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Transsexual separatism

Transsexual separatism is a conservative movement within the transgender community which believes that the needs and political goals of people who make a medical transition should be considered separate from those with other kinds of gender identity and expression. It is closely tied to transmedicalism and has parallels with other kinds of separatism, including lesbian separatism.

Background

The 20th century transsexual separatist movement was largely a response to the transgender movement led by Virginia Prince. By the 1990s, transsexual separatists were publishing their views in TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, a publication founded by Davina Anne Gabriel.

Another important separatist gathering was the New Women’s Conference, which had surgical requirements for attendance. In response the Full Circle of Women was created for people who did not have bottom surgery.

In 2002, Cathryn Platine laid out the basic argument:

The very fact that transsexuality is a medical condition requiring our dependence on the medical (and psychological) professions which enslaved us is now being used against us because of a perception by non-transsexual transgenders that it confers a legitimacy on us they wish (without paying the price naturally) to coattail.  The result is we’ve steadily lost what little legal ground we had gained as the “transgender” movement becomes more visible in the form of a steady judicial backlash.

Transsexuals, even those who’s birth certificates were changed, can no longer marry anyone with sure knowledge that the marriage won’t be considered invalid when it’s convenient to do so by ANY third party.  The implied promise of the past that blending in, hiding, denial of past history in exchange for a “normal” life has been repeatedly broken by the courts recently.  Our needs for the most basic tools of daily living are frequently jettisoned at the drop of a hat by our “allies” as a bargaining chip.  Our merely pointing out our differences and different needs is greeted by self appointed “sisters and brothers” with hatred that often escalates to sometimes vicious harassment we don’t even get from the outside!  Gay men often tell transsexual women that we are gay men in denial.  Radical lesbian separatists label us “agents of the patriarchy” and that our biology is our destiny in an interesting reversal of the original feminist battlecry and have been known to join forces with the extreme right to deny even inclusion in the ADA. Janice Raymond did this with  Jessie Helms.  Our history co-opted by gay historians.  We are denied the most basic tools of survival, often lose everything and everyone we hold dear when we transition, often cannot get even burger flipping jobs while holding college degrees, bear the brunt of homophobia since we are more likely to be identifiable as “queer” and yet are pointedly and repeatedly excluded from legislation such as ENDA nationally and SONDA here in New York.  Being thrown out of our own families and denied contact with our own children is the norm, not the exception.  Trans-children have been ripped away from supportive families by social agencies and subjects of years of extremes of behavioural modification to get them to renounce their gender identity.

References

Taylor, Dana (July 5, 2013). Birth of a Transsexual Separatist and then Born Again. TransAdvocate https://www.transadvocate.com/birth-of-a-transsexual-separatist_n_9417.htm

Williams, Cristan (August 2, 2012). TS Separatism: 1994 & 2002. https://research.cristanwilliams.com/2012/08/02/ts-separatism-1994-2002/

Cowan, Zagria (September 26, 2011). TG, word and concepts: Part 5: The Backlash. A Gender Variance Who’s Who https://zagria.blogspot.com/2011/09/tg-word-and-concepts-part-5-backlash.html

Platine, Cathryn (2002). Why Transsexual Separatism?  A Transsexual Separatist Manifesto. Gallae https://www.gallae.com/cathy/essay12.html [archive]

Barnes, Whitney (July 8, 2001). The Medicalization of Transgenderism. Trans-Health https://www.trans-health.com/2001/medicalization-of-transgenderism/

(August 1996). Transsexualism: A primer. http://www.looking-glass.greenend.org.uk/primer.htm

Wilchins, Riki Ann (1994). Why post-op trans women should not be allowed at Michigan. TranSisters: he Journal of Transsexual Feminism https://archive.org/details/transsistersjou1994unse_2/page/30/mode/2up

O’Hartigan, Margaret (May 1993). Changing sex is not changing gender’, Sound Out, May 1993:20

Resources

Digital Transgender Archive (digitaltransgenderarchive.net)

Eminism (eminism.org)