” and who are considered to be the elements of this continuum? Or are we really speaking of a broader gender continuum where the poles of the continuum are women who identify as female and body sex is female and males who identify as males and body sex is male (if this continuum does indeed exist)?  
 

The elements of this continuum include as I have been informed by various people (and please forgive me if I leave some identities out) in no particular order: transvestite; transsexual; cross dresser; transgender; drag king/ queen; sissy; gender queer; intersex; eunuch; third gender; fourth gender; fifth gender; agender; genderless; two spirit; androgyne; trigender; transgenderist; and no doubt other identities that I have overlooked. I have purposely left out culturally specific gender identities as they are not universal. For my purposes, including them in this discussion is more confusing than it is helpful. If I can be persuaded that the continuum in gender identities exists, then we can discuss where they belong on a continuum or if some of them don’t belong at all. Do adult babies who identify as cross gender enter into the category of transgender as members of the proposed continuum?  

 

 

How are these identities arranged in a continuum that has validity and reliability? Validity is the quality of being valid and rigorous; the quality of having legal force or effectiveness; the property of being strong and healthy in constitution. It means that there is no change in definition and that it describes accurately properties of a concept or theory. Reliability means whether or not you get the same result under the same circumstances each time the phenomenon is observed. In order to be useful, a continuum of transgender identities must be accurate in describing the placement of the elements and has universal agreement. Another way of describing the meaning of the continuum is that it must define each element’s relation to the rest of the elements on the defined continuum. 

 

 

If one is to construct this continuum, one cannot use social constructs in my opinion, as they shift rapidly. As a result, they will not meet the criteria of reliability and its validity will be fleeting as society evolves (or devolves). 
 

Since for the moment until someone responds to these ideas, I will also put forth the idea that one cannot argue the existence of a gender continuum using sociopolitical arguments of gender identities in establishing the continuum. That serves to narrow down the basis of these identities existing on a continuum. 

 

 

 I would also like to challenge the notion that this continuum is based on brain sex. Though there have been studies that establish differences in brain sex between men and women, and there have been some studies that have found cross gender structures and neuron density patterns in transsexual men and women, there are not enough studies with large enough samples to say with validity and reliability that the brains of transsexuals are more like the gender to which they identify. We can, at this point say that there is a great deal of evidence (an association) that supports that finding and we are closer to understanding the biological underpinnings of gender identity now more than ever. In the area of anatomy and physiology, I can clearly see that we will be able to identify a continuum, as one appears to indeed be emerging, but to date this continuum appears to only include biological males who identify as male, male to female transsexuals, female to male transsexuals, and biological women who identify as women. There is no evidence to support these other identities existing on a biological continuum to my knowledge. The studies I refer to are all quantitative studies. In other words, these studies are based on statistical analysis. To the extent they are proof of a hypothesis they are limited to confidence levels of probability. In other words, we need to know whether we are speaking of a study that is wrong once in a hundred times, once in a thousand times or however the author of the study sets the burden of proof so that the results of the study are accurate and able to successfully predict that a random individual instance will bear out to be the same as the results of the study. 
 

The notion of a transgender spectrum or continuum can only be positively established with the use of qualitative research methods. Qualitative methods of research are not as powerful as quantitative research methods, particularly in proving the reliability of the hypothesis. But they are very important and useful in identifying phenomenon for evaluation using quantitative research techniques. Methods included in qualitative research include participant observation, ethnographies, case studies, surveys, historical reviews, and document surveys. They lead to a rich descriptive understanding of the phenomenon being studied. My opinion is that if a continuum of “transgender” does indeed exist, these are the research techniques that might offer proof of the existence of such a model. They will offer the hypothesis of whether a continuum of transgender identity exists and pave the path to begin quantitative research strategies to prove or disprove the existence of such a continuum. Until that day, I must remain convinced of the null hypothesis, that there is no proof of a transgender continuum and that identities under the rubric of transgender are grouped as a matter of convenience for sociopolitical purposes. 
 

I would propose that perhaps a better way of envisioning all of these identities and recognizing their independence and/ or interdependence with each other would be better served using the Venn diagram. Borrowing from another mathematical representation, Set Theory, a Venn diagram recognizes that there is a universal set of these gender identities.  Yet elements of the set may or may not share properties with each other member of the universal set, while others do share some but not all properties of a member of the set. They do not describe a continuum. An example of this would be the overlap of identities such as gender queer, agender, eunuch, and other similar identities. Other identities such as transsexual and transvestic fetishists share nothing in common but can be recognized members of a set under the umbrella term “transgender”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cis Privilege and Trans Privilege

Coming home from my own therapy session with Dana, I began to think about Cis privilege and Trans privilege. I really can't tell you what made this come to mind. I'm usually fairly reflective after a session, but today I was rockin' out on the way home. I was listening to Derek and the Dominos, the Rolling Stones and the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the radio going home, so I can't really say I was focused on anything particular. I was thinking about what I had written on male and female privilege earlier and that is what triggered this line of thought.

