DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE — “TRANSWOMEN” ARE MERELY CASTRATED MEN

    Chapter Two

DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE

   Bev Jo

                                                              – The Pretenders –

    PART ONE

“TRANSWOMEN” ARE MERELY CASTRATED MEN

I’m discovering that eighty percent of the men claiming to be “transwomen” have refused surgery and even female hormones, so perhaps this title should be “’Transwomen’ Are Merely Men” or “Transwomen Are Merely Female Impersonators.”1

This should be a simple issue. How could our oppressors – men – possibly become us? How? Just by saying they are?  By the male medical industry and doctors making money off this game, declaring that they can turn men into women?  Would you agree with these men if they claimed to be a different race than they are, a race they are in a position to oppress?  Would you believe them if they claimed to be of a different species?  Why not?

Once again, as expected in patriarchy, men are made more important than any women. (Even NCLR, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, works for men and against Lesbians.2

If you do accept them as Lesbians, would you (as a Lesbian) want to be lovers with one?  Why not?  If you are hesitant to say “no” to their claims and demands, in spite of what you feel inside, why?  What is it that makes you agree to something that doesn’t feel right?  Does it remind you of other times when it was hard to deal with a man who refused to take “no” for an answer?

Here is an example of how female these men truly are, from a card that “transwomen” hand out to women going to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, one of the only spaces left with a policy of “womyn-born-womyn:”

“Second-Wave ‘Feminists,’
A hot load from my monstrous tranny-cock embodies womanhood more than the pieces of menstral (sic) art your transphobic cunts could ever hope to create.”

On the other side of the card is a silhouette of a female shape with a large erect prick and the words, “Real women have cocks.”

There is a global war going on against all girls and women. Girls and women who are murdered are most likely to be killed by boys and men that they know. Most girls and women are sexually assaulted (again, most often by males they know), and all of us are exposed without choice to insulting, demeaning, female-hating pornographic images throughout the media. The onslaught is constant, including in the “LGBTQI etc.” media.

It’s a hell of a way to grow up and a hell of a way to live.

The Lesbian Feminist movement did make a huge difference and gave us hope, but it’s being eroded and assaulted into nothingness. The biggest threat to the last female-only space is men claiming to be Lesbians.

It’s essential to not be takenn by the myriad ways that men try to con and manipulate us. Men want access to all women, and Lesbians are a favorite theme in male pornography. Men also envy us and our culture and our communities. Some will go to almost any length to get to us. One particularly insidious form that this invasion takes is by some men claiming THEY are Lesbians. This would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious, and if most Lesbians didn’t seem to believe them.

Some castrated men simply lie, and claim to be “biological women” or “womyn-born-womyn.” I believe most would try this if they weren’t so obviously male, so the majority insist that they are “transwomen” or “Male-to-Female Transsexuals” and that they have just as much right to be in women-only and Lesbian space as real women and Lesbians. They even say that we oppress them!  If we dare to fight to defend our rare, precious women-only space, we’re accused of needing to be educated and of being “bigoted,” “ignorant” and “transphobic.”  These men have made up a bizarre name for real females — “cis-gender” — which is another way of defining us out of existence. (This is as insidious as replacing “Women’s Studies” with “gender studies” and replacing Feminist professors with men — all part of trying to destroy the international Lesbian and Feminist movement.)

We’re not stupid – some of us have been fighting these men for 40 years. And we’re not “phobic” – we’re not afraid of men claiming to be us, we’re oppressed by them!

You can think about this issue in one of three ways: 

1. You can just ignore men claiming to be Lesbians (which is possible only if you don’t go to any Lesbian events and if you don’t care about our community being destroyed). 

2. You can choose to accept them when they insist they are Lesbians and women – but know that your choice is seriously hurting and demeaning all Lesbians and women.

3. You can refuse to have one more lie shoved down your throat and believe what is obvious to everyone who’s been around these incredibly arrogant men for any length of time (such as at just one “women only” event): “Transwomen” are not and can never be women or Lesbians – they are simply men, trying to steal our identity and culture.

One way to begin to fight their oppressing Lesbians and women is to refuse to give them what they want. At the very least, PLEASE stop calling them “women” in any form, and stop using female pronouns for them.

If these men actually had some tiny amount of caring for women and Lesbians, they would recognize how much we need women-only and Lesbian-only space, and would never try to force themselves on us.

Instead, they act like typical men and intimidate and guilt trip – everything is about them. And the hell with any Lesbian who gets in their way. Some have also learned what to say to sound believably female, but if you question a bit further, they revert quickly to male bullying techniques.

In a liberal attempt to not hurt their feelings, in spite of how glaringly male they are, too many women and Lesbians support them against the rest of us. It’s the old patriarchal male-worshipping tradition of putting any male above all females.

The usual comment I hear from their advocates (who are quick to betray any Lesbian or woman who’s been attacked by these men) is, “Why would they go through so much if they weren’t really women?”  Well, these days they don’t go through much other than dressing up as some man’s idea of what a woman should look like. As for those who do have surgery, men do a lot of bizarre things for sexual gratification, such as strangling themselves to have more exciting orgasms, which has resulted in some unintentional suicides (such as that by David Carradine.)  Some do other painful and dangerous rituals, including having objects inserted into their heads to simulate horns, having their skin completely tattooed to look like green scales and their tongue split to appear a bit like reptiles (about as convincing as when men try to appear like women). Other men disable themselves by amputating limbs deliberately. Men don’t always think about the consequences when they decide they want to do something bizarre or when they want to invade and mark territory. 

It’s not up to us to explain why they do what they do. It’s like expecting Lesbians to explain why men and boys rape females, and rape, torture, and kill animals, and, why, as soon as boys can stand, they start to throw rocks without caring who’s in the way.  They just don’t make sense. And they KNOW their desire for violence is part of how they are biologically different from us, in mind and body. Ironically, and tragically, it’s Feminists who are the ones most often claiming that male violence is “socialization.” For years, most Lesbian Feminists agreed with the mainstream media that males were not intrinsically evil, and that their misogyny was a result of socialization – “He raped and killed all those women because he was sexually abused in childhood.”  If that was the case, wouldn’t most women be serial killers?  Male animals aren’t socialized to rape and kill, but they do. The evidence is there. Men know it. They know they are innately different from females. Ask them if you doubt it. Even progressive Michael Moore admitted on Bill Maher’s HBO show, “We want to fuck anything in front of us.” It’s only females who argue on male’s behalf that we are all really the same. And no matter how nice a man seems, I always say, we never know what they’re doing when alone with babies or animals. 

