On why we don't want to be called 'cisgender' or referred to as 'cis' women!

http://liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/a-feminist-critique-of-cisgender/


I hate the term, and this article above explains it pretty well, though a bit longwinded. I wish they would address us Butch Dykes more...but AS a Female Proud Butch Dyke, I am PROUD to be a womon, and PROUD to be Female, and I am not letting ANYONE chase me out of womonhood, but neither am I 'cis' because it ASSumes, anyone who is 'cis' is generally feminine. It is not a term we call ourselves. For me it is 'Butch DykeAmazon', Female, bio Female, WBW, Lesbian, Amazon Warrior, Amazon Witch, Amazon Priestess, JewWitch and so many other FEMALE CENTERED and Dyke positive names!

-In Sisterhood,
-M.A.

"Not Giving Up the Fight" I posted about our WBW Dyke Space at Lesbian Caucus group on Facebook

I will not stop this fight, but neither will I use my 'real name' online. NO. My real name has been out there, in now TWO communities REALTIME where I took this stance, two communities I highly value. The first community, when I took this stance and said: 'this woman to woman organization should NOT be changed to accomodate FTM's, those who want to transition to male, and make that choice, because the FOCUS of it is by and FOR women' I was set up, entirely villified, almost lost my precious relationship, the nastiest backstabbing stuff, lies, distortions and ugliness drummed up from my past, or about me, or complete untruths, that essentially I left that community, that same hurt you have H., is the same hurt within me, this is completely REALTIME. The second community is my women's spirituality community, and it's this year they've been trying to recruit trans to come, and publicizing the change in policy. I had to fight hard to at least keep MY workshops for WBW only, when most of the board opposed my point of view, and barely conceded it to me. I will NOT teach my Amazon Mysteries to the born male. And I still was villifed and ugly things said about me, and other Radical Lesbians and Lesbian Separatists who opposed giving up the focus of our Sacred WBW space, and much of it I'm sure was informed by the Pantheacon debate, Z Budapest, Rabbit, Ruth Barrett and others who taught strictly Dianic Wicca for WBW. And they were HORRIBLY villified through the Pagan press as a result by the trans block and trans supporters, for the WBW policy of Dianic Wicca(in the exact same way Michfest is). Not only that, one workshop that was done at the last Pantheacon, the trans and their supporters formed a gauntlet that any woman would have had to have gone through to attend Z's self blessing ritual.......we keep trying to reach out to likeminded others, but why should we do it in back alleys, back doors, in secret apartments, and basically back in the closet? NO. If everyone else can be out of the closet so can we...and while I agree with you and Ch. who have been longtime voices FOR WBW space,that we need to attract women to our cause rather than scare them away, I DO agree with that....we also need to defend our territory as well, and our spaces from cooptation.....

Born Female Lesbian rights for WBW Lesbians

I feel very strongly about this article below, and it explains my position in regards to the issues in a very succint and direct way how all Lesbians including Butch Dykes have been invisibilized by the alphabet soup movement, and how we differ from all the other letters, both being born female, and being Lesbian. Both sexism and Lesbophobia with the trans in both directions invisibilizing us and our needs even further.

http://www.erinyes.org.au/

response to trans agenda from Dirt's Women's College thread

Poppycock...I've heard it all before. The militant trans movement has done just about everything it can to destroy women only space, and gotten young dykes/butches, ect to identify as 'queer' and want 'queer' space, rather than identify with the dreaded 'woman'. I don't want to share my bathrooms with M E N, I've done enough of that on the job and I see just how nasty they leave their outhouses, and the misogynist woman hating and homophobic writings on the wall, NO THANKS. Have your gender neutral bathroom if you must, but don't deny I might want one that is women only, and not come behind nasty M E N with it's pissed filled smell. They can't even let the toilet seat down!

I don't believe in the whole 'body disphoria' thing, that too is learned. Believe me, I had it as a kid, it's called SEXISM. I in no way wanted to be a 'girl', because being a 'girl' meant wearing dresses, being powerless, not being the hero, having to play dolls and house and domestic chores, and the work world was limited, as well as the roles females could inhabit, otherwise they/we/I were thought of as 'unwomanly', 'unseemly', 'unfeminine' and 'don't you want to be a little lady?' NO. I crossed out the term girl and she and put he and boy in my textbooks. I hated that we were being trained to obsess on our bodies, on babies, on appearing feminine, when nothing was further than the truth for me. For me, Feminism, with it's promise of complete female EMPOWERMENT, fueled my mind, and gave me pride and hope that I could do anything a boy could do. Unfortunately, due to persistent systemic and overt sexism and homophobia(anytime we should leave the feminine box) this promise hasn't been kept. Women, Butches, Females are still only 2% of the skilled trades, and many, many women have tried, and been kept out by the male systems intact. There's still the worship of male religions and dieties that keep women throughout the world down, and even actively anti-feminist, unwilling to liberate themselves and their sisters AS WOMEN from the chains imposed by men and 2000 plus years of patriarchy.

You can talk once the patriarchy is destroyed, the boot is off my neck. Nobody is 'gender neutral', that is a phallacy, a true phallic lie. Yes indeed. Genderfluid maybe, but never genderneutral. The answer is not in cutting off and sticking on body parts, the answer is in expanding what a women or man can do, dress in, inhabit themselves in a world that denies even tiny differences from the male-macho, female-feminine norm, imposed by politicians, religion, society, cultural and educational institutions, as well as the family itself. Much of it based on the fear of truly feral POWERFUL Females untamed by men, or their female mouthpieces, and on the fear of homophobia/lesbophobia.

