Recently, after commenting on a September 2, 2009 TS-Si guest post by Suzan Cooke entitled Classic Transsexual, among other things I questioned the wisdom of believing anyone’s internet narrative unless it was substantiated/proved, I was told this by Cathryn Platine:
“You Susan, are just electrons impacting on a cathode ray tube to me…..I’ve never met anyone who knows you personally so should I, according to your own standards, just believe you are some random guy in a stained wifebeater tee, swilling beer claiming to be a woman on the internut?” That’s what I’m left with using your criteria….. I’ve noticed that those who make such statements (“I don’t believe anyone’s life stories without proof”) often do so from what is called “projection” in psychology, especially on the internut. It comes from seeing in others that we know to be true of ourselves.”
My response was:
“You can, and should, assume anything you damn well like, Cathryn, who knows, you might be righter than you think.”
As this was the second time in the blog thread I was challenged by Cathryn Platine, I ended the above comment with this:
“You’ve come at me twice in this thread, out of the blue, so since you brought it up, you are partly right. I sure don’t give a flying screw about your religion, nor lesbianism, and certainly not feminism. You’re wrong, however, when you say that I attack those issues. If and when I decide to come at your position, you won’t have to wonder if I have or not.”
Lisa Thompson, the owner of TS-Si, in a burst of brilliance, responded – in about as juvenile and immature a way as possible – that by my way of thinking I’d have to visit a country before I accepted it existed…to which I responded:
“Lisa, if you want to compare geographical reality with internet embellishment then go friggin crazy. But, I think you’ve lost your friggin mind. .That’s about as juvenile an argument as I’ve ever heard…what a lame analogy…get a friggin life. I will tell you as I tell catkisser, if you want to believe everything you read and an individuals claim on the internet, then great…I don’t.”
She has since deleted the comment she made that lead me to respond in that manner. She also deleted a second baiting comment. That’s the TS-Si way of controlling opinion…bait with a an insulting, asinine comment, and then delete the baiting comment after one responds. Baiting someone on your blog with a comment and then deleting the baiting comment to make the person who addresses it look bad is pubescent child behaviour. I don’t participate in that kind of crap, and no doubt there will be no one who questions TS-Si about why she deleted her two baiting comments after I responded.
Either way, I took the bait and unloaded, expressing exactly what I thought of Suzan Cooke’s “history”, TS lesbians in love with other TS lesbians, feminism, and fringe religions…ending my parting shot by saying:
“None of you four are any ally of mine. I said there would be no question when I came at another position, and you can bet your sweet wig, Lisa, I will be calling TS-Si out on every occasion I get. I know who my allies are against the TG construct…Suzan Cooke, Lisa Thompson, and Cathryn Platine…you don’t qualify. Each of you give hypocrisy new meaning.”
That garnered a shot across the bow from Joanne Proctor:
“This is what gives everybody else who works to advance Intersexed and transsexed legitimacy a bad name. I reject this kind of rant out of hand. You, Susan, are no ally of mine! I do not want your bile around me!”
Nice, huh?
There are a couple of things I should note. The “bile” Joanne refers to had nothing to do with either transsexualism or the transgender. Specifically, they were about internet narratives and my personal opinion on one person’s, TS lesbianism, feminism, and fringe religions and have nothing to do whatsoever with advancing intersex/transsexued legitimacy. Secondly, I comment all over the blogosphere doing my best to advance the legitimacy of classic transsexuals and making the differentiation between transsexual and transgender and I run into a lot of people doing the same, but seldom ever do I encounter Joanne Proctor except on TG/TS/IS sites, never on a mainstream site, where it’s actually heard…debating gender on a TS/IS site is not a debate, it’s discussion with people who for the most part feel just like you do. Either way, I personally don’t give a damn about Cooke, lesbianism, feminism, nor fringe religions; I was baited and I bit. My entire reason for being in the gender debate is based on the transgender claiming to represent and speak for transsexuals…I hate the umbrella. My reference to allies regarded that.
Subsequently, Joanne Proctor, then proceeded to comment on yet another TS-Si post, this one by Lisa Thompson in which, yet again, she lampoons and ridicules the transgender. The name of this essay was Tales from the Rainbow Bough. Of the six comments made on that post, three of them were by Joanne Proctor joining in on the hilarity and ridicule of the transgender…but, of course, her comments weren’t bile.
Either way, Joanne Proctor is right…I am no ally of hers…nor is she mine.
The issue is what an ally really is.
Allies support each other. They defend each other. Allies don’t necessarily have to agree word for word but they do have to agree on the overall position in which the alliance is based.