In 1979, Janice Raymond published her brilliant The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, describing the harm castrated men do to Lesbian community. She says this actually has been going on for centuries, from when “eunuchs were men that other more powerful men used to keep their women in place.3  She also explains, “Because transsexuals have lost their physical ‘members’ does not mean that they have lost their ability to penetrate women—women’s mind, women’s space, women’s sexuality.  Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women so that they seem noninvasive.”4

Many Lesbians ask, “Well, what can they do without their pricks?” The answer is that female impersonators have been able to get into our communities and culture much further than other het and bisexual men can, and they have done far more damage. They prevent us from having female-only space, which has been one of men’s goals for a very long time. Castrated men are more likely to ignore public Lesbian events, and instead focus specifically on invading the rare remaining women-only space, which, of course destroys it. And increasingly, they aren’t even castrated!  (Beyond the mind-fuck, how many of the 80% not castrated men have raped women?)

They also get into power positions in our communities, including as writers and historians, pretending to speak for us, erasing and re-writing our Lesbian history. I recently saw a book that was showcased in a local bookstore, called “Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Franciso Bay Area,” which is edited by two men, one claiming to be a Lesbian.  The history of my Lesbian Feminist community from 1970 on was missing.  Instead was a misrepresentation of Lesbians, portraying us as being politically and socially involved with gay men in a way that we never were. A tiny photo of the cover of “Amazon Quarterly” was included, sayin it was an example of “the many Separatist publications” from that time. I had worked on the first issue, but after that, it became extremely anti-Separatist.

As Janice Raymond says, “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating their body for themselves.”  It’s actually reminiscent of the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Female impersonators have bizarre fetishized ideas of what it means to be female, based on an obsession with male-defined patriarchal rules of femininity and pornography. If you try to get them to actually explain what being female means to them beyond wearing make-up and revealing clothing made by men for women, wanting to imitate models or movie stars, they can’t do it. Perhaps some eventually learn a few tricks, like the divorced father of several children who confided to me that it was the Lesbian teacher and Lesbian students in a women’s studies class in Aotearoa (New Zealand) who taught him to give up his skirts, dresses, make-up, and high heels so he could look like a “real Dyke.”  He also had his way paid to go to an Oakland Lesbian and Gay conference, which would have cost thousands, yet there was no sliding scale or reduced rate from the $200 charged poor Lesbians (so very few of us were able to go). Female impersonators are not just accepted – they’re given preferential treatment at our expense.

The myth of the poor man who always felt like a girl growing up is contradicted by the many longtime married men with grown children who decide later in life that they are Lesbians. (Most still keep their wives. I know of at least one who got his employer to sign a statement guaranteeing that his higher male salary would not be reduced after he “transitioned.”)  Did they get bored with all their privilege or did they watch too much “Lesbian”-themed porn.

Another proof of the right wing, anti-Lesbian and anti-gay basis of “transsexualism” is that in fundamentalist Muslim Iran, where Lesbians and gay men are executed, the government actually pays for transsexual surgeries:  

“Sex changes have been legal in Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, passed a fatwa – a religious edict – authorizing them for ‘diagnosed transsexuals’ 25 years ago. Yet homosexuality is still punishable by death. ‘The discussion is fundamentally separate from a discussion regarding homosexuals. Absolutely not related. Homosexuals are doing something unnatural and against religion,’ says Kariminia. ‘It is clearly stated in our Islamic law that such behaviour is not allowed because it disrupts the social order.’”5

The damage female impersonators cause internationally is tremendous – they have destroyed or tried to destroy the very ways by which women try to protect and heal ourselves from male violence, such as Women’s Centers, Battered Women’s Shelters, and Rape Crisis Centers, internationally, as well as destroying the last remaining, rare, and precious spaces where we meet and create Lesbian community, such as the Michigan Women’s Music Festival.  If these men were really so female-minded and cared about women and girls, would they really sue so their male voice could be what a raped women or girl has to hear when she calls a Rape Crisis line? (The lawsuit was in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. But men are now regularly on Rape Crisis lines in the U.S.)

The sense of entitlement and arrogance of these men is glaring – they act like any other man who thinks he has the right of access to all women. Their manipulation with guilt is such a typical het male trick too. When I was a teenager visiting a new friend, a male friend of hers came by – he wasn’t even her boyfriend, but he let her know he wanted to fuck her, right then and there. No concern that she might not want that or that she could get pregnant. No concern for her at all, or even that I was visiting her. She acquiesced, in front of me. Later, she was worried about getting pregnant, but hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings. Over 40 years later, I was at a public lecture and film about Lyme disease. One of the alternative healers there was angry at her boyfriend and announced to the audience that he had given her Lyme disease through sexual contact. It didn’t matter that it was a roomful of strangers – he got on the floor and knelt in front of her and kept shoving his face into her lap – obviously begging for more sexual access to her. She didn’t shove him away. It was disgusting to be made an unwilling participant in this bizarre male game, but interesting to see how they have no shame in their demand that girls and women give them what they want – which is to keep fucking, and fucking us over.

Men claiming to be Lesbians come across the exact same way – as if they have a claim to all women, and as if we belong to them and owe them.6  A common theme among female impersonators is that we are somehow responsible for violence against them, including when they are murdered. They ignore that it’s men who are attacking them. Men attack and kill far more women and Lesbians than they do female impersonators, but they don’t care, and the fact that they also are men is ignored. Such male sense-of-entitlement. It is all about them – they are selfish and narcissistic, and don’t care how they hurt Lesbians and women and our communities. They have no respect for us or for our need and desire to have our own Feminist and Lesbian culture away from them. They are acting out of the same drive to mark territory that is in all men, and particularly obvious in rapists. What part of “no” don’t they understand?

I’ve been a Separatist since 1972, and so haven’t been around men in social situations by choice very often. But since almost nothing for Lesbians is now women-only, I’ve been around some het men at Lesbian events in the last few years.  One thing has become quite obvious to me – most het men at these events act far less aggressive, bullying, and sense-of-entitlement-male than castrated men claiming to be Lesbians. And that’s pretty bad, isn’t it?

                      Misplaced Sympathy and Generosity

“But you don’t know what it’s like to grow up feeling like you’re different and not belonging.” That has actually been said to me to get me to understand how hard it is for a man pretending to be us. Well, I have known exactly what it feels like from my earliest memories, knowing no one else was like me. But my growing up a Lesbian and Butch doesn’t count next to a man’s complaints.

I have heard so many women say how terrible it must be to feel like you were born into the wrong body growing up. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that these men are simply lying. Even some “radical” Lesbians have fallen for this con. Yet how many ex-het Lesbians have you ever heard say, “It must be terrible to grow up always feeling like you never belonged because you knew you were a Lesbian and there was no one else like you?  (After all, most oppressed people grow up with their own families and communities sharing their culture and experiences.)  Why is it so much easier to imagine and care about the “oppression” a man claims to have rather than to care about a Lesbian’s real oppression?

If I told you I was a bird, would you believe and accept me as one?  Why not?  Don’t I have the right to self-identify and don’t you have the obligation to respect that?  Aren’t you being a bigot and oppressing me if you don’t respect my identity as a bird?

