Nice Try, Bess

…And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives
– Pink Floyd, “When the Tigers Broke Free”

I demand that you take this post down immediately.
-Elizabeth Hungerford, via e-mail (link added for clarity)

Once upon a time, there was a right.

Lets call it the right to vote.

Once upon a time certain people who didn’t like the fact that certain other people who once did not have the right to vote now had the right to vote concocted laws and rules – tests and taxes – leaving the right to vote intact yet nevertheless achieving the ultimate goal of making the right to vote unavailable in matter of practice for almost all of those certain other people who once did not have the right to vote now had the right to vote.

And once upon a time there was another right.

Lets call it the right to reproductive freedom.

Once upon a time certain people who didn’t like the fact that certain members of the United States Supreme Court banded together to prevent states from outlawing abortion outright gathered together in the form of state legislative conclaves and crafted laws and rules leaving the right to an abortion intact in name yet nevertheless with the ultimate goal of making abortion and even birth control of almost any kind unavailable in matter of practice.

And once upon a time there was – albeit not everywhere – a right.

And once upon a time there was – albeit not everywhere – a right.

Lets call it trans people’s right to legal redress against discrimination based on their being transsexual, transgender or trans-whatever.

Once upon a time certain people who don’t like the fact that certain other people acknowledged the reality that transsexual women are women demanded that a women-only organization fire a transsexual woman even though plenty of women in that organization did recognize the reality that that transsexual woman was a woman.

Now, that once-upon-a-time was before there were any (well, any more than one – in a solitary, moderately-sized midwestern city) laws giving trans people a right of redress against such discrimination.

But then once upon a time there was a right of redress against discrimination based on being trans-whatever and that right existed not just in a solitary, moderately-sized midwestern city but in the largest jurisdiction in the land to have a gay rights law.

And once upon a now there is – albeit still not everywhere, though still more than one place, and in spite of a trans-exterminationism manifesto that was published the same year as that once-upon-a-time-in-L.A. law – a right.

Lets still call it trans people’s right to redress against discrimination based on their being transsexual, transgender or trans-whatever.

Certain people claimed that they agreed with this concept…

I do not want anyone to face irrational discrimination – that includes females as well as trans folx.

…but, by their own caveats – such as that one – they really don’t.

Once upon a time a surprisingly-direct answer to a thirteenth question (after refusing to address the first twelve) was suggestive of a post-op transsexual woman being regarded as a the woman that she is…

 and then once upon a time the caveat laid the truth bare.

[Kimberly Nixon, a post-op transsexual woman] has demonstrated that she falls within the specific class of people we believe “gender identity” laws should protect.

…

Ms. Nixon did not seek employment in her case. Rather, she sought to volunteer as a rape counselor. The court explained that “(t)his is quite a different case from, say, Ms. Nixon being excluded from a restaurant because of her transsexual characteristics. Unlike a for-profit business providing services or recruiting employees from the general public or a volunteer organization open to all, Rape Relief defined itself as a women only organization with the express approval of the state …”

The distinction of note isn’t the volunteerism – it is the  implied right to make trans women spread ’em on demand, be it physically or rhetorically, to “demonstrate.”

Ultimately, no trans woman – transsexual, transgender, or trans-whatever – will ever not have to face an inquisition over sex status…

whenever anyone who might happen to consider herself – or himself – morally and biologically superior to the transsexual woman – or, of that matter, any person who might want to fuck with someone else, using the legal principles ejaculated by Brennan and Hungerford – decides to inquisit as to op status of someone who is suspected of being trans-anything.

The trans woman will be othered…

othered into never being fully considered to be part an employer’s real workforce…

othered into never being fully considered – or considered at all – for promotions of which she may be deserving…

othered into never even being told about possibilities for advancement…

othered into never being hired in the first instance…

othered into never having the privilege of being able to transition in the pre-first instance…

Consequently, all transsexuals and those who might be suspected of being so or even being trans-anything face the reality that those who can – with force of law – inquire can effectively render meaningless any and all laws setting out equality for trans people.

Oh…

and don’t tell me that no homosexuals can evince an intent to violate employment discrimination laws.

Signorile: You can’t fire someone for being black—
Schlein: I can them for whatever reason I want—
Signorile: You cannot fire someone for being African-American…
Schlein: Well, I wouldn’t tell them…

All trans people – but particularly transsexual women – except, perhaps, a select few who can afford to go off the grid and reject and criticize the status quo with relative safety buy their transitions withoug having to play mundane peasant games will be othered into not existing.

You and your co-conspirator are eliminationists.

J’accuse! 