I have defended Cathryn Platine more times than I can count. When she was banned from Pam’s House Blend, I wrote a blog post HERE on it. I commented on PHB about it as well, risking being banned from there myself in the process. On the other hand, when I was banned from WBT for calling Calpernia Addams a post op drag queen and telling Suzan Cooke that calling all straight people boring and conservative was the most ignorant thing I’d heard in twenty years, Cathryn referred to that as a “personality” issue…and remained silent. Had that been the only time Cathryn had declined to step up in my defense, I’d have been fine with it…but it wasn’t. Her recent defense of Suzan Cooke and her lobbying, as Cooke does, for TG/TS nomenclature, coupled with the two episodes I just mentioned puts her firmly into someone else’s camp, but certainly not in mine. She’s good with that, and believe me, so am I.
Joanne Proctor has said that the Women Born Transsexual and TS-Si are two of the three best blogs on the web…saying HERE:
“That said, apart from TS-Si, Sophia’s new blog and Suzan’s WBT blog, I can’t find too much rational discussion on the web.”
That’s pretty telling. Suzan Cooke’s WBT is transgender centric, as she now has decided to work with the transgender for mutually beneficial causes like hate crime legislation and ENDA (even though she supposedly an anarchist). And, TS-Si not only now publishes Suzan Cooke (read transgender), but also publishes essay upon essay lampooning the transgender which, when TS-Si does it isn’t bile. Go figure…
A while back, two of us got together and formed an internet group. We formed with just one premise, i.e., to speak individually, but as one voice, in challenging the transgender at every opportunity. We don’t sit around writing endless narrative. We don’t sit around quoting the latest research. We are coordinated. We act. We respond. And, we do so consistently, persistently, and reasonably. Our group is growing and we’ve succeeded in shutting down threads spouting TG non-sense. When someone’s name is brought up for membership in our group their position on the gender debate is discussed in depth. Each of us come from different spheres of internet experience, all of which are related to the gender debate. Once we decide amongst ourselves if there is someone out there of whom might share our position we approach them…present a little information, ask if they think they might be interested in joining. Some have accepted. Some have declined. Most have not been asked to join. All of us share one thing in common: a sense of loyalty and unity in our quest to speak with one voice to the transgender. If one of us goes at someone, we all go at them. If someone attacks one of us, they may as well attack each and every one of us. We know who our allies are…and aren’t… for sure.
The transgender have been successful in their appropriation of transsexualism because they are tenacious. They don’t give up. They don’t give even a nanometer of ground. They don’t compromise. They are unified. They support each other and are quick to bannish those with a change of heart. They defend each other. There is no common ground with the transgender construct. For one to say they have decided to work with the transgender to achieve goals that are mutually beneficial for both the transgender and transsexual is capitulation to their own colonization. No one who feels as we do sees any good whatsoever coming out of any type of alliance with the transgender. To us, rewriting GLBT as GLBT/TS is just a further manifestation of transgender…and is no revision whatsoever.
Any type of political association to transgender…is transgender.
Any defense of transgender strategy…is transgender.
Any alliance whatsoever, on any plane, at any level with the transgender…is transgender.
Any compromise with regard to the transgender…is transgender.
The friend of our adversary…is our adversary.
Our adversary is not our ally…and we certainly know who our adversaries are.
UPDATED 09-09-09
In the above essay, I write:
“She has since deleted the comment she made that lead me to respond in that manner. She also deleted a second baiting comment. That’s the TS-Si way of controlling opinion…bait with a an insulting, asinine comment, and then delete the baiting comment after one responds. Baiting someone on your blog with a comment and then deleting the baiting comment to make the person who addresses it look bad is pubescent child behaviour. I don’t participate in that kind of crap, and no doubt there will be no one who questions TS-Si about why she deleted her two baiting comments after I responded. ”
My attention has been called to THIS EDITORIAL. TS-Si contends their site was the subject of a Denial of Service attack which lead to certain comments being temporarily ”unpublished” in an effort to maintain TS-Si’s site integrity. This information was not available to me at the time I published the above.
Based on the circumstances, I choose to accept TS-Si’s explanation…and openly apologize to them for the insinuations made in my essay.
SA-ET
12 Comments
I discovered the internet just 8 years ago having had nothing to do with transsexual issues for more than 15 years. What I have found has both shocked and dismayed me. Much of what get’s written makes me feel like climbing in the shower afterwards with it’s vile denigration and pastiche of my life. When I refute the validity of what has been said the vile verbal abuse in response is nothing short of terrorism. The threats and sheer iliterate nonsense is only made worse by the fact that so many seemingly accept the stupidity that has been said.
The episode at TS Si over Cooke’s unprovoked attack on the legitimacy of our existance should serve as a warning. We really have reached the end of the rope. Attack our legitimacy and rights as women and you can expect a response. Me and Susan are not the only ones who are sick and tired of feeling we have to apologise for being heterosexual women who have successfully left a medical condition in an operating theatre and moved on with a life and not an apology for a life.
I saw the exchange over there and Lisa’s baiting, and the phony denial of service attack.
