You think I just don't understand, but I don't believe you.

Gloria Steinem on “trans woman” Renee Richards:

“a frightening instance of what feminism could lead to” or as “living proof that feminism isn’t necessary.”

“At a minimum, it was a diversion from the widespread problems of sexual inequality.” She writes that, although she supports the right of individuals to identify as they choose, she claims that, in many cases, transsexuals “surgically mutilate their own bodies” in order to conform to a gender role that is inexorably tied to physical body parts. She concludes that “feminists are right to feel uncomfortable about the need for and uses of transsexualism.”

“If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?

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Hai! My wife Cheryl came home one night in 1990 and found me dressed in her clothes. So, I garroted her and almost beheaded her. House me with women!

Much has been written about the decision of U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf, sitting in a Massachusetts federal court, to order the State of Massachusetts to give  murderer Robert Kosilek a “sex change” due to his gender-identity disorder.

In a telephone interview with the Associated Press, Kosilek said that “(t)his is who I am. My essence is female … To those who don’t understand gender-identity disorder, I understand that there is a reluctance to even think about this in a serious vein because to the average person who is uninformed, it may be truly bizarre, but this is who I am. This is who I have always been.”

Let’s put aside the the gender essentialism for the moment (My essence. Blergh.)

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Here are the people to complain to if you think this is fucked up.

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Senior Editor Michele Kort
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Consulting Editor Gloria Steinem 
Money Editor Martha Burk 
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Mary J.

This is a Guest Post by Lanie about rape. Lanie’s story is shockingly common. It makes me murderously angry that Lanie’s story is common. Her story is my story, and I suspect it is yours. Thank you Lanie for sharing.

It was supposed to have been a reward for having survived high school, new people and ideas. It instead was one of the worst years of my life. I started college before my 16^th birthday. A few weeks before school started my Mom got a call from the University. From what I could hear it was, “…yes my daughter has finished high school and is planning on attending your University, yes she was accepted. Ok next Wednesday? We’ll be there.” Then my Mom hung up the phone and told me something about having to meet with the Vice President of Student Life and how it could keep me from attending. That was the overwhelming tone of my interaction with my mother my freshman year. I was a risk, I was constantly at risk, of doing something wrong and it was because four years earlier I agreed to go to prep school after sixth grade.  I was gonna be trouble. The school decided it, and judging from my mother’s general uneasiness she had been sold on the idea.

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So this man seems, um, a little off. These comments are from The Bilerico Project, a well-known woman-hating Gay blog (h/t to Mansplainin’ & Transplainin’).

Oh! But it gets better. Or worse.

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Maryland District Court Judge Bruce S. Lamdin, who sits in Baltimore County (where I live), has decided to “retire” rather than face judicial ethics charges stemming from his conduct during an order of protection hearing. Listen to the Lamdin Audio (trigger warning for extreme woman hatred). Read the news links below for details on Lamdin’s egregious behavior.

So, the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities dropped its investigation. Because the woman-hating judge “retired.” So problem “solved.”

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Gender Identity Watch is a new blog devoted to tracking legislation and case law that attempts to codify “gender identity” into law and to override protections based on sex. Gender Identity Watch monitors organizations that push gender identity and thus engage in the erasure of female reality, including:

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: “Transgender people and issues are core to our work at the Task Force.”

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All women are damaged.  Damage is injury or harm that reduces us.

You, woman, are damaged.

Does this offend you? Do you believe you are not damaged, that you are somehow immune to the forces at work that make women hate each other?

You are lucky.

Who WOULDN’T be damaged? Damage to women is both a direct goal of male supremacy and a by-product of living in a woman-hating culture.

I don’t blame women for this damage.

All women are two-faced.  We engage in deception when we pretend we believe one thing, and act according to a different belief.  We “have” to be two-faced. How else would women survive in a woman-hating culture, where what we are socialized to be loyal to doesn’t always match up with what we know to be true in our hearts? And, so, often we sell ourselves out, just as much as well sell out other women.

I don’t blame women for adopting tactics needed to survive.

I am a woman. I am not immune from these observations.

I am damaged and two-faced.

But how do we trust women in light of the fact that all women are damaged and all women are two-faced (and three- and four-faced, depending on the lives we lead and the masters we serve)?

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