transgender

How Days of Action Work in Addressing Police Bias and Anti-Transgender Violence

Today in hundreds of cities and towns across the world transgender and gender-nonconforming people and their allies pause to honor our fallen heroes. The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was founded in 1998 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith—a transgender graphic designer, columnist, and activist—to memorialize the murder of Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts. It occurs annually on (or around) November 20, and its overarching goal is to bring attention to the continued violence endured by the transgender community with the hope that together we can end such violence and intolerance.

Not long ago, Washington, DC, found itself in the midst of an epidemic of violence and murders against transgender people. The rates had been steadily growing over 10 years and suddenly we suffered 4 murders in less than 3 months. (The increase in discrimination was perhaps due to a backlash against the migration of many transgender people to DC, from Virginia and elsewhere, wanting to live in a city that had, and still has, the country’s most comprehensive human rights protections for gender-nonconforming people.)

Transgender Day of Action  Washington, DC November 21, 2011

Transgender Day of Action
Washington, DC
November 21, 2011

Vigil followed vigil and soon it was time for our annual TDOR. But we decided to add on a more immediate and visible Transgender Day of Action to bring this outrageous state of affairs to the forefront of public consciousness and the media and put the police, city officials, and the U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, on notice.

In 2011, we started with just 5 people who met once or twice a week to hear directly from survivors of anti-trans violence and police harassment because any action to be effective would have to be grounded in real-world circumstances. We called ourselves the TLGB Police Watch, and eventually represented a coalition that included more than a dozen local organizations which turned these community concerns into goals, a set of demands, and a plan for a day of non-violence civil disobedience.

Within 24 hours after putting boots on the ground, at the Metropolitan Police Headquarters to City Hall and the offices of the U.S. Attorney of Washington, cold cases were reopened, the constitutionality of Prostitution Free Zones was questioned, police training efforts changed, and conference rooms once closed to transgender issues were opened wide.

At an international trans health conference the following spring, we reported out to trans activists from other cities, providing training and materials based on our success in effectively slowing the rates of violent incidents and murders.

Subsequent DC days of actions started popping up at other times during the year, fighting for healthcare access, employment opportunities, and housing nondiscrimination. The number of activists working directly on trans issues in DC right now includes more than 100 people and most of the organizations that were originally part of the TLGB Police Watch coalition.

The important take away is that days of action work and will continue work in visibly fighting this scourge of our community. It is an educational and effective way to make your demands heard and bring about change. The only requirement is your determination to organize across a spectrum of stakeholders, and then show up to do the work. Anyone who wants help in organizing a Transgender Day of Action in their community anytime of the year can tap into our resources and/or contact us for assistance and support.

DC was home city up until about 18 months ago, and tonight my heart and soul (and continuing support) are with all my friends there. Love is what it is all about because it has the power to extinguish hate in our world. Let’s work together to make world a place that is safe for everyone and human rights reign.

George Larcher image Flickr/creative commons

George Larcher image
Flickr/creative commons

 

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Reproductive Sex Gets More Abnormal Every Day

Editor’s Note: Periodically we have fun delving into our archives to bring you still relevant items. This one was written in 2011 by our co-founder Dan Massey that puts reproductive sex in its place. Comments welcome, as always.

Last Wednesday night (8/3) we hosted a meet-the-author event for the launch of Gloria Brame’s new book, The Truth About Sex: Volume 1. More than 30 fans of kink and more showed up, many from the Alternative Sexualities conference the same day in DC. There was a lot of Q&A and raunchy banter leading to some observations of how “non-reproductive sex” had come to be widely accepted in the last 50 years as an important part of the total sexual experience.

Adam and Eve

When confronted by an assumption that does not seem warranted, I try reversing my perspective, looking through the opposite end of the telescope so to speak, and often find my altered viewpoint enlightening. In this case, I felt the discussion was overburdened with the millennially long uphill climb of humanity from the pit of obligatory reproduction. No sooner did we figure out what caused children than all the usual scolds came out of the woodwork to try to force us to do it anyway, even when we didn’t want to.