This has been coming for a long, long time now since the day I found A.S.SRS when it was only a couple of months old. The battle lines had been drawn then.
Some of us actually thought we could talk sense into the TG’s. Yah well we found out we were way wrong. They want to be transgender that is fine, they cannot claim to be us to score legitimacy points.
Good luck to you guys, I am with you but I don’t have the patience to deal with that bunch of antisocial goofoffs. Besides I have been thrown off more groups than I care to remember for speaking the truth.
I have had enough of their nonsense
Call it burn out if you like.
Interestingly enough, the alleged DOS attack at TS-SI could not have come at a better time. If you look at the order of the posts, the alleged attack started shorty after susan calling out Lisa Thompson and at exactly the time I had posted my complaints about the article they published from me.
The timing was perfect for them as they tried to defend against my calling them on their actions in posting my article in a manner as to make me look bad.
This so called DDOS attack was a perfect diversionary tactic executed at the perfect time. Do I believe it? NO!
Why would anyone waste their time trying to take down TS-SI? There are way better targets on the internet than this rag.
Still, just as with 911, we cant prove it didn’t happen, and so it serves it’s purpose either way, on the one hand to divert attention away from the issue they can’ defend against, and in the second place to make Gaughan and Thompson appear so important that someone would consider them important enough to launch a distributed denial of service attack against.
The ego and blatent elitism of these two clowns is sickening, even by TG standards.
On Cathryn Platine:
Was she ever really an ally?
Circumstances sometimes make strange bedfellows.
I have to say I doubt it. Susan took up Cathryn’s cause when Cathry was banned from Pams House Blend, a casualty of Sandeen. Has Cathryn ever defended Susan ? If she has I cant remember when.
I do know that I tried to introduce Cathryn’s PETITION over at TS-SI and was admonished for my efforts. It led to a huge fight between myself and Lisa Thompson, Sharon Gaughan. They assumed that I had written the PETITION, that it was MINE. They were wrong, but did Cathryn Platine actually try to set the record straight?
Well yes, but only after it was all over, only after I went to war with Lisa Thompson, and Sharon Gaughan.
You see, they are all friends, the whole bloody lot of them…
Gaughan
Thompson
Cooke
Platine (and Maura Hennesey)
Proctor
Could Cathryn have stepped in on MY behalf and settled the dispute earlier .. well yes she could, but she waited until her conscience got the better of her, giving Gaughan and Thompson lots of time to shout me down.
Was she an Ally of Susan’s blog? .. no, nor of anyone that posts here.
Some “Science” eh!
I must agree with you on Cathryn. She was on an online group I was a part of Seemed like a perfect fit at first. But she began to call the separatists in the group names like hater and bigot and find little things in people’s posts that nobody else noticed to find fault in them. Sparks began to fly, and she left. Are there really any good TS separatist sites out there?
WTF? Trashing me on a 2+ year old entry? What is your problem dude?
Constructive critique is far from bashing, and I regret you took it that way. I was a lurker in a TS-only group where it appeared to me that you attacked the moderator and accused her of hate, homophobia, etc. – tactics used by TGs to oppress actual TSs. Should I locate the post in question and post it on my blog?
For the record, I don’t do what you allege in your other reply. I had no use for that body part and never asked for it. Most women don’t attack other women like that. Such an attack is certainly a red flag of being something other than a TS. Men tend to compare their credentials in sort of a public urinary competition, and I’m not interested.
At any rate, lets stay topic and respect Susan. Susan puts a lot of work in this blog, and the least we can do is respect her wishes. She says not to call TS women (and even TGs) male terms on her blog, and not to use it for attacks and idle chat.
So I’m a TG now?
Reiser, I could never get a handle on you before so I gave you a wide berth. Now I’ll just say go fuck yourself. I was the lone internet voice of transsexual separatism for more than a decade. Almost every talking point used I first brought up.
I have no idea what your game is, but take it elsewhere.
FYI, I was writing about transsexual separatism back when you were still wanking off in mommy’s panties.
Well they seem to have brought out the whitewash. I did find it quite interesting when several months ago they aligned themselves with Cooke, I had commented on it and was banned even though my comment was not a personal attack at ether of them but a comment on the direction they were headed in.
A direction which they are now well into. I expect to see a certain New Media Journalist posting there before too much longer. It had been a private joke between a couple of friends who also use to post there.
An obvious attempt at becoming the big fish in the small pond. From a couple of the other comments over there it may have not gone off as well as they had hoped it would.
I know several self identified HBS types and they don’t even post over there anymore, not a one of them.
This Too Shall Pass.
In regards to science; if they would stick to that and drop the Tranny-Pandering editorials that would be a decent site.
Just a quick correction: Cathryn Platine and I are friendly, but our connection is through a mutual friend of operative history.
I would love to join an internet group like the one mentioned above that the 2 ladies formed.
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