Bending Over Backwards: Traditional Sexism and Trans-Woman-Exclusion Policies
1 Califia, Sex Changes, 115. 2 For an overview of feminist anti-trans woman sentiment, see Califia, Sex Changes, 86-119; Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 258-262; Brown, “20th Century Transgender History and Experience”; and Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender, 151-174. For pertinent examples of transmisogynistic feminist writings, see Daly, Gyn/Ecology, 67-72; Dworkin, Woman Hating, 185-187; Eichler, The Double Standard, 72-90; Greer, The Madwoman’s Underclothes, 189-191; Greer, The Whole Woman, 70-80; Jeffreys, Beauty and Misogyny, 46-66; Morgan, Going Too Far, 170-188; Raymond, The Transsexual Empire; and Steinem, “If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit, Change the Foot.” According to Dallas Denny (“Transgender in the United States: A Brief Discussion,” SIECUS Report, Oct/Nov 1999), in 1980 Janice Raymond prepared a paper for the National Center for Health Care Technology titled “The Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery.” Pertinent information about Sandy Stone and Beth Elliott can be found in the above references. For more on Nancy Burkholder and the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s trans-woman-exclusion policy, see Tea, “Transmissions from Camp Trans,” and Emi Koyama, A Handbook on Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival for Trans Activists and Allies (Portland: Confluere Publications, 2002; www.confluere.com/store/pdf-zn/mich-handbook.pdf). 3 For more information on Michigan’s policy basing festival entry on whether one was “born and raised a girl,” see Vogel, “Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival Sets the Record ‘Straight.’” Musicians Lynnee Breedlove and Animal have both performed at Michigan on multiple occasions despite identifying as trans and answering to male pronouns (Anderson-Minshall, “Michigan or Bust”; Sarah Liss, “Politics of Pussy”). For more on the lesbian community’s privileging of trans men over trans women, see Serano, “On the Outside Looking In”; Tea, “Transmissions from Camp Trans,” and Nataf, “Lesbians Talk Transgender.” 4 Kessler and McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, 145-155. 6 Ilene Lelchuk, “When Is It OK for Boys to Be Girls, and Girls to Be Boys?” San Francisco Chronicle, August 27, 2006; Zak Szymanski, “TG Specialists, Parents Ask: When Is Young Too Young?” Bay Area Reporter, March 16, 2006. 7 Tali Woodward, “Transjobless,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, March 15, 2006. 8 During the late 1960s and early 1970s, lesbians were excluded from liberal feminist organizations such as NOW, and it was not uncommon for heterosexual feminists to characterize lesbian-feminists as hypersexual, oppressively male, out to exploit other women, and reinforcing the sex class system—see Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 210-228. 9 Examples include Charlotte Croson, “Sex, Lies and Feminism,” Off Our Backs, June 2001; “A Fest in Distress” (a roundtable on the politics of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s entrance policy with Robin Finkelstein, Emi Koyama, and Grover Wehman, moderated by Lisa Miya-Jervis), Bitch, Summer 2002, no. 17; Bitch & Animal, “Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival,” Velvetpark Magazine, no. 6; and “Generations of Gender” (a conversation between Boo Price and Lynn Breedlove), Girlfriends, August 2004.