So I spoke up to say that I thought, when you considered all the possible varieties of sex, orientation, affinity, gender identity, and gender orientation, the so-called “normal” (i.e., cisnormative heteronormative) reproductive sex act becomes a mere footnote to this multidimensional space in which we can all freely express our joy in life.

By now it should be clear that reproductive sex (without any form of intentional fertilization control) is something to be avoided unless one is fully prepared to deal with the consequences, namely the birth of a child, with sufficient preparation and capability to safely oversee eir formative life period. No child should ever be born into a situation where they are not desired and respected as the highest good to their parents. No potentially fertile couple should ever consider (or even be allowed to consider) reproduction without having attained some maturity that qualifies them to raise and educate a child.

In short, there is nothing more unusual, abnormal, and potentially self-destructive in the entire domain of sexuality and eroticism than the actual act of breeding. How could anyone possibly have thought masturbation was dangerous relative to actual reproduction? Was nobody paying attention to anything real at all? Even if masturbation really did grow hair on your palms, wouldn’t that be obviously preferable to creating an unwanted child, a child that would suffer endless personal abuse and humiliation until one day he might take vengeance on his tormentors?

Sex is about joy, pleasure, happiness, and personal sanity. Breeding is not about any of these. It is a unique and different aspect of life that, while extremely important to many people, is just one tiny and extremely dangerous corner of the universe of sex. Reproduction is an act in and of itself, which has nothing to do with erotic sex, except for the physical association in the wiring of human body. But the wires that give joy and delight actually don’t have much to do with operating the plumbing that makes babies. For the beast, the erotic senses drive behavior towards reproductive sex; however, for observant and rational humans, they actually have nothing to do with reproduction.

We are not animals. We are human, even transhuman beings, able to orient ourselves in the world, to observe the events and activities of our environment, to decide on the most appropriate next action to take ourselves, and to take such condign action in a timely way. And when we thus become fully, rationally conscious of what is really happening and our role from moment to moment in making things happen, it is easy to see the optimal choice—to finally dispose of the delusion of reproduction as the whole of sex and raise our eyes to the vast opening sky of possibilities.

Planetary society is entering a new and fabulous age of sex and gender freedom, when the range and domain of such experience and exploration is no longer defined by the mechanics of reproduction. At last the challenges of uncontrolled reproduction can be addressed, as all are educated to a life of sexual experience beyond simple interhuman bestiality. The making of babies is separate and secondary to the desires and actions of the lover to do good to the beloved. Fulfill your lovers in every way from the sensory to the transcendent, according to each individual’s sensitivities, and put reproductive sex in its place.

—Dan Massey

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

Park your formulaic sex at the door

Like a lot of people, I took note a couple of weeks ago when Cosmo, Cosmopolitan Magazine, the fun girl’s bible, ran a story with pictures laying out 28 Mind-blowing Lesbian Sex Positions.

Flicker/creative commons

Flicker/creative commons

The modern Cosmo was the brainchild of its brilliant editor and author Helen Gurly Brown in 1965, who started dialogs on topics unheard of in print at the time, skillfully merging sexuality with a commercially available mainstream magazine. Long considered a sexual freedom advocate, she told women they could “have it all.”

With this article on lesbian sex, and few others on gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects during the last year or so, Cosmo can be commended for branching out and acknowledging lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, appearing to be more inclusive while trying to tap into that lucrative market they’ve ignored for decades. They are trying even while acknowledging that many or most feminists and lesbians have shunned Cosmo, put off by so much editorial about how the average woman, once objectified, can make herself sassy and attractive to their male partner/s.

While wondering if any lesbians were consulted in the making of that article I came across some criticism by real lesbians who posit that this entire concept seemed to have been the product of frat boys based on their porn fantasies (pretty much the style of most of the magazine’s stories). That may well be true but I think it was overreach — when making fun of the positions, these critics called them “stupid” saying they were either undoable or useless, dismissing them entirely.

It was impossible to hold up one’s own body weight, let alone the body weight of the other person in half of them. We had to balance on our tip toes and contort our bodies in the most insane ways. And, most importantly, there was nothing arousing about any of it.

