Good for you Julia.

It is equally bad here in the UK from the essentialists who dominate here.

I admire your hope that one day they will change; here, womyn-born-womyn remains too central to the "feminist" identity for anyone to consider giving it up for us. Out-trans-women were recently declared unacceptable by one of the major UK lesbian online communities for not being woman-enough. But then again, you only have to listen to Julie Bindel's hate-mongering in the Guardian to know that much.

I. Love. Her.

No seriously. Julia Serano is so badass. I actually feel a little better about the world, just knowing she's in it.

I go to an all women's college, and we had a recent graduate who was born woman but identified as man. (trans man I guess?) He liked to be referred to as he and had had his breasts removed. My school accepted him and the teachers and students referred to him as a him, but my school would not accept someone born as a man who now identifies as a woman. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It still seems to be in the business of not accepting what the person feels is there true identity. Though, I always thought it was kind of odd that if you felt your true identity was male, then going to an all women's college doesn't make a lot of sense. But, I imagine the atmosphere of acceptance is better here than at a larger university.

Powerful words.

To some degree, transwomen and transmen are in the best position to see what it's like to live as a member of the other sex and how different privileges are afforded.

I'm in the middle of reading Whipping Girl right now, and I have a serious feminist-fan-girl-crush on Julia Serano. She's articulating a feminist view of gender and sex I can totally get behind. It's brilliant stuff.

I'm looking forward to getting home from work tonight so I can watch the video clip :).

I too love Julia Serano.

I am one of the coiners of the meme "WBT" for woman born transsexual because I think people with transsexualism were born that way which is in its own way as essentialist as WBW.

That said. The hatred of WBTs by some elements within the lesbian community goes back to the late 1960s when I first came out.

Looking into the history and how the anti-transsexual bigotry came down hardest on those women who were the most committed to the movement makes me wonder if Cointelpro didn't play a role in stirring the controversy.

From there it took on a life of its own culminating in the concurrently running trans-wars and sex-wars circa 1980.

All this played out during a period of second wave feminism that saw the trashing of almost every single woman who came to be seen as a leader either by working harder than most of her peers or by articulating a clear strong position that made her the person the media looked to for the pithy sound bite.

Women of a transsexual history in this context tended to try the route of working harder than every one else because we felt the need to prove our commitment to counter the claim we were not good feminists. It became a bad feedback loop.

Now days the Michigan Women's Music Festival is almost an anachronism in holding their anti transsexual position when transsexuals of all varieties are welcome as participants in Dyke Marches and much of lesbian culture nationwide.

Her work reminds me of the project my GSA is doing this semester. We're studying the impact of gender roles on the GLBT community. It was no problem to find guest lecturers and materials on gender roles (what they are, how they work) and GLBT discrimination is commmon knowledge in our group. It's finding a lecturer who can explain the link that's the problem. Maybe we can book her?

Oh do I have a crush on her big time. I have Whipping Girl on reserve with my local library and can not wait to get it. That Video is very powerful stuff.

She rocks!

I'd never actually heard of her before. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Julia Serano just absolutely rocks my world.

Her statement about being raped by male culture fits EXACTLY with my experience growing up in the 70's.

And seeing women's spaces "accept" and fetishize FTM's while continuing to marginalize trans women makes me sick and is why I have little to do with the lesbian community.

The fact that so many FTM's are participating both in their own fetishization and in marginalizing of trans women is why I have largely withdrawn from the Philadelphia trans community.

FemiDancer, I'm actually working at a women's college (one of the Seven Sisters), and I am completely out as a trans woman, and, as far as anyone there can recall, I'm the first out trans woman to work there. I've gotten nothing but support from staff, faculty, and students (including trans men), including from a couple of second-wave-era lesbians, one of whom is the head of my department. And yet, the college has no gender-identity clause in its non-discrimination statement. It will be interesting to see what happens when I try for admission to the college under their program for working / older women.

RachelPhilPa: That's awesome! Maybe you'll break a boundary and open women's colleges as a space for trans women :) Good luck going back to school.

Yeah, I'm with you all on the crush thing.

I'd never heard of this issue before and like all prejudice it's infuriating.

I'm crushing too