Anyone who dares to protest men claiming to be women and Lesbians is told the anti-Feminist, seemingly liberal (but actually reactionary) line that we have no right to not accept someone’s definition of themselves. We are told to ignore our basic common sense, to ignore what is obvious to any woman who is exposed to these men, and to betray our loyalty to other women and Lesbians on behalf of the patriarchy and male supremacy. Being called a “bigot” when you have been fighting true bigotry since girlhood can be very daunting and hurtful to kind, caring, compassionate Lesbians and women who are against injustice – especially if they don’t have support.

Imagine if every time you protested something the right wing had done to hurt people, you were yelled at and called names for oppressing right wing people. That makes about as much sense as what happens to any woman who dares protest the power these men have. 

The assumption is that Lesbians are in a power position over the men who pretend to be females or the females pretending to be men. But BOTH groups have more power than Lesbians – either they have experienced male privilege or they’re getting male privilege now. It’s like accusing Lesbians of being “male- phobic” when we dare to question male privilege and male crimes against females. 

Imagine another oppressed group being so welcoming to their oppressor who claims to feel like (and therefore be) them?  Would Lesbians and women so readily accept or be bullied to accept a white man who demands to be accepted as another race – a race he has power over and is in a position to oppress? And would he be accepted into that community and get into positions of power as a spokesman for that community? I would hope anyone with a heart and half a brain would object. So why accept a man claiming sex change is possible, if a race change is obviously ridiculous and oppressive?  Why then are women and Lesbians valued so little that most are flattered when men pretend to be us?

We would not have nearly as much trouble in dealing with these invasive castrated men if it wasn’t for the many Lesbians who rush to support them against other Lesbians. Collaborators enable and promote many evils in patriarchy.7

It’s outrageous that Lesbians, who don’t know the history of their own Lesbian culture, call us “ignorant” for objecting to men being in our communities. It’s classist and arrogant, as well as self-hating. Lesbians’ desire to protect “transsexuals” is also about how kind and loving Lesbians can be to anyone they think is suffering. Lesbians are involved in far larger numbers than our percentage of the population in organizations fighting for people and animals and forests and every cause imaginable. Of course these are important issues, but it’s time for Lesbians to also fight for Lesbians.

One of our greatest strengths as females and Lesbians is our ability to have open hearts and to want to care for and support anyone who claims to be vulnerable or needing help. It’s also one of our greatest weaknesses. Rapists know this and use it to con victims. Serial rapist and killer Ted Bundy often pretended to have an injury to get access to women who otherwise would have been more wary.

Being obsessed with fetishizing male-invented femininity that caricatures real females is nothing like being female. If a man cries and says he always felt oppressed as a girl growing up and really wants/needs to be with us, most women accept him and begin to “educate” (bully) other women and Lesbians on his behalf. I understand this sympathy from Lesbians and women, but don’t understand how they can then be so heartless and cruel to the Lesbians and women these men hurt. I believe it’s on the continuum with the women who will love men, no matter what they’ve done, and who will chase and marry serial rapists and killers in prison. They are male-worshipping. And I believe that castrated men are far more male in their minds and behavior than even many men who are still full of testosterone. Do these men’s supporters really not notice the next moves “transwomen” make once in a Lesbian community, and how incredibly male and un-female-like they are? There is nothing female about castrated men. It’s almost like women feel so sorry for them in their repulsive bodies and minds, with their very ugly rendition of what they think is a “feminine” womanly appearance, that they overlook their aggressive male behavior. 

How can any woman or Lesbian value herself and the rest of us so little that she thinks we are nothing more than the absence of a prick? — Or that the male medical profession, for whom this has become big business, can create females out of males?  Another attempt at bullying with guilt is when female impersonators claim they have a “birth defect.”  How could anyone be so cruel as to deny someone something based on such a thing? This ploy is oppressive to truly intersex people. But expect that more castrated men will falsely identify as intersex, although intersex organizations do NOT want to be identified with castrated men.

What Do You Call a Man Who Refuses to Take “No” for an  Answer?

This issue is personal to me because I was recently called a “bigot” by a “Feminist” friend for refusing to use female pronouns for the man who sexually harassed me when I was a teenager. I’ve felt stalked by him for over 40 years, but I can’t get away from him even in “women-only” space. I think it’s outrageous that any Lesbian or woman should have to see a man who has harassed her in what should be safe space. (This man didn’t go beyond pressuring me, but please remember that all of these men have pasts, and assume many will have raped girls or women. They’re MEN, after all.)

I also have a unique perspective when I say I know that many castrated men are lying.

In 1968, when I was 17, I met Elliott at the University of San Francisco. He had been in a Jesuit seminary high school and just could not understand why I wouldn’t be his girlfriend. He could not grasp why I was in love with Marg and not interested in him, since he was a man, after all, and she was just a girl. He’d never thought of Lesbians before, and certainly did not feel he was a woman in a man’s body. We were in a poetry group together and I remember clearly a poem he wrote that was completely about phallic images. I had no Feminist awareness then, but it disgusted me. Elliott was so proud of his adolescent male poem, and when I see him now, he still acts the same, except that he’s learned pseudo-feminist jargon and now claims he’s a Lesbian.

I’d never seen Feminist writing and the only Lesbian book I’d read was “The Well of Loneliness,” in which the Lesbian character gives up the woman she loves so her lover  can find true happiness with a man. The only movies about Lesbians that I saw were “The Children’s Hour,” “The Fox,” and “The Killing of Sister George,” which all were incredibly stereotyped in their Lesbian-hatred and which had a horrible effect on Marg and me.

I could feel Elliott watching me as the months went by, and, if I seemed to begin to be friends with other men, he would go into a rage and cry. I transferred to a different school to try to be with Marg, but still stayed in touch with Elliott. He said he’d fallen in love with another Lesbian and that she’d made love to him as if he “were a woman.” He also told me about having sex with a man. After a while, he decided he was a Lesbian and took a first name as close to my name as he could get, and dyed his hair a similar red to mine. (Wouldn’t that creep you out?)

Often, these men want to get into Lesbian communities because they are not very successful as typical het men. Many seem to be failures in getting access to women, and realize that not only are Lesbian communities an untapped source of exceptionally tolerant women — as well as a way to fulfill that male fantasy of Lesbians – but that they also can get into power positions they never would have been able to get into as just the pathetic men that they are.

Almost immediately, this seemingly meek, passive man got into power positions in the Lesbian community. He was accepted into the Daughters of Bilitis (one of the first Lesbian organizations) and quickly became vice president, which caused a split leading to the end of that organization — so one of his first acts as a pretend Lesbian was incredibly destructive to us. Then he was invited to perform his “Lesbian” music at the LA Lesbian Feminist Conference in 1973 and now claims to be one of the originators of “Women’s Music.” He continued to get into every power position in our community that he could, lying whenever possible if asked if he were a “womyn-born-womyn” – which is what he told the Feminist “off our backs” newspaper collective when they questioned him before printing his long article titled “Lesbian Sex”(where he bragged about the many women who’d “loved” having sex with him.) He became the regular “Lesbian” columnist for “The Bay Area Reporter,” a local gay and Lesbian publication. Meanwhile, I would see his racist and self-centered letters in other gay publications. When I tried to counter one in which he compared Mexican immigrants to German Nazis (“Del Norte is Spanish for Lebensraum”), he countered by slandering me in the worst way he could think of. I began telling Lesbians to be aware that when they read something racist, classist, or otherwise oppressive by a “Lesbian,” that it might not actually be a Lesbian or even a woman who wrote it.