You cannot slither up to the mountaintop – from a jurisdiction whose laws leave room for a rational person to wonder whether you, based on your biographical info, have ever had to compete on a level playing field against a trans person for anything, be it your job or anything else – and scream ‘Someone rid us of these troublesome gender identity laws!’ and then legitimately act surprised if in fact some person or people take you up on it by doing what they can to eliminate those – or even one of those – whose civil rights needs led to the existence of those laws.

And…

You cannot slither up to the mountaintop – from a jurisdiction whose laws leave room for a rational person to wonder whether you, based on your biographical info, have ever had to compete on a level playing field against a trans person for anything, be it your job or anything else – and scream ‘Someone rid us of these troublesome gender identity laws!’ and then legitimately act offended if someone asks a question about whether or not there could, in even some small way and even possibly – affording you every charitable throught process imaginable – genuinely not intended by you, be some connection between your fluffy, jargon-laden demonization of trans women – which, lest anyone forget, is based entirely on a sought-after, universal legal presumption that the presence of any person who may have a penis in any area that you and those you claim to speak for arrogate to youselves the right to demarcate as (non-trans-)women-only is, and can never be anything else but, a precursor to rape that the machinations of law and society must eradicate because we all ‘know’ that no sexual assault has ever occurred anywhere other than in a women’s restroom and no sexual assault has ever been committed by anyone other than pre-op transsexual women – and some mind even smaller and more transphobic than yours acting out violently against the first presumed-trans person that he or she may happen to encounter.

And…

If an obnoxious, hate-filled, know-nothing lawyer penned a screed against people of color in an attempt to negatively affect international policy regarding the rights of people of color and then, in the weeks following release of the screed, there was a noticeable uptick in violence against people of color – including violence committed by government actors – in the same area as, or an area adjacent to, the obnoxious, hate-filled, know-nothing lawyer, there would be no problem whatsoever in at least asking the question: Are the two connected?

If an obnoxious, hate-filled, know-nothing lawyer penned a screed against gays and lesbians in an attempt to negatively affect international policy regarding the rights of gays and lesbians and then, in the weeks following release of the screed, there was a noticeable uptick in violence against gays and lesbians – including violence committed by government actors – in the same area as, or an area adjacent to, the obnoxious, hate-filled, know-nothing lawyer, not only would there be no problem whatsoever in at least asking the above question, there would be more than a few people of prominence who would presume it to be the case even without posing a question.

And yet…

If an obnoxious, hate-filled, know-nothing lawyer co-pens a screed against trans women in an attempt to negatively affect international policy regarding the rights of trans women and then, in the weeks following release of the screed, there was a noticeable uptick in violence against trans women – including violence committed by government actors – in the same area as, or an area adjacent to, the more obnoxious of the two hate-filled, know-nothing lawyers in question…

Kool-aid…

Strong, in these apologists it is.

I guess that you could assert that simply asking a question is an “an incitement to violence.”

But if you actually are asserting that, then if I actually had unequivocally called you a “dangerously incompetent attorney” (as opposed to posing in the alternative that your ‘analysis’ of how criminal law can – or, in your view, cannot – enter the picture even in the presence of civil rights anti-discrimination statutes demonstrates that you either “do[]n’t give a shit about how nonsensical” your analysis is or that you are “a dangerously incompetent attorney”), then I’d walk such a characterization back.

And I’d have to conclude that you actually are not a dangerously incompetent attorney.

I would, instead, be forced to conclude that you are simply a dangerously incompetent human being.

I leave it to you – and everyone else – to determine which is sadder.

After all, in a single breath it would seem, you are both implicitly expressing concern over how the wording of one comment on one blog post could negatively impact the singular grandiose entity of your employment and asserting the utter and complete impossibility of anyone being motivated to violently act out negatively against trans people based on something that you co-authored, submitted to an international politico-governmental body, publicized on at least your own blog (who knows where all else), and (presumably at least) have no problem receiving at least some international press about.

Ah yes…

It must be presumed that someone will use some piece of information about yourself – available on the internet only by virtue of you having outed yourself by making posts from a computer from which that employer’s IP address bandwithily radiates (and, BTW…have you never heard of the internet white pages? Or the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers? Well, they’ve heard of you!) – to harm you, but the question of whether or not what you have concocted and disseminated on the internet could possibly have had any immediate negative impact on any trans person cannot even be asked.

Anyone who might get the urge to cause you problems must be internet-savvy, eh?

No one who might possibly ever get the urge to harm trans women could possibly be internet-savvy, eh?

You’re wanting it both ways.

For someone who hates men as much as you do…

I am a lesbian with a SEPARATIST agenda. That’s right, I love women and I’m really fucking serious about it. There is nothing about the male anatomy or the way that men act or (might) treat me that could possibly compensate for the moral and emotional damage inflicted by a relationship wherein I am necessarily the lesser party because of my lovely vagina. Nothing. And don’t get me started on hairy backs, ok??