What I think is being missed here by all parties is that touching bodies in unusual or unexpected ways can be rewarding, bringing you to heights you might at first have overlooked. It seems that, once liberated from the constraints of men, feminists and lesbians have gradually become more like men in how they approach satisfying their own desires.

We have sex. We fuck. We use our fingers and our bodies and our mouths and our toys and we get ourselves and each other off. Just like straight people do. There’s stimulation and penetration and vibration. There’s licking and sucking and smacking and grabbing. 

Instead of exploring erotic encounters that expose oneself to unexpected delights found all over the body, not rushing so much and staying curious to couple all parts of the body in surprising ways, men, and now it seems many straight women and lesbians, tend to recreate a slalom with specific goals to be met at every turn, usually in a certain order to get to their orgasm in as straight a line as possible.

But that is so, so boring.

Even the critics include a paragraph with two contradicting statements, aptly portraying the push and pull between anxiety about reaching the goal of orgasm and the desire for sex to be more than just that.

But there is not, I repeat, there is not anyone rubbing foreheads on each others’ belly buttons or rubbing bottoms against anyone’s sternum, not in the name of having an orgasm any way. By making sex all about an orgasm we miss the erotic excitation of our minds as well as our bodies.

Sex is an erotic encounter that stimulates physical, psychological, and, some agree, spiritual growth. If you focus less on scoring the goal you will play a more artful and nuanced game that is rewarded of surprises and new stimulation.

Slow down, set aside your usual formula for a week and see what happens.

 

Israel’s Messy Package (Part 2)

flickr/creative commons

flickr/creative commons

Yesterday, in Part 1, I told my personal family’s jewish history in an attempt to put the existence of Israel into a broader context. Earlier enough, I had dispensed with the myth of my youth, that Israel was simply the world’s and Palestine’s gift to the jewish culture, a safe harbor for Jews following the atrocities of WWII. In fact, Israel was conceived by a militant zionist movement begun in the late 1800s, so it is motive that has to be understood for anything to change.

(We use the word, zionists, as we use the word, christianists, to denote fundamentalists who purport to believe in their respective religious traditions but display none of the characteristics, quite the opposite.)

The early zionists set on their quest to establish a religious state, with eyes on the grand prize: the occupation of the geographical, historical, and religious epicenter of the Middle East. Its big mistake, and the mistake of the US and other countries that helped bring about the 1948 establishment of the state Israel, was that two other major world religions, Christianity and Islam, also lay claim on the same pile of sand, sharing reverence to the same Abraham.

Zionists, however, proceeded and proceed today according to their belief that they are the superior race and religion which has suffered injustices for centuries (more and worse than any other) making them singularly deserving of a special berth in the world, a completely new class of world citizen with complete dominion over their tribal enemies. For starters, that’s just a galling affront to all people and all religions. Logically, adherents to any theoretical superior religion would perforce never resort to violence, and never deny the beliefs or non-beliefs of their neighbors.

Upon arrival in the region, the zionists saw no wisdom in becoming the local peaceniks or diplomatic leaders to bring about world peace (in which case they might today be considered one of the most respected countries in the region and the world). Instead they began an unending and bloody campaign to expand, encroach, invade, disenfranchise, and discriminate against all non-jews in the way, in any way they could. Rather than justifying war as their need to secure their borders, they would do better to ask themselves what they have done to draw the ire of their sequestered and suffering neighbors.

Israel was founded on the basis of religious extremism and discrimination, and has rendered itself indefensible. Just yesterday, Navi’ Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for an investigation into Israeli war crimes.

Israel’s failure to fully enfranchise the Palestinian people from the start, its commitment to stand in the way of any two-state solution, and their institutional religious discrimination set the course for failure. We are now living through the results of these failures, waiting for new, younger, progressive, and humane leaders to take the reins of the Israeli government, and waiting for America to wake up.