When it suited him, Elliott stopped being a Lesbian long enough to get printed in a bisexual women’s anthology, so there are two reasons he shouldn’t be identifying as a Lesbian. 

I didn’t see him for years, but then found out that he was regularly performing his “songs” at one of the only “women only” open mics in the San Francisco Bay Area. He still played the guitar badly and bellowed out of tune songs about how angry he was that women wanted to “bed” him, but not “wed” him. (I haven’t seen any signs of either happening.) I had no choice but to accept his presence if I wanted to participate in this part of the community. Then, an African-American friend told me she had recently met Elliott and that he’d been incredibly racist and patronizing to her. She was not used to hearing such right-wing politics as his in the Lesbian community. (He told her that the police must have had good reason to have arrested her friend, Henry Louis Gates, at his own home, and Elliott also agreed with McCarthy’s 1950’s “House on UnAmerican Activities” boycott of Leftists like Pete Seeger.)  My friend felt threatened enough to change her phone number.

I started ignoring Elliott at Lesbian events after hearing this, which he really did not like, so he began harassing me online. After friends and I advertised a Separatist meeting on a local Lesbian list, he wrote a nasty email ridiculing Separatists and Never-het Lesbians. (We hadn’t referred to Never-het Lesbians in our notice, but he’s particularly threatened that I’ve chosen to never be het, so goes out of his way to attack Never-het Lesbians. It’s very specific to me since few Lesbians use that term.) I responded by saying how he’s harassed me since I was a teenager, and got an angry response from his Lesbian supporters in my community. They accused me of “outing” him, even though he had already admitted to being a “transwoman” on his website, and, as another friend has said, “It’s no secret – just look at him!” (His supporters haven’t seemed to notice that each time I’ve been responding to something vicious he’s aimed at me and other radical Lesbians publicly.)

Elliott then became more bullying at the next open mic, as if trying to provoke me to react. He bellowed a “song” ridiculing short hair on Lesbians and saying how he likes long hair on women — like most female impersonators, he tries to look as feminine as possible. (Interesting that I’ve never yet seen a castrated man who looked remotely Butch.)

At the following open mic, he went over the line into verbally attacking me in a “song” in which he virtually named me, and did name my ex-lover, Martha. I had no close friends with me that night and had to quickly decide what to do. When it was my turn to read poetry, I defended myself, and discovered that Elliott had his support group of Lesbians ready, because as soon as I started with “I don’t like conflict, but believe in self defense…” they got up and walked out. One stayed to yell at me, correcting and reprimanding me each time I referred to him by male pronouns. That also made it difficult for anyone to hear what I was saying. The Lesbian who was in charge, as well as the owner of the space, banned both Elliott and me from performing for the rest of the season. It didn’t matter that he had attacked me and that I had defended myself. I’m sure if it had been a physical attack, I still would have been punished for being impolite and for not “taking the higher road.” (There was also obviously a cultural/class difference going on.)

Elliott and his supporters are all white and mostly middle class, with some identified as Feminists. My supporters (who I later told about it) are Separatists, Radical Lesbian Feminists, and completely apolitical non-Feminist Lesbians and women — most of who are poverty class or working class and racially and culturally diverse. (One sweetie even high-fived me and said “Congratulations, dude!” about having been banned.)

It was interesting for me to find out that my friends in the community who don’t identify as Feminists are also repulsed by him and don’t want to be around him. It seems that castrated men have so manipulated Feminist ideas that they get the more Feminist-identified to be their main supporters

I then wrote Elliott, asking if he was deliberately lying about me or if he was confused. It was interesting to see exactly how he cons Lesbians. He began by threatening me that he would make more information about me public if I didn’t stop talking about him, so I asked what specifically that was, since there was nothing I was hiding. He didn’t know what to answer, so then insulted and ridiculed me and Separatism, saying that we had failed and that I’d been wasting my life as a Separatist, while he’d been doing important work for Lesbians. (This seems to be a common theme for female impersonators – to complain bitterly about how much they’ve done for Lesbians.) I answered that we had an international movement that was doing just fine in spite of men like him and that he had done a lot of harm to Lesbians. So then he tried his usual line, about how he had felt like a girl growing up. I said that wouldn’t work with me — I knew it was a lie because he would have told me when we were friends, and reminded him about his phallic poem. He denied it as well as denying his racist letter to the Bay Times, in strange, almost legalistic language – something like “I do not admit to those.” When I told him I had copies of both, he really lost it, and, after more ranting, tried pity, saying he was a “freak.”

Elliott chose to do what he did. Many people who’ve had extreme plastic surgery later regret it. But he still has access to women and Lesbians that most men never get. And he has the pleasure of watching so many Lesbians fight over him, and attack other Lesbians on his behalf.

It was exhausting and horrible to be baited, taunted, and insulted, but I do know that bullies are cowards. And I did get to tell him that he can never have what he and other  men claiming to be Lesbians are trying so hard to get — which is to have sex with a Lesbian – because once a woman is with them, she is no longer a Lesbian. And, of course, only the most self-hating of women would choose such men – which may be why I never see him involved with anyone. Even most liberal mainstream-minded and/or self-hating Lesbians won’t go that far. The women who seem the most often to be with female impersonators are the wives they were already in het marriages with before they decided to “transition.”

Elliott is just one example that I can write about personally because of knowing him clearly before it ever entered his mind to identify as a Lesbian. Now, after almost 40 years of posing as a Lesbian, he still doesn’t seem the slightest bit less male or remotely female. Not many Lesbians can say they know for certain these men are simply lying. And I don’t see other female impersonators acting any differently. At one Lesbian event, a castrated man reached out to smack a friend of mine on the butt as she walked by. She didn’t know him. What made him that confident and arrogant, if not male privilege? I have never seen a Lesbian do that. A friend who knows him says he’s groped her and tried to kiss her whenever he has a chance. He has a wife who he married when he still identified as a man, and told my friend what he hasn’t told his wife — that he frequently likes to go out and pay undocumented workers to fuck him.

I have friends in other countries who’ve seen identical patterns. My dear friend, Katinka, in Sweden wrote about how she counters charges of “transphobia:”

“The word phobia means ‘irrational fear’. My fear of “MTF transsexuals” is not irrational — it’s well-founded and justified. That fear is political (they destroy lesbian feminist politics and community) and physical (like other men they are physically violent and can be sexually abusive and intimidating). I also have a feminist critique of them and the transsexual movement (a conservative, anti-feminist movement). Having a lesbian feminist analysis and critique of castrated men and their movement is not the same being “phobic.”