…that sounds almost downright bisexual – or subconscious compensation therefor.

Here’s a piece of advice, though: Don’t hold your breath.

As Marti Abernathey has recently spelled out for you:

The faulty reasoning in your UN paper is dangerous. Dangerous in much the same way Janice Raymond’s work is dangerous. Raymond’s work in the 1980s has affected trans lives in a way that is real and has caused much harm in our community. The world will never know how many trans people have killed themselves because they saw no way to pay for surgery, thanks to Raymond. Your paper may not be a knife, but it sure as hell is a great sharpening stone.

You are the archetypal bully who cries louder than any human being has ever cried when your victim makes a stand against you (here, nothing physical howver much you may want to imagine it to be, but merely demonstrating how off-base your legal assertions are – something that transsexual targets of 1979 could not do on the internet.)

The fact that you and a co-conspirator have carefully constructed a few examples that allow you to hop up and down and flail and point and say ‘See! We’re not Janice Raymond! We’re okay with de-penised transsexuals in the ladies room!  In fact, we’re just as okay with them as we are with women!’ may (or may not) actually get you disinvited from Janice Raymond’s next rhetorical transsexual-swimming party but it doesn’t qualitatively separate you from, say…, Republicans who trot out Clarence Thomas, Allen West, Bobby Jindal and Herman Cain as ‘proof’ that they are somehow goal-differentiated from Jim Crow Klansmen.

Republicans speak of free markets – that are in fact rigged.

You speak of rights – that in practice will be illusions.

Republicans speak of capitalism – that is in fact plutonomy.

You speak of remedies – of which M.C. Escher would be proud.

Republicans speak of democracy – that is in fact theocracy.

You speak of delineated spaces – but in obtuse gobbledyspeak which obscures the reality that such spaces that cannot be established or policed without, well, you know…

Entitlement to sex-segregated spaces on the basis of ‘gender identity’ discrimination refers specifically to civil rights causes of action. This may be a difficult distinction for the non-lawyer to make, however, we do not address criminal searches & seizures, aka ‘panty checks,’ per the Fourth Amendment–which applies to government actors.

The letter does not express opposition to ‘gender identity’ discrimination laws in the contexts of employment, housing, education….

none of which exist in the type of vacuum in which no person or entity has any ability of premises control…

none of which exist in the type of vacuum in which  a trans person – who might happen to walk through life as unexposed as “Undercover Punk” did not skulk through the internet – will ever be able to completely avoid your term of art:

sex-segregated accommodations

Some art, of course, is far uglier than other art:

All persons- including trans identified persons- retain access to the bathroom assigned to their birth-sex (/reproductive capacity).

In the words of Arthur Edens, “You don’t need me to tell you what that means.”

In my words: No one should have to tell you what that means – but because you, your co-conspirators and your co-opted apologists insist on deceiving the (intended) damned, I’ll have to…

yet again.

Any standard that must be established, must be policed, lest it cease to be a standard.

Q.E.D.

Any boundary that must be established, must be policed, lest it cease to be a boundary.

Q.E.D.

You and your cohorts are the rhetorical amalgam of Bernie Madoff, Janice Raymond, Paul McHugh and Allen Andrade.

You and your cohorts are engaging in eliminationism, creating the illusion of an equality tolerance that only a handful of elites – if that – will, in practical, 21st century employment condition – not to mention security state – realities will ever actually be able to obtain the ability to meet.

You and your cohorts are attempting to engage in a deceptive form of message control, refusing to allow most of those targeted by your hatred to respond – and, when you do, following it up  with circular non-answers:

When Janice Raymond was rampaging in Chrysalis and in her full-length exterminationism manifesto and in her deceptively toned-down distillation thereof for the National Center for Healthcare Technology, she didn’t have any of her intended victims fact-checking her in real-time.

You clowns do, and it is obvious even to a mushroom that it, perhaps more than even the existence of transsexual women, pisses you off to no end.

YOU took it upon yourself to act in concert with a well-known, well-documented transphobic bigot to issue a plea to the United Nations to both negatively impact existing rights of trans people and to impede further development of rights for trans people.

YOU took it upon yourself to post comments to THIS site, thereby publicizing the IP address of what was later revealed (and acknowledged by you) to be your employer:

YOU took it upon yourself to engage in Laurelurleen Ramseyerogovitch-esque sockpuppetry in introducing your and your co-conspirator’s exterminationism manifesto:

YOU took it upon yourself to, with the pomposity that cyber-Janice Raymondists are known for, send a message to Ethan St. Pierre containing a very Dana Taylor-esque display of laughable-yet-sad-if-you-really-believe-what-you’re-saying paranoia regarding yourself.