We are all aware of what Cis privilege means as people who are transsexuals. Cis privilege means that you never have to worry about how someone might react to your presence in various situations of which we are all familiar. We might not be afforded the privilege of our true gender identity even when we are going about our lives as the gender we really are. It is possible that we might not be considered to be who we are. As a result, we could possibly be deprived of the privileges of the gender of our identity. It doesn't happen very frequently anymore, but I am sensitive to that discrimination when I sense it could be a real possibility. I most often pass along life seamlessly. Either people don't know I'm a transsexual and see me as a woman who was assigned at birth or they are polite and well mannered people who understand that I am just another woman, though my life history may be apparent. That is immaterial to me. I expect to be treated like a lady. That almost always happens now. (I am thankful!)

The present vogue of conceptualizing everything as a "continuum" such as autism, gender identity and sexual orientation dictates that we look at male privilege and female privilege as a continuum too. Taking it a step farther, the predicate is that there is a continuum of Cis privelege and Trans privilege. I think the majority of us would have a pretty hard time of thinking of what in the world Trans privilege might be. I have, for the past 5 hours. My experience is that of becoming the woman publicly as opposed to being the woman I have always known I was. I can only comment on my own observations of what Trans privilege might be and I would really encourage your comments to add to this to help me on my thoughts on the topic.
I found this on an image search, it is from transachanism.com:

It fails to factor in any reference of female privilege or trans privilege, so it fails the test of modern conceptualization of health and social problems. It does not represent a true continuum. It appears to be a representation of third wave feminist sociopolitical ideology.
So what might trans privilege include? Well as I mentioned, I am female. So, I thought of these things. Most of them are things I view as a loss in life, but females assigned at birth would most likely say: You never had a period. You never were able to/ got pregnant, give birth or nurse your baby.You didn't grow up in fear of being raped or beaten or otherwise abused. (Oh yes. Some of us did, indeed). You weren't discouraged from a professional career and you most likely did not experience discrimination in getting a job or promotion (until we lived as who we truly are).


This is an example of what Cisgender privilege looks like sometimes to members of the transsexual community. I try to keep in mind that Freud himself once said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". Here is another:



We see this from feminists like Janice Raymond and Mary Daily.




 Is it? What do you think?

Do the Gender Police Confront You?

Sheri Berenbaum led a thought-provoking discussion about the often-debated topic of gender differences. An inquisitive crowd kept Berenbaum on her toes as she answered questions concerning whether gender differences are innate or learned. Drawing on over 15 years of research on congenital gender disorders—and using props such as Legos and make-up kits to illustrate her points—Berenbaum challenged the audience to "think outside the box" about the mix of social and biological factors that make us male or female. Sheri can be found on the web and also at her University, Penn State.

The Gender Police have drawn hard lines on people of my experience. We have the extreme Right who would say our very existence is an abomination and we have the extreme left who insist that we must identify as some blend of gender that is neither wholly male or wholly female. I find one as constraining as the other.

I wonder where it came from that if we were free and perfectly healthy individuals that if we identify as women, we are not respected as women or if we identify as men, we are not respected as men. This is the problem of the extreme Right. We simply want to live our lives and be left alone to the right of privacy as any other American Citizen.

The other side of the equation exists from the extreme fringes of Feminism and is solely an extension of Womens' Studies professor Janice Raymond's ideology. Even today as she rewrote a foreward to her book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the SheMale.  Even with her new forward, which is a rather shallow apology to transsexual women, she still sees us as victims of a patriarchy. She was unable to and continues to fail to recognize that we are woman who for many different reasons ended up at odds with our assigned gender. The majority of these do not involve obvious anatomical variations. For this reason being politically coerced into a continuum known as "Gender Spectrum" includes vastly different presentations because of vastly different etiologies, makes us pawns in a political struggle between Left and Right.

Interestingly, the most negative people about the realities of our lives both as individuals and in varying collectives include the extreme Right and the Extreme Left.

For one group, our very existence on the earth is anathamema. For the other group, our very right to a unified gender identity is sacriledge. I find both extremes both nullifying simultaneously.

At this time in our culture, very few who wish to fall under the umbrella  of transgender identify as gender queer. They have every right to that identity. It's not my identity. I do not consider them to have the same orientation of gender or have much in common with me other than a political desire to be left alone and become the best me I can be.

Similiarly people who feel a mix of their genders but have no burning urge to match their physical being to their identity, may be known as transgenders, crossdressers or by other labels that they define themselves by, have every right to be left alone and become the best people they can be.

