There are several points that need to be made here. This post may be long, but I suspect I am the most qualified poster here to discuss the subject (no false modesty here). For those who haven't followed the whole discussion, here are a couple of links to the closed thread where I discuss some of the history of the term "Tranny."
http://www.eunuch.org/forums/showthread ... post233690 http://www.eunuch.org/forums/showthread ... post233884 .
The transsexual sexologists' Axis of Evil, Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence observed that transsexuals tended to fall into one of two groups which they called Autogynephilic, and Homosexual. The theory they developed to explain it was rather preposterous, but the observation is valid. The AG (I don't want to write the whole thing every time) group were older, usually from a straight background, often married, better educated, more likely to identify as lesbian, though less sexually active. The Homosexual group were younger, sometimes teenagers, often thrown out by their family because they were gender variant and sexually active with men, thus perceived as gay. Being younger, prettier, poorer and often homeless they were much more likely to get into sex work, escorting, street prostitution and porn. Most large cities have areas where trans prostitutes can be picked up. Up till the early 2000s and the flowering of the Internet, we all hung around together, against a common oppressor, at the local gay bar, and met at trans support groups, which were the only place to get info on hormones, electrolysis and all the other fun things we go through. With the rise of the internet, that hanging together was replaced by sitting alone at a computer communicating with people you might never meet in a medium that encourages fanaticism. With the popularity of talk shows, Phil Donahue, and particularly Jerry Springer, trans people became media darlings, and they wanted the most colorful and outrageous, often sex workers. Then celebrities started getting caught with "tranny" prostitutes in large number and the term, along with she-male became associated with sex workers. These days the two groups don't socialize and seldom meet, and don't much like each other, the HS group thinks the AG group are a bunch of silly old cross-dressers sitting around playing fem, and the AG groups think the HS are homosexuals dressing as men to have sex with other men often for money. The vilification of the word "Tranny" is a part of the AG group trying to distance themselves from the HS group and their association with sex work. The HS group seldom objects to tranny or she'-male, unless accompanied with violence. That distancing is a bit ironic because, frankly, our foremothers were often whores, because until recently it was the only occupation that society would allow those few with the courage to be transsexual.
And the whole politically correct attempt to ban words smacks too much of magical thinking. The idea that calling someone a colored man is enervating and demeaning while calling him a man of color empowers and enhances him, is exactly the same as the magician believing that getting an incantation exactly right will give him power. I grew up on "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me." while today the punishment for using the word may be many times that for an actual deed. If I hit you over the head with a baseball bat I might get a couple of years for assault and battery, while if I call you "faggot" and hit you over the head with a baseball bat I could get ten years for a hate crime, making the word five times worse than the deed. The problem with what the law calls "fighting words" is that they are used deliberately to attack and hurt. The more you succeed in making the words awful and hideous, the more power you hand to our enemies to attack us. Dick Gregory had the right idea when he titled his autobiography Nigger, saying " Dear Momma -- Wherever you are, if ever you hear the word "nigger" again, remember they are advertising my book." That is why we reclaim words, to take away their power to harm us. (though as I pointed out in the earlier post, we have been using the word all along, so it's hardly reclaiming)
I invite you to look at what Punky quoted"
If someone yells "dyke" to a lesbian they're meaning "being gay is wrong/disgusting to me". If a lesbian reclaims the word she's saying "being gay is ok so this word should not be offensive and in fact I will say it with pride".If someone calls me a "tranny" they're likely to mean "you're a man in a dress".Reclaiming the word would imply saying "yes, I am a man in a dress and I'm proud of it". At this point I might as well reclaim the word "faggot", considering that that has too been used against me.I am not proud of being a man, because I am NOT a man.Reclaiming "tranny" is not the same as reclaiming "dyke" or "queer" or other words used against cis LGB people. Those words aren't (usually) used to invalidate one's identity.It comes as no surprise that pretty much everyone who's reclaiming "tranny" is a drag queen or a cross-dresser but hardly someone who actually identifies as a different gender than what they were assigned at birth, and when they are they're usually trans men and we know that that word is disproportionately used against "trans-feminine" people. Notice the utter derision heaped on the "man in a dress." Why does this so offend her. If she really believes she is just another woman, why would a man in a dress be so offensive. Most bio-women can laugh at Flip Wilson's Geraldine, or the movie Too Wong Fu or Priscella Queen of the Desert, without taking offense. The man in a dress joke goes back at least to Classical Greece 2500 years ago. See the story of Hercules and Omphale.
In one of many Greek variations on the theme of penalty for "inadvertent" murder, for his murder of Iphitus, the great hero Heracles, whom the Romans identified as Hercules, was, by the command of the Delphic Oracle Xenoclea, remanded as a slave to Omphale for the period of a year,,...The theme, inherently a comic inversion of gender roles is not fully illustrated in any surviving text from Classical Greece. .... and to Sophocles in The Trachiniae it was shameful for Heracles to serve an Oriental woman in this fashion,[7] but there are many late Hellenistic and Roman references in texts and art to Heracles being forced to do women's work and even wear women's clothing and hold a basket of wool while Omphale and her maidens did their spinning, as Ovid tells:[8] Omphale even wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and carried Heracles' olive-wood club. Unfortunately no full early account survives, to supplement the later vase-paintings. I think this is a symptom of our dirty little secret, how transphobic many trans people are. There is a tiny minority of males, such as Andrej Pejic or Bill Kaulitz, who can fluff up their hair, change their walk and gestures slightly and pass as girls. But for the vast majority of us, going from perceived as male to perceived as female is going to go through a period where we are perceived as a man in a dress. Without a sense of humor this period is going to be painful and humiliating.(though from the evidence of some of our and Fictionmania stories, there are some who get off on the humiliation) And for a certain percentage of transwomen, their lack of physical and financial assets are going to make it impossible to pass completely. And yet many of them persist in the face of impossible odds. If you want to see real courage look at some of these people. Could you face having "Tranny fag! Freak!" hurled in your face on a daily basis? But do you see any compassion for them in Punky's post. I see only contempt, and how she links it to those lesser beings, drag queens and crossdressers who would accept a label associated with a man in a dress. This is a clear rejection of their own history. For too many of us transwomen, "I am just a normal woman with a slight, easily corrected birth defect, but all you others are weird perverts and I don't have anything to do with you" Many transwomen, aside from their expected exemption for the slight birth defect, sound just like "Focus on the Family." in their contempt for transwomen who don't meet their standards.
For those of you who run into the word used as a "fighting word" the advice I have given to trans support groups for years is this. If there are no people around or you think you are in danger, ignore them. Under no circumstances engage them in conversation. Too many trans people end up dead or in the hospital because they thought they had to confront a bigot. Righteous indignation doesn't cut it against guns or knives. But in a bar or with people around I like to smile sweetly, say "Why thank you, you say the nicest things, and you have a nice day too," turn around and walk off tossing in a Marilyn Monroe wiggle and as big a hair flip as I can pull off.
Transward
