Thanks!

Thank you for writing this piece! I think it's hard for some to clearly grasp the obdurate nature of their faith in the anti-trans social memes permeating our culture. Some believe it's a choice to have a cross-sexed gender identity because jokes, religious assertions and armchair therapists collaboratively create a social climate in which an otherwise rational person who knows that while they themselves cannot pick and choose gender identities at will, trans people must. I'm sure the author of the piece you've responded to cannot recall when he "chose" his gender-identity and I'm sure that it's not occurred to him that neither can trans people.

Furthermore, we know that that gender identity isn't taught/learned because we know the man who pushed that idea in the 70s (John Money) falsified his research. You want to know what happens when you force a kid with a male gender identity to be a girl? Look up John Money's tragic John/Joan case. While you're doing that think about how this child's case exactly mirrors the experiences of transsexual kids.

No, we as human beings do not just pick a gender identity. If people would set aside the memes and rationally consider - for even just a moment - the facts which are there to be known about humanity and our gender identity, I'm sure many would find themselves mortified over their treatment of trans people. Is it any wonder why something like half of trans kids suffers with PTSD? When trans people can be legally fired, not hired and denied basic housing options, do we really need to quibble over the explicit damage these unsupported anti-trans memes cause? Is there a correlation between the fact that homeless trans people have a 22% HIV infection rate and a world wherein practically all homeless shelters refuse service to trans people? I'd say so.

I work as a case manager. Do you know that it took me TEN YEARS - 10!!! - to get our local childrens homeless shelter to stop kicking out trans children? Stop and just consider what I've seen happen to these children once they were forced onto the street over the last decade. Do you want to know why the shelter refused services to trans kids? They thought that the kids were playing dress-up so that they could rape the other kids... I am not joking. Ideas like this are held for a reason. They don't just happen to pop into existence - en masse, suddenly and without cause - to create an environment wherein otherwise rational people sleep well at night knowing that they sent a trans child to meet their fate on the cruel streets. No; such attitudes and beliefs require a social climate in which the February 27 edition of the Arbiter became an unwitting co-architect.

Thank you Diane and thank you Arbiter for allowing a more reasoned voice to be heard in the midst of a maelstrom of meme-driven misinformation, phobia and the very particular type of hubris only found in those who's confidence in their world-view is propped up by legions of the like-minded rather than logic and reason.

That one is rather long also and in a phrase says "the term is still evolving".

Do you believe that my position is that the term is not evolving? Do you believe that it is my position that the term has never evolved?

But you seem to love walls of text...

Is your critique that I'm too detailed when I dispel Separatist memes with historical fact?

Wow... you copy and pasted a wikipedia article. So, not only did you go for the strawman (my supposed position that words do not evolve) you went for the argumentum verbosium too.

The idea that I've asserted that words do not change meaning is absurd; the posts listed here contradicts your argument. In fact, practically every post I've made about terms is about the evolution of the term. If your best critique of the information I've made available is to pretend that I'm making assertions that you'll never be able to actually quote me making, then I guess that says a lot about your position.

So, if I understand your post correctly:

A.) You're not happy with me.
B.) You felt you needed to attack my position and therefore, instead of dealing with my actual assertions, you instead invented an imaginary position for me to take.
C.) You felt posting a wiki article was really clever.

Really? What evidence did you base that assertion upon? This is a PERFECT example of the fallacious memes that get passed around.

Here's a copy of a TV Guide wherein a trans character is referred to as "transgendered" from the year 1970:
http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/wp-content/uploa...

... and a close-up of where the term was used:
http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/wp-content/uploa...

Here's a 1970s newspaper in which Christine Jorgensen calls herself transgender: |http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/2011/07/08/chris...

Here's a book on transsexual surgery from 1974 talking about "transgender surgery": http://research.cristanwilliams.com/2011/08/15/tr...

Here's another book from the early 70s which talks about transsexual research as "transgender research":
http://research.cristanwilliams.com/2011/08/15/tr...

Either the people who told you that the term was invented in the 1990s were wrong or someone from the 1990s time traveled. Which do you think is more likely?

By way of reply, I'll say to you what I wrote to this group's leadership just last night:

As I've sad to you numerous times, I totally get wanting to have a TS-only group. I've also said that I too am a member of a TS-only group too. The difference is that we don't go around pretending to be victims of those mean ol' crossdressers who are tying to appropriate our identities *rolls eyes*

So to be very clear, I never said that you should not have a support group. In fact, I've said the opposite numerous times. What I did do was poke fun at the idea that English language taxonomies are somehow oppressive. I also poked fun at the hubris so many Separatists display. For example:

"For me it is also, and equally as importantly, about developing a clear voice so that we can talk to governments and health systems and get early intervention for other true transsexuals, so they do not need to go through the horrors of puberty and the ravages of testosterone."

Yes, this is a great goal. Very admirable. However, believing that you can be politically powerful with a group of > 20 is hubris. If you want to make real change, learn to work with people who are different than you, who you disagree with and who you might not even like because the lives that hang in the balance are worth more than your personal discomfort or need to have others tell you that you're opinions are valid.