The zionists have steadily expanded their movement, now known as today’s Israel Lobby (greater than AIPAC), monolithic in scope, hiding in plain sight, and controlling practically every aspect throughout modern American life. It’s not just the $3 billion a year and technical/military assistance our tax dollars pay for. The Israel Lobby controls the election of congressmen and every presidential election, and, sadly, all media. Unquestioned loyalty to Israel has, unfortunately, always been viewed as being in America’s interests by guaranteeing a permanent base in the region to spread our own nationalistic, capitalistic religion. And, in case we forget, because the existence of Israel happens to coincide with christianist belief that it is necessary for Jesus Christ’s someday return.

The Israel Lobby reminds me of another group: the secretive christianist organization known as The Family (also as The Fellowship) with its 10,000 cells world wide that is also working for religious dominion over its perceived enemies.

So, today, I’m asking some starting questions. We’d like to hear what you think.

1. Why are activists, who are no longer hypnotized by the Israel Lobby rhetoric and working to solve the humanitarian crises underway, so roundly criticized, even from their left flank?

2. Why are so many vocal members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement still blinded by the Israel Lobby’s talking points, failing to recognize our innate solidarity with Israel’s victims?

3. When will America take down the veil and reveal to the world that today’s Israel has no intention of seeking a two-state solution under any circumstance and that’s why it is so ready to resort to untold violence that stifles more moderate Palestinan voices?

Israel has forgotten that diplomacy is a table from which you never get up and leave. No matter what you think about the inferiority of your neighbor, nothing, no thing, justifies violence. There is always a way. You simply need to keep talking until you get to the last word: peace.

I remember my daughter one day when she was 7 years of age exclaiming, “Mommy, mommy, I know what the opposite of war is! It’s creativity!”

It’s not too late to heed the prophetic wisdom of some of our greatest statesmen, such as Dean Acheson in 1947 warning that creating land already occupied by Palestinians would “imperil not just American but all Western interests in the Middle East.”

Also see: AIPAC Is the Only Explanation for America’s Morally Bankrupt Israel Policy

Israel’s Messy Package (Part 1) here.

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As you may have seen in VenusPlusX’s Manifesto and all over this site, we are dedicated to the end of nationalism (racist by nature) and the end of racism (the chief expression of sexual oppression) by fostering progress (universal human rights, global peace). We align with all others who see progress as the the elimination of useless, coercive, inhumane systems of governments, corporations, and religious hierarchy, salvaging parts of our human legacy worthy of respect, and adding new and human and largely voluntary associations.

Transreligion for Athiests and Non-Athiests Alike

Religious myth has only degraded and inhibited human progress. Essentially all contemporary religions are myth based. Christianity fails the test of worth when it relies on Hebrew racial myth (the old testament) and Greek philosophical myth (the concept of the Christos and related ideas) as absolute truths. We know that nothing that draws on such ancient Sci-Fi can be either true, good, or beautiful, except by accident, and thus stands forever opposed to the power of love in the world.

There are, fortunately, many people (now and in the past 2000 years) who love others, serve others, do good to others, and make our world more beautiful by their efforts. Some of these people call themselves Christians or Jews or Muslims or Atheists or something else, which is their choice, but their lives have taken inspiration from the universal powers of love and truth in the human mind, not from religious myth or dogma.

Eddi van W Flickr/creative commons

Eddi van W
Flickr/creative commons

Transhumanists continue to debate the appropriateness of any kind of religious faith or behavior as a component of Transhuman life. My own post-transition perspective illuminates many ethical and moral concerns of the Transhumanists. Foremost, if we are to foster the emergence of a genuine Transhuman philosophy of life, we need to create an inspirational framework that justifies and motivates rational behavior. We should evaluate candidate inspirational frameworks according to their individual ability to satisfy essential requirements that must be met by any proposed framework.

In my view, a satisfactory transhuman rationally religious world view ought to address five basic requirements that bridge the gaps of sex and gender and merge the physical, psychic, and inspirational elements of joy into a total personal and socially transforming experience of reality. At the same time, we recognize that a genuinely operational inspirational framework, a true transreligion, can only emerge from the collective unification of individual joyful experience. This list is just a starting point for further thought and discussion.

1) Assure complete freedom from reliance on any myth or backstory. Our beliefs are based on plain observational knowledge and insights of personal wisdom.