 A disturbing trend is that in countries where castrated men are accepted as women, they’re raising the statistics on inter-Lesbian domestic violence.

Then there are the worst kind of men who are insisting the government pay for their sex change operations – like the neo-Nazi murderer on death row. 7

Recently, a friend started a thread on Facebook about the harm femininity does to females. Of course a man (who calls himself “Sarah),” had to intrude to lecture us that “Some women have penises,” and he kept interjecting the word “penis” into this Feminist discussion. Again, it would be almost laughable if it wasn’t for the harm these men do. This is the same mentality behind the groups of men who identify as women sneaking into the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and then running to the showers to take off their clothes and expose their pricks to women and girls.  Again, what do you call a man who refuses to take “No” for an answer?”

   RAPE BY DECEIT

Men who posture as Lesbians seem to love the idea that they can con real Lesbians.  But even those who have enough privilege to pay for extensive surgery to alter their bone structure forget that being female and Lesbian is about far more than our bodies – who we are is our essence, our minds, hearts, and spirits.  Males are just different.  No matter what the disguise is, we’ll be able to notice what’s missing – the warmth and heart of what a true female and real Lesbian is.

But how obsessed they are with conning us is revealing. So I want to ask, if they ever are able to trick a woman into being sexual with them, isn’t that a form of rape by deceit? They clearly are obsessed with tricking us. Whenever Lesbians talk online about castrated and female impersonators, there are revealing responses from the men who insist on forcing us to relate to them, even online. When some of us wrote that we could of course tell any kind of man from a Lesbian, this is what one castrated man said:

“Well, after 6 months I haven’t been kicked out of the ‘Women born women’ book club meeting that I attend every month, so clearly my sneaky thievery of the truth from the clueless lesbians has been all too successful.” 

It doesn’t seem to occur to him that of course they know but are typically tolerating him, the way Lesbians do, to not embarrass him or hurt his feelings. And of course, all girls and women are trained to accept and try to ignore all the ways that boys and men intrude on our space, which males know very well since that’s one of the ways they use patriarchal conditioning to maneuver girls and women into situations where they molest and rape us. This man of course shows no concern for that fact that by inserting himself where he’s not wanted, he’s destroyed that women-only space and is likely to have driven some real Lesbians away.  This is what a friend wrote about her experience with a similar situation:

“When I first came out (in my mid-forties), I wanted to find some other Lesbians–I didn’t know any, at all. The timing coincided with the advent of the Internet, and so I was able to find a “Lesbian support group” near my home.  When I showed up, I found a small group, comprised of a male in drag, and about 3 Lesbians, who seemed comfortable around him.  All I remember about that night was that he held forth during the entire meeting, and in fact I left early, and never returned.  This experience delayed my finding Lesbians, when I really wanted some Lesbian friends.

“Once I started meeting Lesbians, one of my new acquaintances, a Separatist, introduced me to Radical Feminism, which was all new to me.  I started voraciously reading books and blogs, and I also joined a Radical Feminism listserv, which was international.  This online group had been created by, and was moderated by, someone who, I learned much later, is a castrated male.  This person put himself across as extremely female, including talking about “her” life as a little girl. I remember once saying something about men “mutilating” their bodies trying to think of themselves as female, and he quickly retorted that one should be careful using that word because it might have unwanted implications for pro-abortion arguments.  I didn’t know enough then to counter it, and trusted “her,” still feeling I didn’t know much.

At some point, after months, this person, in a private e-mail, told me of “her” “birth defect” which had been surgically corrected when “she” was 18.  I asked if “she” was born intersex.  His reply was “no.”  Then I knew, and was shocked.  He then went on to explain himself in this way, “If you and I were to make love, you would not be able to tell anything different about my body from your own.”  I experienced that as predatory, though it took me some time to name it that.  My misguided desire to be compassionate served to extend our interaction over the next few months, unfortunately, but then I ceased communication with him.

“She” then started a sexual relationship with a very young Radical Feminist Lesbian on this listserv.  The age difference between them is about 40 years.  Though the younger Lesbian was an adult, it was wrong, since there was such a power imbalance between them. The relationship didn’t last more than a few months.

He then started writing me privately about his suicidal intentions, appealing to my sympathy.  I mistakenly allowed him to continue in this vein, in which he tried to get me to drive to his state to pick up his large collection of Radical Feminist books (which he offered to me, knowing it was a big draw for me).  I offered to reimburse him to ship them to me, but I was adamant that I would not go there.  At that point he stopped trying, and, of course, never killed himself, nor sent me any books.

Another castrated man bragged:

“We do walk amongst you. No doubt you’ve been obliviously naked around a transwoman or shared the same bathroom with one. And probably more than once. I only ‘revel in deception’ because it irks you so; you claim that you can categorically always tell who is trans cuz they’re all old men in dresses with kids and a wife, but quietly freak out at the suggestion that there are invisible, passable trans women out there who share your spaces.
I revel in pointing out the inconsistencies in your arguments. It’s…fun
I’m going to the toilet now; a female public toilet. THERE! I just raped you! Did you feel it?

That aside, I regret to inform you that I use female bathrooms to…
*Drumroll* Pee, poop and to dispose of sanitary pads. And sometimes masturbate to the sound of other women peeing. I joke. Everything but the last part. ”

Does that sound even remotely like any woman you’ve ever known?  Does that sound like anyone who at all cares that most women and girls are sexually assaulted at least once in our lives?  Few women joke about rape.

So, if you love Lesbians and women, please don’t help these men get what they want. Stop participating in supporting their narcissism and selfishness, and please instead help the Lesbians and women they are hurting.

PLEASE do not participate in defining us out of existence.  Don’t support castrated men and other female impersonators against us in any way, including letting yourself be bullied into using our female names or pronouns for them. Know that whenever you don’t object to these men, you’re participating it making the space or event not safe for Lesbians and women, on behalf of men. They have the rest of the world, as well as the entire “LGBTQUERTY” community that is far more welcoming of them than they are of Lesbians.

Endnotes

1. I first wrote about castrated men invading our communities in “Dykes and Gorgons,” in 1973. Part of that was reprinted as our Gutter Dyke collective writings in the Separatists anthology, “For Lesbians Only,” edited by Julia Penelope and Sarah Hoagland. 

2. From Gallus Mag’s blog GenderTrender – she continues wonderful postings in defense of Lesbians:

 “NHS [National Health Service, England] determines Breast Implants are “medically necessary”: But Only for Men.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1343025/Transsexual-refused-8-000-breasts-NHS-AFTER-60-000-gender-swap-surgery-wins-court-battle.html is hard to believe. A man who wanted breast implants received over $15,000 in free legal aid to force his shared primary care trust provider to divert $12,000 from cancer patients to pay for his breast augmentation. And he WON. He will now get the larger fake breasts he wanted, paid for by taxpayers.