Then much of this so-called disphoria would disappear. Maybe a tiny few would decide to take it further, but I simply don't believe that the young boyish/masculine/butch women that are transitioning, strapping down their breasts, taking 'T' in droves would feel they have to if they could FULLY be themselves, and felt FULLY empowered as just the kind of women they are. We come in many different flavors. Feminine does not automatically mean female. The same would be true of the drag queens and effeminate men that get shit on physically assaulted, sexually assaulted, made fun of or beat up for defying the male is macho role, so therefore they must 'be a woman'.

And anonymous, if you are trans(especially MTF), then ask us bio Females whether we want you in our presence, and RESPECT that. Or, come in as a guest to our Tribe, and honor our lead, our struggles, our battles. You never need worry about issues like abortion, birth control, birthing a child, being impregnated by rape, bleeding the sacred moonblood(a sacred bio-female mystery), or female diseases like breast, uterine, cervical, ovarian cancers. These are unique to us. As well as many other things. There IS a huge difference. Come in with respect, without stridency or 'demands' as this is a very male way of doing things, never taking 'no' for an answer, disrespecting our boundaries, AS women, or maybe we want to be amongst our own in some spaces, RESPECT THAT, in the way I would respect women of color wanting their OWN spaces.

But see, this doesn't happen. Both MTF's and FTM's force their way into our Female domains, and then DENY our need for them, and to focus on OUR issues, so much to the point that the Lesbian community IN AND OF ITSELF is almost invisible in my area, for the sake of those who call themselves 'queer' and push the trans issues. And yet hetero and gay men still get to have THEIR spaces....
-M.A.

Keeping Fest for WBW, and why we no longer want to argue the point

alifornia
Posted: 11 52010v 08 2006 Post subject:

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Womyn2me wrote:
And that, my dears, is 5 pages of why I no longer want to talk about it anymore, and why I have actually become less interested in trans-inclusion outside of Fest as well.


I agree Womyn2me, a big waste of time, waste of breath. The truth is Michfest was created BY AND FOR WBW Lesbians in particular. Other bio female women liked the culture of Fest and stayed, because it honored their femaleness, and female power, after dealing with their men, or men in society. Lesbians felt and do feel honored by being able to be completely, totally OUT and in our FULL SEXUAL AND SPIRITUAL POWERS as Dykes and DykeAmazons, and DykeWitches, and Dyke Sex Magicians, as Butch Dykes and Femme Dykes, and every other kind of Dyke imaginable, fat, thin, inbetween, all ages, colors, ethnicities, believers in the Goddess..the Sacred Female, where we have a space HONORING that, and a 30 foot statue invoking that. Michfest IS an Amazon village, and like any other Amazon village, historical or present day, it is a space by and for women only and in particular women loving women only, meaning Dykes, or women who love women on SOME level, whether it be physical, emotional, mental, psychic or spiritual or all those levels combined. There is a magic to that land, an Amazon magic, a magic that does not accomodate Y chromosomes, only XX. A gate, psychic, physical, emotional....because WE KNOW that difference. Go join the Castrati, the eunuchs, the cult of Cybele, that is the cult for you, or the mysteries of Janus, the two sexed God/ess. But, not Michfest, which is Amazon territory, where the female born, in this era can have a truly safe refuge. We have our Priestesses and our Warriors, our Dancers and our Magicians, our Singers and Songwriters, and Poets, and Shamans, our Drummers and our Healers, our Visionaries and our Lovers, our Tradeswomyn and our Organizers, our Cooks and our Cleaners, we have all manner of women to sustain this Tribe for at least two months, culminating in the one big week. And to my death I will support bio female women only Lesbian centered Space. Michfest is the only place I've ever been where I was told "You are Home now", and I knew it..this Amazon Warrior could lay down her arms, and relax, and feel safe, even in themiddle of the night tripping through woods she did not know, terribly lost, but NOT afraid, because I KNEW that only womyn surrounded me, and that I WAS SAFE. There is no other woods I'd feel that safety(with the exception of EWF, a small women's festival compared to Michfest, but even there, the woods are very remote and dark, and there are animals; and men in other campgrounds, even if further away, and it's much more isolated in those woods, but I know them too.)

ONLY in born female space do I feel that level of safety. Only with my Tribe...the Tribe of Womyn, of Dykes, of Amazons, of Sister Witches....of all these things that Michfest has and represents...do I feel safe, and also in my smaller festival, where there are the same.....there is NOWHERE in the outside world I feel that way, not at Pride, not even at DykeMarch because it's so infiltrated not just with trans but M E N. There is nowhere else that honors Dykes the way Michfest does. And I glad it's Dyke run. Even the so called 'Lesbian' community is no longer so Lesbian anymore, and it's no longer safe for the likes of me....I'm always coming up against women hating their womonness...handsome Butches wanting to identify with and become men, or some yoyo male ego who claim's he's a woman, soley because of his femininity, cuz he has or hasn't cut off his cock, cuz he has hormone grown breasts, or speaks in a softer voice with the feminine appearance that has always so oppressed me..that faux feminininity of the male born. Proving he's 'more of a woman' than I, yes Bredna did say that.....'Butches are men', like we've been told 1000 times NO WE ARE NOT. A TRUE BUTCH is the rawest and most primal form of Wild Womonhood....the kind that cannot and will not be tamed or feminized..but yet she's ALL FEMALE!

Only bio females can bleed, and only bio females can have multiple orgasms so that's who I am, and what I chase...and what I honor, those fantastic multiorgasmic Beings who I share the sacred Blood Mysteries with...and that's something NO MALEBORN could ever, ever be or do.

-In DykeAmazon Sisterhood,
-MasterAmazon