2) Demonstrate open and informed attitudes, viewpoints, and experiential training for all of the many dimensions of sex and gender.

3) Practice group communion for collective psychic inspiration and empowerment, through the exploration and experience of sex and gender as acts of communion.

4) Fellowship every transhuman living on this planet. Empower them to know the joy of living, showing how love finds expression in true service to others by doing good and making beauty.

5) Be open to alliance with any cosmic government that may make its presence or influence felt in human affairs, with a willingness to facilitate transhuman emergence. In the meantime dedicate your life to the highest principles of love, truth, goodness, and beauty.

To summarize, we help one another by starting with baldfaced mythless truth and showing each other the joy that is really important and gives meaning to life. A universal acknowledgment of the possibility that some external force will intervene keeps us mutually focused on progression towards our ideals of truth and love, regardless of what the future brings. And our intent to combine free and open acceptance of all forms of sex and gender expression with equally free and open communion, joy, and fellowship guarantees our ability to lead the destined evolution of human affairs.

Transhumans may find something like this just fine as the basis for a way of life and be finally able to leave the god talk to the past. But a religion, the social expression of a community of individuals who share common ideals, is not designed, so much as grown through the social customs of the community. Setting aside old, incorrect beliefs, the inherent truth of principles like these will emerge and cause focused will actions. Through trial and error, the community will gradually discover convenient and innovative ways of serving these principles to more and more people. And that will be the emergence of true Transreligion.

Now is the time for a new inspirational framework to replace the outdated and overly interpreted ideas of our pastfathers. I do not know what will emerge, but I trust that it will necessarily be true to ideals and principles such as those stated here.

Editor’s note: This was published a few years ago to offer a framework for a new non-religion incorporating the ideas of sex and gender freedom. It is re-issued today to help spur the coming together of many diverse points-0f-view who are striving for a humane world unified with shared ideals. 

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

Three Basic Ideas of VenusPlusX

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

The work of VenusPlusX is to explain to humanity a few basic ideas that can be applied to address weaknesses in the evolved human social order. These ideas  have the power to shape the path of human social evolution.

These concepts are fundamental to all of our work and help us understand and explain how humanity can escape from the constraints imposed by fear and ignorance that presently interfere with human progress.

  1. the universe is populated and has an organized government, one branch of which is responsible for the conditions of prior mismanagement present on this planet and ongoing efforts to expedite their remediation.
  2. there is a simple supreme law of behavior that defines for each individual how they may best contribute to the expression of love and the healing of evil for their fellows.
  3. the human concept and phenomenon of transgender is the emerging direct experience of cosmic joy and play in human social and recreational activities.

First, we are in no way alone in the universe. Not only is our galaxy necessarily populated by beings much like ourselves in different stages of social development, but the large-scale operation of the affairs of the peoples of that galaxy is necessarily coordinated by some sort of cosmic government that deals with human affairs on a scale that no single people can address themselves.

In this and many other comments on this blog we will speak of something as “necessary.” By this we mean that some aspect of destiny cannot be fulfilled unless it is true. This form of argument in terms of potentialities rather than actualities belongs to the world of “modal logic,” especially developed by the great logician Kurt Goedel. In the paragraph above, we basically mean, “Why the hell would you think the universe isn’t populated? If it could happen here it must have happened all over the place. Don’t be a heliocentic homocentric fool.” As for the government, it basically comes down to, “Considering the human propensity to invent rules of living for everybody, how can you imagine an entire galaxy wouldn’t develop systems of administration and adjudication? Just because you can’t imagine what the issues would be for a group of planets separated by light-years, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Your imagination isn’t that great.” Grow some humility, monkey-son.

Second, there is a supreme law of behavior that determines what actions of each person contribute to the individual’s development as a loving person and make a permanent impact on the expression of Love in the universe. We state them here and will return to their explanation in a later blog:

  • Become Love
  • Live Truth
  • Do Good
  • Make Beauty

We do not say “tell the Truth,” although a decision to do so might be entirely correct. To us, Truth is not just words, but the direction in which our will shapes our actions of Love to achieve Good and Beauty as results. Thus, we say “live Truth,” because, to us, Truth is a living reality. Similarly, we say “make Beauty,” not “seek Beauty,” though the latter may be entirely appropriate in a given situation. In each case, the prescribed action is particular to the Supreme value being enacted.