 On Gallus Mag’s blog, GenderTrender:  “Transwoman” fights for experience of living in all-girls dorm

A 51 year old male Navy vet, John Brigman, now calling himself Jennifer Gellar, decided to change his legal sex so he could live in the only all-girl dorm on the South West Texas Junior College Ulvade campus. Although he has a home in Ulvade, he wants to ‘experience dorm life’ in the only female dorm on campus. Gellar had a harassment complaint filed with police against him last march by one of the female students. The teenage girls in the dorm are frightened, saying ‘You have to kind of trust who your roommate is if you want to stay in that dorm, and I really don’t trust her. It’s not even about gender. She’s built like a man so automatically he’s going to be stronger than any of us.’ He says ‘I’m just wishing that people would accept me for who I am.’”

 January 15, 2011

 On  Lesbians Are WOMEN!,  Gallus Mag tells us how the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) works AGAINST, rather than for Lesbians, betraying us:

“Is THAT a picture of a lesbian?

THAT is a picture of a mass murderer. His name is Richard Speck. He murdered eight nurses. In prison he claimed he had turned transgender and was “actually” a female. He wanted a “sex change”.

How high on a list of LESBIAN Priorities should Richard Speck’s desire for a taxpayer funded sex change be? How important is it to YOU, as a LESBIAN, that this mass murderer gets a free sex change? Would you donate funds to help him do so? Would you want a major LESBIAN organization to make his desires a PRIORITY? Would you want an organization to do so while claiming to represent LESBIANS?

Well the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) has made it a priority. A LESBIAN priority that criminals like Speck have a CIVIL RIGHT to taxpayer funded gender reassignment, even if they have NEVER expressed a transgender urge prior to their incarceration. And this is a priority for a Lesbian WOMEN’s organization WHY exactly? What ARE the priorities of the National Center for Lesbian Rights?

Here is a list of all active pending cases on the NCLR case docket posted on their website, as I understand them:

-an amicus brief submitted in a lesbian case challenging Florida’s ban on adoption by lesbians and gays. (The case was represented by pro-bono attorneys, not NCLR, so here the NCLR submitted a brief in a case relating to an actual lesbian, not a case they represented however.)

-Lawsuit filed to force prisons to provide incarcerated trans criminals taxpayer funded hormones and surgery. Free sex changes for incarcerated transgender people who “come out” after incarceration. As wards of the state, convicted criminals should be entitled to taxpayer funded hormones and surgeries that are not provided for law abiding citizens.

-Lawsuit filed claiming heterosexuals are being discriminated against, by being excluded from gay men’s softball leagues. Seriously. This is who the NCLR is representing. Can’t make this shit up.

-amicus brief filed in case of Egyptian gay man seeking asylum from anti-gay mistreatment in a country where gay men can be arrested for homosexuality.

-asylum case for Mexican transgender identified person who received alleged harassment because of claiming to be a sex incongruent with that on birth certificate.

-asylum case for gay Pakistani male.

-amicus brief filed in case of Pakistani hetero male who alleges he was detained by the FBI due to religious profiling of muslims in terrorism investigations.

-assisting a pro bono attorney who is representing an asylum case for Bosnian lesbian.

-lawsuit against Cherokee Nation representing lesbian married couple.

-asylum for another Mexican transgender person.

That’s it. As I understand it those are the open pending cases represented by the NCLR.

Well what else do they do?

NCLR Sports Project issued a report in 2010 warning that women’s sports teams discriminate against males and that failure to permit males to compete against females in female sports may result in “costly litigation”. The NCLR press report was issued in October when a 57 year-old male who beat out all the female competitors (average age 30) to win the women’s world championship for long-drive golf sued the LPGA for his “right” to compete against women. The NCLR supported this action and does so by misrepresenting themselves as being a lesbian WOMEN organization. The NCLR appears to believe that women’s sports leagues infringe on the CIVIL RIGHTS of males. The 57 year-old male may be the first competitor in history to embark on a new professional sports career at such an advanced age.

It’s hard to IMAGINE that a lesbian rights organization would make the rights of males to play women’s sports their highest priority, much less the “rights” of male criminals to receive taxpayer funded sex changes, or the “rights” of heterosexuals to play on gay softball leagues, but this is what the NCLR is concerned with. Only three of the ten active pending lawsuits listed on the NCLR website concern lesbians, and two of them are not actually being represented by the NCLR. So, one out of ten.  Three transgender cases (two male one female), two gay male, two hetero male.

It’s time for the National Center for “Lesbian” Rights to change their name to better reflect their priorities. “National Center for MALE Rights”?  “National Center for Queer Rights” perhaps?

After all, the ex-lesbian legal director of NCLR  has stated “…there is a community of lesbians and transmen who are just kind of merging into one social group…”. NCLR seems to believe that the concerns and priorities of lesbians (who are women) are indistinct from the concerns and priorities of men (the legal director considers herself a man, so that may explain her male-centrism and misogyny). Like many transgender persons the legal director seems to believe that all discrimination against gays and lesbians is due to their perceived gender-nonconformity, and therefore the concerns of the LGB can be subsumed, borg-like, by the transgender political movement. What such a philosophy fails to take into account is that……wait for it…..Lesbians are WOMEN.  Political objectives and legal priorities for WOMEN are entirely different- and often at odds with- those of MEN.

So if anyone wrote out a year-end donation to the NCLR- quick put a stop payment on it. Don’t support an organization that colonizes lesbians and takes our money and works for the “rights” of Richard Speck, and straight men, and males who want to start professional sports careers at the age of 57 in women’s leagues.

And don’t buy the women’s underwear that NCLR sells to raise funds.

And tell ALL your friends and neighbors how the NCLR does NOT represent your LESBIAN interests.

3. Gallus Mag’s GenderTrender showed the YouTube video from Jerry Springer’s show, quote from Jerry:

Sandra is a transsexual, who cut off her own legs with a saw over 6 years ago because she decided she no longer wanted them. Sandra said she decided at the age of 14 that it never felt right to have legs, and finally took action to get rid of them.

http://youtu.be/DA43D

The second video is a follow-up show where Wendell (“Sandra”) is confronted by his ex-wife for how his selfishness affected her and their children.

http://youtu.be/p3xQPPy9tMY

4. Janice Raymond’s “The Transsexual Empire” is still an excellent resource about castrated men. It’s criticized as “old information,” but since it’s true, it’s a classic.  Castrated men and their supporters hate it of course.

From Gallus Mag’s GenderTrender, which also show what being female means to these men — just disconnected, grotesque, imitation body part, as if from butchered women:

Crossdressing and Sex Prosthetics Approved for Transgender UK Prisoners

March 16, 2011

A 20 page guidebook on transgender prisoners was issued to wardens across the UK last week. As a result of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act the Ministry of Justice’s guidelines state “An establishment must permit prisoners who consider themselves transsexual and wish to begin gender reassignment to live permanently in their acquired gender.”

