A whole new school of FtM haters
March 8, 2011 8 Comments
I’ve just come across a bizarre blog, ‘Dirty White Boi’ is an American woman who believes that FtMs are women oppressed by society into becoming men because society has told them to hate their own body. She seems to be a butch lesbian who feels threatened by FtMs because their are less butch lesbians around. She sees young FtMs choosing testosterone and surgery over being butch lesbians and sees that they are mutilating healthy bodies.
The way she makes her point is downright ‘nasty’ and generally unethical. She subscribes to ‘trans only’ groups, where people publish information they think will remain confidential, and then takes posts out of context and puts them on her blog. This is a horrible violation of what felt like a safe safe (she says that as MtFs go into women only spaces and violate them, then it’s ok). She takes videos of kids transitioning on you tube and mocks them. Oh and the comments… she deletes the ones that she disagrees with, I know because two of my carefully crafted ones were deleted.
Annoyingly Dirt has a point, not one I agree with, but one that’s certainly worth thinking of. I actually urge anyone who is thinking of transitioning to read her blog throughly. If you are thinking of transitioning, you should be really sure that you have fully explored the option of being a masculine woman, and decided that it isn’t for you. If you are a young girl who isn’t comfortable with being a woman, in the way that you see your mothers and sisters being then you should really make sure you have explored all other ways of being a woman before deciding that you’re actually a man. If you have done this, and you have come to the conclusion that you are a man, then by all means transition.
But transitioning will involve hormones and surgery, and these have their downsides. You will be on regular medication for the rest of your life, and if you inject it is a bit painful, surgery has side effects which include death, long term infection, disability. If you feel that the only way towards happiness is to take the risk of death – then go for it! But do make sure you’ve explored all options, and don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Not that there are enough FtMs to form a ‘bandwagon’ anywhere I’ve ever been.
About Z
Lucky you that you’ve only just come across her. She’s got quite a reputation in some online FTM communities and not for her respectful behaviour, as you may have guessed. Just as a heads up, she has been known to track and trace IP addresses and linking sites with the aim of either outing or harassing FTMs. The general advice on LJ is not to include a link to her blog.
I get your point about exploring your gender identity as fully as possible, including the consequences (real and potential) of any transition, but I really don’t think her blog is helpful even as a “worst case” in that respect. The one thing is does do is confirm the fact that if one wishes to transition, you’d better be prepared to stand up for yourself and keep your sense of self when challenged (by friends, strangers and especially the medical profession), which is a valuable and necessary lesson. Final point: being a masculine woman and taking T are not mutually exclusive. Thankfully there’s a whole lot of queer space between the binary of “woman” and “man” – something the medical profession are getting better at recognising if my experience and those of a friend are anything to go by (aided by a considerable amount of social and educational privilege).
I’ve got to say, as a femme trans guy, the idea of being a butch women, well that isn’t going to happen.
Hi,
Thanks for reading and commenting, (I don’t think either of you have commented before which means I’m attracting new readers, which is awesome).
I am going to include a link partly because I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to find my real name from this blog, and she can post what she likes about this blog. I feel a strange temptation to mention ‘cisplatin’ in her comments though… (given that every comment beginning with ‘cis’ is deleted).
Fortunately I don’t feel threatened or hurt by her point of view, just intrigued, I know that transitioning was right for me, but it took a while to figure it out and think through the options. I truely believe in challenging views that oppose yours and thinking them through. But her arguments are full of logical flaws and cherry picking. I’m currently trying to work out comments I can leave which point out the flaws and don’t get deleted!
I’m wondering if she is trans, but doesn’t want to admit it to herself, – it reminds me a lot of those ‘Ex Gay’ blogs, hell she’s even developing a therapy to talk ‘young women’ out of it!
I really, until very recently knew very little about the queer space between male and female, so it’s nice to be educated.
This has been interesting for me, because it’s given my blog new things to talk about, I genuinely thought I’d said and done everything about being trans and a doctor (though I don’t do my medical blogging here).
i’d love to hear you talk more about your thoughts on transitioning vs. creating out a butcher version of femininity, as the tension there (please forgive ineloquence — new baby, no sleep. and now it turns out ineloquence isn’t a word.) is something i struggle with. i don’t mean to deny the existence of trans people or say people should transition, but sometimes, as a fairly femme lesbian who still doesn’t like the “traditional” boundaries of womanhood all that much, it can feel like being abandoned — particularly in the case of those who transition and seem to immediately get drunk on access to male privilege. i don’t mean to say that it IS abandonment or that those people are wrong to follow what it in their hearts, mind you, only that it can feel that way.
Hi Bionic Mamma
Thanks for finding my blog. I’ll have a think about that and get it back to you, it would be a good topic for a post. I’ve been blogging for five years nearly so I’m running out of things to say! (Yeah I’m FtM, yeah I’m a doctor, not going to say much about that because it would out me..). I can certainly see why people feel abandoned, and I worry that what seems dead easy when you are in your 20s is less easy when you’re older. I am acutely aware that fertility issues are a big deal for me now, but I just didn’t think that they would be a problem when I was transitioning. If I’d stayed female I’d probably have a baby now, and it would all be lovely. I’m aware that some of my opinions on this are going to not follow the FtM party-line.
The getting drunk on access to male priveledge thing is interesting – although I joke about it, I probably did get a bit drunk on it at first, but the novelty wears off.
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FtMs are women oppressed by society into becoming men because society has told them to hate their own body.
I would say that Dirt’s main point is that womanhood is socially constructed in such a narrow and patriarchal way that finding womanhood uncomfortable is natural for any thinking female.
The hipness (in certain young lesbian circles in the US) of transitioning and the weakness of feminist politics makes young women choose to transition as a privatized alternative out of conventional womanhood, where in other contexts they might have chosen other, public forms of resistance.
I agree with her this far. Her intemperate and occasionally disturbing posting style is a perhaps also a consequence of power-struggles within lesbian organizations.
I feel completely offended and hated upon by this awful person. It’s entirely disturbing that a queer person could be such a discriminatory and hateful individual. I would like for her to get some counseling before her bahaviour actually causes harm to someone. Someone should do something to stop her hate speech.