Third, except for areas in which biological reproduction is employed for the creation of new human personalities, all transcendent beings exist in state one might call intergender or omnigender; however, since such beings have no need for sex for reproduction, but are widely exploring all forms of gender expression and behaviors provided by their transphysical bodies, the term “transgender” will be used in these blogs, in the sense of omnigender or intergender. We see the transgender phenomenon as increasingly manifest in human society to stem from the natural human responsiveness to the true transgender nature of the developing human personality. You will find an initial exploration of these ideas in my paper Why We Are All Transgender.

Español:  http://espanol.venusplusx.org/?p=11056

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Gender Definition

Do you think that gender is a social construct to support the binary point of view? As gender lines blur, will binary objectification fade?

Leave a comment and let us know what you think, or make your own video or blog to share. We will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt or slap bracelet to thank you.

Video by Tiye Massey.

A Second Chance

No one encouraged me to be productive, to make something of my life. Hell, I thought selling drugs and prostituting were careers so naturally when I grew up I followed in those footsteps. I became a prostitute which led to drug addiction and then the cycle began.

Nothing good became of my life, each day got harder and harder. The more I lived the more I hated myself. I just didn’t understand what I had done to deserve such a horrible life. On a daily basis I would wonder how was it possible for someone to have a child and leave them to feel like this? I thought of suicide many times, but I was too afraid to do it so I knew I wanted to live, I just didn’t know how to live.

One day a friend said to me,”Brandi, you ain’t nothing but a dressed up trash can!” I got angry. I knew she was telling the truth — I just didn’t know how to take it. It hurt my feelings, but it made me self-reflect. And the way I treated myself since has been drastically different.

About a month ago I signed up for a program called Project Empowerment. And I got a chance to get to know the real me without all the hurt, pain, and resentment. This program has inspired me above anything I could’ve ever imagined. I went into that class of 30 students as the only transgender person and I thought for sure it would not work. I was mistaken. The program focused on me, it challenged me to be better, to fight harder, to not give up and take my place in life as a professional woman. No more drug-addicted prostitute. No, today I am working as a hair stylist assistant and I feel good about myself. When I look in the mirror, I see hope! Those days of wanting to kill myself are over. A second chance has come and I’ve taken full advantage of it.

The director of Project Empowerment recognized the change and growth within me. I must tell you it feels good when other people start to see things in you that you never thought were possible. It does something to your soul and it gives you an immediate sense of confidence, wow! Somebody believes in me. Unexpectedly, he called me up at the  graduation as a surprise speaker. Now that’s growth, and I spoke from the heart. When I was done everyone was on their feet giving me applause. That’s never happened in my life and I didn’t know how to process it, but I knew it felt good so I took it in as my moment of celebration. Being celebrated for doing something good.

Your life doesn’t have to be what it was yesterday. If you find yourself looking in the mirror and hating your inner self, take a moment, reflect, and then let life present itself. A second chance came to me and I took it. I’ve never been more happy. Make yourself available,  be ready, asecond chance will come.

If you walk away from this story with one thing, let it be this: If you allow your past to define you, you’ve lost and it will most certainly confine you. The past is what it is. Embrace the future and step into your second chance.

International Transgender Day of Remembrance in DC

This month’s official DC Transgender Day of Remembrance honors all of those who have died in the strucggle for equality, and their families, as activists rededicate themselves to help answer today’s community concerns.

Celebrated internationally, the Transgender Day of Remembrance in DC will take place at 6 PM, Tuesday, November 20, 2012, at the DC Metropolitan Community Church, 474 Ridge Street NW (just north of M Street, near the Green and Yellow Mount Vernon Square Metro Station), and organizers hope the public will attend.

Earline Budd, Executive Director of Transgender Health Empowerment (THE), and Day of Remembrance planning group member, notes, “Each year this event proves to be better and better, and more empowering for the community.”