Unlike other prisoners who must wear prison uniforms, self-identified transgenders may wear their own clothes, and will be given access to prosthetics, devices, and gendered street clothes used to disguise their physical sex. Males who want to must be referred to as “miss” or “ma’am” and be called by a fake name of their choosing. These new guidelines apply to transgendered who have not been issued a “Gender Recognition Certificate” by the government but to those who remain legally regarded as their actual physical sex. Male murderers and rapists who wish to “become women” are already provided with state paid Gender Reassignment Surgery and then transferred to women’s prisons, regardless of concerns for those women’s safety.

In at least one case, a man in prison for kidnapping and attempted murder of a woman received a taxpayer funded sex change, transferred to a woman’s prison, then after a few years demanded a reverse-sex-change back to male, also taxpayer funded.

I was unable to locate records of any “female to male” transgenders fighting for transfer to the male prison of their chosen gender. Presumably this is because females who want to be male decide to avoid placement with their brethren because the male prison population (like all male populations) is far more violent than the female one.

Instead of standard uniforms, inmates who wish to transgender may wear high heels, lingerie, dresses, wigs, make-up, nail polish, suits and ties, and other body coverings as well as complex prosthetic devices.

The new guidelines are being heralded by trans-activists as a new era in gender rights, and one beneficial to many transgenders who undergo incarceration in much higher rates than the general public. According to one US source, “Sixty-five percent of male-to-female (MtF) transgender people have spent time in prison or jail, as well as 29 percent of people who identify as female-to-male (FtM)—rates far above that of the general population.”

Sheila Jeffries has also written excellent books referring to castrated men. “Unpacking Queer Politics” has great support for Lesbians.

5. Information about Iran’s support of sex change came from a BBC News story by Vanessa Barford –  “Iran’s Diagnosed Transsexuals” — and “Transsexual in Iran,” from the original film, “Be Like Others,” directed by Tanaz Eshaghian, and broadcast on BBC television in 2008.

Below are excerpts from the article:

“Homosexual relationships are banned in Iran, but the country allows sex change operations and hundreds of men have elected for surgery to change their lives.”

“Diagnosed transsexuals”

“Sex changes have been legal in Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, passed a fatwa – a religious edict – authorising them for “diagnosed transsexuals” 25 years ago.

Today, Iran carries out more sex change operations than any other nation in the world except for Thailand.

The government even provides up to half the cost for those needing financial assistance and a sex change is recognised on your birth certificate.

‘Islam has a cure for people suffering from this problem. If they want to change their gender, the path is open,’ says Hojatol Islam Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, the religious cleric responsible for gender reassignment.

He says an operation is no more a sin than ‘changing wheat to flour to bread,’

Yet homosexuality is still punishable by death.

‘The discussion is fundamentally separate from a discussion regarding homosexuals. Absolutely not related. Homosexuals are doing something unnatural and against religion,’ says Kariminia. ‘It is clearly stated in our Islamic law that such behaviour is not allowed because it disrupts the social order.’”

6. Gallus Mag’s done it again. In her blog posting, “Injustice at Every Turn,” she documents their incessant complaining. One even said he hates little girls because he’s been “deprived” of his girlhood, and then describes a completely male fantasy of what a girl’s childhood is.

Transgender males feel victimized by females who choose to congregate among themselves. http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11968

They feel victimized when they are forced to cover up their breast implants in public like females.  http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/national/police-reportedly-ask-transgender-topless-sunbathers-men-to-put-tops-back-on-060110

Transgender male criminals- including rapists and murderers- feel victimized when they are not incarcerated in women’s prisons.   http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23740460-transsexual-killer-can-go-to-womens-jail.do

They feel victimized by those who don’t want to have sex with them.  http://community.feministing.com/2010/07/18/i-wouldnt-fuck-a-trans-person/

They feel victimized by little girls, “seething with anger” at little girls in public.   http://www.bilerico.com/2011/02/give_me_back_my_girlhood.php

They feel discriminated against when national health insurance won’t pay for their breast implants.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1343025/Transsexuals-fight-implants-lands-taxpayer-18-000.html

They feel discriminated against when they can’t live with teenaged girls in dorm rooms. http://www.dallasvoice.com/watch-transgender-woman-sparks-uproar-moving-allgirls-dorm-texas-1060957.html

They feel discriminated against by journalists that refer to them by pronouns that accurately report their sex   http://transequality.org/media.html

They feel victimized by “male exclusion” at women’s colleges.   https://floodsrollback.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/womens-college-without-boys/

57 year old males feel discriminated against when they want to start a late-in-life professional sports career in female sports   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwNMzlp0CJM

7. In Leslie Feinberg’s moving novel, “Stone Butch Blues,” she describes graphically the rapes and torture of Butches by men, and how men would invade Lesbian bars to have access to Lesbians. Yet, she supports female impersonators to do just that, at Michigan and elsewhere. It’s a shame that she doesn’t see the parallels.

8.  http://off2dr.com/modules/extcal/event.php?event=370

“Execution for Nazi-loving Cleveland murderer can move forward, despite his lawyer’s ‘outrageous’ representation.”
Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2010, 6:48

Frank Spisak testifies in his own defense in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas court In on July 5, 1983.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices made clear Tuesday that they unanimously agree with the collective judgment of the Cleveland community: Frank Spisak, the Hitler-loving triple murderer who terrorized Cleveland State University, was one demented guy — one whose attempted legal defenses have finally failed.

The high court overruled appellate judges who had saved Spisak, a former cross-dresser who fashioned himself as a modern-day Nazi, from death for his 1982 killing spree….Yet the high court refused to overturn Spisak’s death penalty on that basis. Instead, it ruled that the totality of Spisak’s actions — not only his murder spree but his Nazi salute and “Heil Hitler” remarks and lack of remorse — provided the jury with ample grounds on which to recommend a death sentence.

Between February and August 1982, Spisak shot and killed three people at CSU — the Rev. Horace Rickerson; CSU student Brian Warford; and Timothy Sheehan, CSU’s assistant superintendent for buildings and grounds. He tried to kill two others, saying he did it because he was a follower of Adolf Hitler and was in a war for survival “of the Aryan people,” according to court records.

Frank Spisak, who calls himself “Miss Frances Anne Spisak,” said on  April 08, 2006:

I AM NOT A MAN!

I am not a man! I reiterate: I am a girl and I want to be recognized as one!! The state of Ohio is FORCING me, against my will, to remain transsexual. Prison officials refuse to provide me with the medical treatment I need to become a woman! Ohio is withholding female hormones from me, and denying me the surgery needed to correct my disorder. Ohio is forcing me to be masculine in appearance and gender. I am being deprived of autonomy and my rights as a United States citizen! I have first amendment rights to be a woman!   

I am one of society’s forgotten misfits, thrown into one of the largest successful businesses in America today: the prison system. As I understand it, when persons are sent to prison, that’s the punishment. We are not sent here to be abused, but many of us are, daily. Oppression of any kind is a mockery of our most fundamental American beliefs, and values about freedom and the dignity of other human beings. I am in a continual battle for my rights to be a woman, and for my rights and dignity as a human being. Things are rough here since I am the only transsexual out of almost 200 prisoners on the all male death row in Ohio. I may be the only transsexual incarcerated in any Ohio prison.