Respond to what?

Respond to this:

Now, look at the first ENDABlog URL in that missive…

Now, look what it went to:

Not to anything that I wrote, but something that someone else wrote…

making a connection that I did not explicitly make in the searchable text of ENDABlog even though I had pointed to the aforenoted IP of “Undercover Punk,” the entity under whose byline you – using your (and I love this) your “government name” (What are you? An attorney? Or a 13-year-old wannabe rapper? Or perhaps a frustrated FTM who hasn’t been allowed to change his name from Elizabeth to, say…, Engelbert?) – and your co-conspirator published on the open internet.

Whoever “Undercover Punk” was was the credited poster of the Brennan-Hungerford exterminationism manifesto at radfemshlub. 

Whoever “Undercover Punk” was had made comments on ENDABlog – at 4:02 p.m. on May 16th (a Monday), and at 11:14 a.m., 12:33 p.m. and 1:57 p.m. on July 28th (a Thursday) – from the IP address of (well, I’m going to be nice and not say – given that I have never actually said it – that I know of – and I damn sure didn’t say it in the comment to which Hungerford refers via URL) removing any claim to legally-cognizable “privacy” that “Undercover Punk” may have had.  If the times in question on Monday May 16, 2011 and Thursday July 28, 2011, were times during which “Undercover Punk” was not supposed to be engaging in such internet activity, then…

how is it anybody’s problem but “Undercover Punk”‘s ?

The fact that after posting to an anti-exterminationist blog such as ENDABlog from the IP address of (well, I’m going to be nice and not say – given that I have never actually said it – that I know of – and I damn sure didn’t say it in the comment to which Hungerford refers) “Undercover Punk” made an internationally inflammatory posting at which (on my monitor at least) the names “Elizabeth Hungerford” and “Undercover Punk” appear roughly an inch apart would be, as most people’s grammas would say, stupid.

The fact that after the name of the entity to whom that IP address belongs was searchably revealed, “Elizabeth Hungerford” and “Undercover Punk” came – through her own volition – to be revealed as a singular sockpuppet entity…

…is no one’s fault but her own.

The fact that she is now demanding that a member of the class against whom she is advocating negative international policy be adopted silence herself in her act of asking why a particular question is not being asked suggests that she possess more male arrogance than I may ever at any point in my life have possessed.

Sorry, folks….

No special rights for trans-exterminationists.

Now, despite that, I’ve redacted the critical information from comment in question – precisely because I didn’t make it.

But, I am going to ask a few more questions.

First…

Is all of the shit that you’ve been excreting what you actually believe? Or, in helping to sow discord among those who need civil rights protections the most, are you just another corporatist lesbian slag carrying the water of the misogynistic gay men who have turned a civil rights movement into their personal perpetual circle jerk hedge fund?

I am not stating anything in there (well, beyond my general opinion of the gay rights industry) as known fact.

I’m simply asking a question.

Second…

Given the seemingly male arrogance that leads to a demand that an intended victim of negative international policy not ask questions and given that you’ve conned a number of transsexual women – including at least one pre-op (and I won’t even mention the post-ops who feel they possess the authority to stand in judgment of which other post-ops are actually women and which ones are still just men) – into siding against their own people, I have to ask: Forget the FTM snark I made above; are you actually a woman of transsexual history yourself?  Someone whose admitted privilege…

I am a white, well-educated, 32 year old American woman. I am the daughter of two extremely progressive, but heterosexual, parents who tolerate my radical political ideals as partly their fault. I do not deny my social privilege. It allows me to reject and criticize the status quo with relative safety. It exposes me to ways of living and ideologies that are not bound up in survival, but rather, with idealism and personal fulfillment through freedom of thought and choice. Oooh, agency!

might possibly also extend to purchasing what you’ve convinced yourself is an undetectable and unquestionable transition (“government name” and all) and becoming the ultimate self-loathing transsexual woman (you certainly wouldn’t be the first one I’ve run across, though you would be the first one I’ve run across who is actively seeking international trans-exterminative policy that you – presumably – feel would never be applied to you)?

I am not stating any of that (beyond the known arrogance of some transsexual women and, of course, the quote being your own words) as known fact.

But I am asking a question.

Third…

Do you have any human DNA at all?  Your 2011 bio blurb indicates that you’re 32 – which means there is a decent chance that you were decanted in 1979, the year that Janice Raymond’s Transsexual Empire was published.  Are you just a trans-exterminationist golem?  A copy of that exterminationism manifesto animated into something that has the outward appearance of a human?

I am not stating any of that (beyond the information you’ve provided about yourself, other verifiable dates and, of course, general notions of math) as known fact.

But I am asking a question.

Agency!