The NYT reports on a growing "problem" in the lesbian community – descrimination against former lesbians who have had operations to become men. You see, they have "joined the enemy"
“It just saddens me to see so many of our strong butch women giving up their womanhood to be a man,” one friend said.
The sentiment was a tamer version of what many other women wrote on lesbian blogs and Web sites in the weeks after the episode [of the soap opera The L Word] was broadcast last spring. Many called for the Max character to be killed off next season. One suggested dispatching him “by testosterone overdose.”
Case in point – the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival has a ban on transgendered people of EITHER sex – so if you were ever a man, or were a woman but are now a man, you are NOT welcome. In fact, the requirement limits attendance to "women born as women and living as women."
Only true lesbians must apply, I guess. I guess if you are now a man, you are no longer a lesbian. Right? It reminds me of that old joke, "I’m a lesbian caught in a man’s body."
But what if you are now a woman, who used to be a man? Do you have to love women to go to a lesbian event? I guess so. But the MWMF is very specific – they only want natural women who love other women.
This gender confusion brings up all kind of other issues. Like if a former lesbian (now a man) wants to marry a woman, is that really hetero marriage or same sex? What if "he" wants to marry a man? Is that hetero, or same sex?
If somone who has undergone gender-reassignment surgery, and they apply to a single gender school, can the school disallow them, or measure by genetics and not whatever outward gender manifestation the person chooses?
Is a person’s gender merely a social construct, and your genes don’t matter (that is, who cares if you are XX, if you want to live as a man, and have the hormone treatments to prove it, are you therefore a man, legally?). How deep into confusion and self-deception can we really go?
You know, while transgender illnesses do bring up many practical questions, the actual practical answer is that, for legal purposes, your biology is your gender (and btw, XXY is still considered male, sine most are usually capable of normal erection and ejaculation, and female breasts usually subside after the height of puberty). And when a biological woman marries a biological man, that’s considered marriage. Other partnerships are illnesses.
Al Mohler has a podcast and a post about this.