Simply put, I am a woman. This is not a sociological statement, nor is it a political statement. It is who I am. There are more women who were correctly assigned at birth and individuals such as myself who were not, but sought to correct that error. I do not identify as a third gender or a fourth or a fifth. I'm just a woman.

This is a dual journey that I travel. I am the gender therapist and the gender patient, I bring my experience, professional and personal to the therapeutic alliance. All therapists do that. It is somewhat more unique for my patients as I am also someone who has been going through a legitimate process per the standards of care established by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, a body of which I am proud to me a member.

As many of you know, I have been developing a comprehensive health care system for transgender people in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I have been instrumental in initiating the Speech and Language Department of my health care system to offer voice and communication therapy for transsexuals in order to be able to communicate in a gendered manner that is congruent with our identity.

In announcement to a health care online network, this program was rebuked with a harsh and in my opinion, unwarrented attack. The author of this attack who is a faculty member of a large institution of higher learning, stated that she found it highly offensive that such a program would state that the therapy offered would improve the ability to communicate in a more masculine or feminine style, depending on the preference of the patient. She stated that because of this, she would not wish to refer anyone there for voice therapy.

Personal disclaimer: I was involved in the initiative to develop these services, provided a number of training resources and linked them with other Speech and Language therapy professionals who are members of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health in their field who could be of further help in developing the program that we offer. In my opinion, they have developed a quality program that I myself have participated in and am so more than just comfortable in referring my patients who are interested in these types of services.

What I find to be most outrageous of this experience is the lack of forethought in the reckless condemnation of a service that person has no personal knowlege of, just a blind conviction of an ideology leading to  the same type of rigid results that the extreme right can be accused of (and rightfully so at times).

This is why I always say that I have found as much as bigotry, prejudice and hatred on the far right and the far left.

The issue at hand that I object to is that this person made a judgement that this person knows better for you than you do, therefore would not even grant you the opportunity to decide if this service would be helpful to you or not. Considering the philosophical orientation of this person, I find as much patriarchy in the Third Wave Feminist theory as they railed against in the Second Wave of Feminism. Each wants to control you, just to a different end, but neither will be the one of your own determination.

A pity, isn't it? I've seen absolutely no growth since Janice Raymond. 

Harry Benjamin, Robert Stoller, Richard Green and John Money

I started reading these books back in 1968 or 69. I already knew who I was; a transsexual. Benjamin's book came out in 1966, Then Robert Stoller was next in 1968 and Green and Money in 1969. Those were the first "BIG FOUR" in the field; I think after Benjamin, who advocated biological determinants, is where the wheels started coming off the bus, slowly at first and then it took a radical wrong turn with Money, which is a very strange story.

With Stoller, the etiology of transsexual being due to a psychoanalytic disturbance began to creep into the discussion. Psychoanalytic theory or Object Relations as it is more often practiced today, views us as deeply disturbed, severely personality disordered and deviant. You do not see that kind of language with Benjamin, except in the sense that it is an anomalous, statistically significant rarity. Psychoanalytic theory blames the maternal relationship for just about every problem under the sun from schizophrenia to transsexualism and all sorts of other mental maladies. Psychoanalytic theory is based on mythology and that the powers of myths describe human conflicts which are why Psychoanalysis is such an arcane practice. We do have to note that the Greek and Roman mythology was created as an explanation of human behavior which makes psychoanalysis of value.

Things get worse with John Money, a Feminist. He fully ascribed to Social Learning theory of personality development and this is where feminism chimes in. They believed in John Locke's idea of Tabula Rasa: the mind is a blank slate and you can take a baby regardless of biological potential and raise it to be anything, doctor, banker, lawyer, male, female, whatever; all by environmental determinations. Biology plays no role in this and there is Money's infamous destruction of one child's life that he had recommended to reassigned female after a terribly tragic circumcision accident that destroyed his penis. That was passed off as a great success for so many years until the truth came out after that poor person suicided. Money advocated the promotion of pornography and suggested that pedophilia was not necessarily an unhealthy practice.

 Feminists believe the same thing about social learning as did Money. They believe that much of feminine behavior is societally enforced through a coercive patriarchy. They believe that women who are traditionally feminine and take more traditional roles are sell outs to the patriarchy.

There is a hierarchy of science: Physics, Chemistry, biology, Psychology and Sociology, Economics and Political science. You can see where things stand from that hierarchy. Psychoanalysis tends to be a blend of psychology and sociological theory.

BTW, 1:500 males have Klinefelter's mosaic which a portion of cells are XY and a portion of cells are XXY in various proportions. This is usually discovered in men who are infertile and they have a higher rate of transsexualism than XY males. Of course there are the more severe cases of Andorgen Insensitivity Disorder, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and questions about other more subtle brain changes due to hormonal washing at different times in life.

As we become more sophisticated in neurophysiology, I think more will be learned that Transsexualism is by and large a biological condition and not as a result of any social learning theory.