The prison system in Ohio is almost totally unprepared to deal with me. I stick out because I’m soft and effeminate. The male/female relationship in prison isn’t similar to the way it is on the outside. Here, if you are feminine–i.e., don’t resist a male’s sexual advances–you become his slave(wife, punk) and are stripped naked. Everything you own belongs to him, from the clothes you wear to who you hang around with, if he chooses to make an issue of it. Is is commonly believed, by male convicts, that a “woman” is supposed to act a certain way: like a slave. For instance, she must be submissive to all MEN, and stay out of controversies between two MEN. If you disobey a MAN, you may be physically brutalized. Women are called “bitches” or “whores.” To a certain extent the prison system supports and encourages these attitudes because it helps prison officials maintain authority and savage control. It also excites some.

 The savage irony underlying my convictions and punishment is that the court which sentenced me to death, and the rest of society do not know the “real me” and retain only the false impression of a die-hard savage neo-Nazi gunman, generated at my trial in 1983. Because of my active mental illness at that time(and the great conflict I was experiencing over my transsexuality) I was unable to reveal to others that I am a woman trapped inside a man’s body(i.e., at my trial I wore a moustache!).

I was also unable to establish that I have a psychiatric disorder, and was insane at the time of the crimes. I do not state all this because I believe my mental illness entitles me to a “good citizenship award” for killing three people for no reason. On the contrary, mental illness is not a license to kill or an excuse to commit murder, but rather it is a reason to afford the afflicted person with the medical treatment for the illness, rather than criminal punishment for the acts. At the very least, my citizenship in a civilized state should entitle me to a trip to the hospital so the state can operate on me, and surgically correct me. In 1983 I was so mentally ill that being branded publicly as a racist neo-Nazi seemed wonderful in comparison with the humiliations and treatment I imagined I might have received if I openly admitted transsexuality! (note: my ancestry is Semitic).

Incarceration, for the past 16 years, in the brutal and sadistic all male prison invironment into which I’ve been unwillingly thrust, has cured me of all delusions! I’ve gained mental health and attained competency and am now putting together a lawsuit against prison officials in Ohio because I wish to obtain female sex hormones and a penectomy (surgical removal of the penis, testicles, and castration), which I NEED to become female and are medically necessary in my case! The ACLU has informed me they cannot help me in a lawsuit because of the amount of work they are already doing in a suit against the prison(i.e., fighting for death row inmates’ rights to say their last words aloud before being executed). The state of Ohio wants to take away that right by making the condemned record his or her last words on a small 3×5 index card prior to being executed, and then give the warden the discretion to read all, part, or none of it to the press after the inmate’s death.

 Because I’m still under sentence of death, this letter represents, in a sense, my last words. I may not get other opportunities to speak before I die.
Perhaps there is someone out there who would care to correspond with me, who can offer help, advice and maybe even friendship or affection, if they are not extinct commodities. Hell, I’ll even settle for postcards with dirty jokes!
 
 Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. I need contacts with lawyers, organizations, or people who are concerned enough to help. I am one desolate, desperate, and oppressed transsexual in bondage – seeking freedom and release! I am seeking assistance from anyone who will help me fight for dignity and my right to live and be a WOMAN.

P.S. I am permitted to receive one embossed envelope, per letter, for return postage purposes to write back to persons outside(NO STAMPS permitted!) All persons writing to me and seeking replies should kindly enclose an embossed envelope for postage(I am very poor).

UPDATE 12/28/00
Miss Frances Anne files lawsuit, and seeks $250,000

Contrary to what some of my critics say, the lawsuit I’ve filed, especially regarding my “serious medical condition” and NEED for treatment, is not a frivolous lawsuit! It has been clearly established by Federal law in four U.S. circuits since 1992(including the 6th Circuit in Ohio) and the District of Columbia, that transsexualism is a serious medical condition for which a transsexual prisoner is entitled to receive treatment while incarcerated. No Circuit Court anywhere in the United States has reached a contrary conclusion. Because transsexualism is a serious medical condition for which a transsexual prisoner is entitled to receive medical treatment while incarcerated in a prison, deliberate indifference by prison officials to a transsexual prisoner’s need for treatment violates the 8th amendment – prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment – pursuant to the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in a previous case. Ohio prison officials have been deliberately indifferent to my serious medical needs. I have repeatedly asked the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction officials to allow me to have an operation to make me into a woman, or to give me treatments with female hormones. All my requests have been denied.

In my lawsuit, I assert that I have a fundamental (and absolute) First Amendment U.S. Constitutional right to become and be a WOMAN. (i.e., the right of AUTOMONY: right of autonomous control over the development and expression of one’s personality, intellect, interests and tastes). Right of autonomy is “absolute, permitting no exceptions,” and one of the chief distinctions which sets the United States of America apart from totalitarian regimes.

I also raise legal claim that I have a First Amendment U.S. Constitutional right to estrogen and a sex-change operation, because such medical treatment is medically necessary for me to become a woman: a transsexual, like myself, cannot exercise her First Amendment rights to be a woman, nor become a woman, without these medical necessities!

My lawsuit also states that I’ve been PHYSICALLY INJURED by prison official’s refusal to provide me with male hormones and sex-conversion surgery in prison. Furthermore, I declare that I am suffering intense psychological PAIN daily because of the extreme discomfort I feel with the male anatomy and the inappropriateness of the masculine identity and role I’ve been forced to assume, and am expected to conform to by placement in the repressive and hostile all male prison environment into which I have been unwillingly thrust, and where I’m not free to express my soul and human spirit, nor free to end my quest for self-realization and attain self-respect and peace of soul by becoming a woman.

I am seeking a declaratory judgment that the acts, policies and practices of prison officials by denying me medical treatment necessary to become a woman violates my right under the United States Constitution, and I am requesting a preliminary and permanent injunction which will require them to change my name on their records and identify me as MISS FRANCES ANNE SPISAK, and require them to provide hormone therapy(estrogen) to me and hospitalization so that I can get surgery(castration and penectomy, etc.) to become a WOMAN while incarcerated. I am also seeking over $250,000 in damages(for pain, suffering, and mental cruelty to me).

I have always believed that my crimes were more the result of my psychiatric disorder than anything else and, if provided the medical and surgical treatment I NEED to become a woman, that I can be rehabilitated sufficiently in a woman’s role and that I will pose no future danger to society if ever released at a later date. This type of medical treatment and rehabilitation is more scientific and more humane that the fate I’ve been facing for the past 17 years on death row: execution by electric chair or lethal injection. We need to leave these barbaric methods of punishment behind us, along with the 20th Century that is expiring and going into the ashcan of world history along with its historical legacies of two World Wars, racism, genocide, inequality, and the persecution of sexual minorities.

MISS FRANCES ANNE SPISAK
on death row in Ohio/U.S.A.