Ms. Budd is happy to report, “Also this year, just a few days before the DC Transgender Day of Remembrance, Whitman-Walker Health, Casa Ruby DC, DC Trans Coalition (DCTC) , and THE are co-hosting a community conversation on improving transgender health,” at 7 PM on Thursday, November 15, also at the DC Metropolitan Community Church. Presentations by health providers, advocates, and public policy experts will focus on the significant challenges Transgender individuals have in accessing culturally competent health care, including primary medical care, HIV/AIDS care, mental health care, and addiction services.

 

 

What Causes Terminal Transphobia?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español The degree of antipathy that a large segment of society bears towards transgender and gender non-conforming folk is arguably among the most extreme of any systematic persecution of a minority population.

Transphobia arises and is very difficult to cure because the person affected senses a threat to his or her own self-concept of sexual identity. For them it is not possible to consciously acknowledge that a new kind of human is emerging, with superior insight, courage, and adaptability.

Transfolk are the incoming and long-awaited wave of social change for this new age.

Only the fear of one species for extinction and replacement by a superior species can summon such extravagant hatred as we have seen, from Main Street hooligans to the political power brokers who institutionalize transphobia in our laws and policies.

There are many factors that cause whole parts of society to fear knowledge of the transgender and gender non-conforming person. These factors also cause them to fear any new knowledge and push them inward in many other areas of life.

Some people have been so abused by their families and society that they fear to imagine the most pleasurable elements of human existence entirely, and become tragically fixated on cisgender heterosexuality, rejecting a vast range of healthy erotic activities. A relatively small number of people in the world are exclusively feminine or masculine, yet most people in the modern world remain ignorant of this fact, worship the binary, and hold extreme notions, inhuman at best, about how other people, including intersex people, must perform in society to avoid destroying civilization. In fact society is most certainly crumbling today wherever we fail to learn that breaking boundaries of gender in exploration of androgyny is necessary for any future harmony or human progress.

Many among us (and you know who you are) are so insecure in their own sexual identity that they cannot bear to contemplate changing genders or having sex reassignment surgery (SRS), even though only a small percentage of transgender people ever seek surgery.

No doubt there is something very different about androgyny. It can be at once confusing and terrifying to the superficial thinker.

Transgender folk are either in the process of addressing their personal androgyny or have personally traversed that territory to become the people they are today. It is the same look at androgyny that inspires someone to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual (GLB), although they find this a frightening and threatening topic often productive of hidden or overt transphobia.

The life experience of transgender and gender non-conforming people enables them to understand the terrain of sexual orientation and gender identity to a degree largely unknown, even in the so-called GLB community.

Although no two transgender or gender non-conforming folk may agree on detailed personal perspectives, they understand the issues, the alternatives, and the depth of their own nature better than anyone else.

This constellation of attributes, whittled down through the most extreme forms of social oppression, defines a community of individuals of truly awesome personal capabilities.

Only the most extreme and vile forms of social oppression keep these personalities from developing their powers of understanding and leadership, which would be of enormous benefit to society.

Transgender and gender non-conforming folk who have successfully navigated the wasteland of social ignorance face continuing opposition from fearful, ignorant bigots, who force asinine non-issues to the forefront of public discourse, dividing and diverting attention to ridiculous concerns, such as bathroom rape.

The transidentity’s unique responsiveness to the vitological influence of the androgyne cosmos further aligns these individuals with the force of destiny, inspiring them to persevere in spite of overwhelming opposition.

The unenlightened homo-sapiens see and fear people equipped with a seemingly superhuman understanding of most of life’s perplexing personal problems. Rather than perceiving an opportunity to be led from darkness to embrace their own androgyne destiny, they retreat in fear.

They hate that which would advance them immensely, if only they could abandon fear.

Transfolk are truly the incoming wave of social change for this new age.

No longer will we hide our transpowers (and recognition of our androgyny) in shame and fear.

We are your natural-born leaders in the world of the erotic and the vitological.

We are here to show humanity a better way.

Trust and rejoice!

Creative commons image by TransGriot, WipeOutTransphobia