Hence, my graphic comparing groups and how they think work gets done.

I don't attack people, I attack truth assertions when they seem to be demonstrably false. I attacked because they made the following unsupported assertions of fact to validate their need to meet as a group:

“Personally, we think the surfacing of this old issue again is timely, highlighting a problem with the legal definition of trans women, and drawing attention to the problems that mixing sexual fetish with transsexualism causes for our dream of wider acceptance in the community,” she says.

“Repeatedly, male cross dressers are standing on public platforms and claiming to speak for us. These are people who have no belief that they are female and no desire for hormonal or surgical correction. It is time that we had an independent voice so we can stand and speak for ourselves.”

In the first paragraph she's asserting that there's a problem and that the problem is due to "mixing sexual fetish with transsexualism". Did she offer any evidence to support this assertion of fact? Nope... she expects all readers to simply take the validity of her victim status on faith alone.

In the next paragraph she complains about all the crossdressers who are apparently speaking for transsexuals... again without evidence. Ironically Dana Taylor wrote a post about a month ago crowing about how there's no crossdressers out there speaking up. There is an objective truth to be found; either there's a glut of crossdressers speaking on behalf of transsexuals (in which case transsexuals are victims) or there isn't (and she's making a false assertion of fact).

Do I perceive a threat? Nope... not at all. Interestingly, the perception you (and seemingly many other Separatists) apparently have about my motivations is the topic of the post I'm working on right now and will publish today :)

Hey, there's nothing wrong with having a TS group anymore than there's a problem with having an intersex group. However, conflating the reality of groups with different types of non-cis experience, history and expression and having a linguistic taxonomy to collectively talk about all the types of people with a non-cis experience, history and expression is what most call an equivocation.

We have an amazingly strong transgender community in Houston with post-op MTF transsexuals groups, transsexual groups, drag groups, general trans groups, FTM groups, SO groups. parents groups, youth groups, gender-queer groups and much, much more. Each of these parts are allies in working to improve the quality of life for all types of trans folk. The drag community has been putting on fundraisers for transsexual surgeries for years. That's the point of the graphic.

TG groups are not safe for TS women.

Let's be honest... TG groups are not safe for only a certain minority of TS women. The majority of TS women have no issues with other non-cis folk.

Someone said it... TY :)

Cristan you are quibbling about the concept of original. I was using it in the dictionary definition of the one originally issued.

Well, I'm using it in the way that it's correctly used with reference to certificates of live birth. Just because Delgadio's lawyers equivocated and claimed that Nikki's BC wasn't original doesn't make it so. When Heather's side identifies a stolen photocopy of Nikki's erroneous BC calling it "original" they are misrepresenting its status. It's only "original" if you mean "first copy" just as if someone's BC with a misspelling of the father's name was "original". But that's not the context in which they're using the word "original". They're claiming that there was an original non-erroneous BC and a second one was issued... and that's a misrepresentation of the facts. In CA, Nikki was born female; the male designation is viewed as being an error - like a misspelled name. There is only one original BC and that BC states that Nikki was born female in the EXACT same way that had Nikki's father's name (eg Joe Smith) was listed Joey Smith, the error would be corrected and the original reissued.

As to the rest of your response I have no way of knowing if what you assert without proof is in any way accurate or valid

Fair enough. It would probably be helpful to set up a timeline and post it. It might be hard do find 3rd party evidence for the first 2 weeks since Nikki reached out to me just a day or two after her husband died. It's going to be hard to prove that her intention was to lay low and avoid the press those first couple of weeks... unless her mom could corroborate that... hrm... I'll have to think about how to corroborate what was going on via 3rd parties since she made no public statements about the suit for weeks before she finally made a statement to the press.

Have you ever spoken directly with Heather?

Only very briefly and it wasn't more than a few words. She doesn't like me. All I have to go on is what Nikki told me years ago before Thomas died, what Nikki now says, what Nikki's family says, the documented history of struggles between Heather and Nikki and what Nikki's church friends said.

Are there any taped clips where she has said the things you assert?

Absolutely! :) That should go on that timeline!

Remember, Thomas died on July 4, 2010. Days before his funeral, Nikki heard that the ex was going to go after her and gossip broke out in Wharton. Thomas' funeral was July 12 and Nikki is made to feel unwelcome. The day after Nikki buried her husband (Tues, July 13), she is officially informed of the suit seeking to declare her male and her marriage void. Heather broke the news via her lawyers on Fri July 16 and the news broke Saturday morning, July 17. It isn't until July 21 that Nikki finally made a statement to the press... by then ~ 2 weeks has gone by wherein she was wrung through the rumor mill.

Here's the first news story from July 17: http://www.leader-news.com/articles/2010/07/17/ne...

Note that Nikki is not quoted and note the history Heather has with Nikki. Note that it was this initial report wherein Heather outs own her kids.

Here's a video I did from July 2010 wherein I'm fairly pissed and am reviewing Heather's media (mis)statements:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3f7-UDiNMg

I'm sure you're not the only one who would benefit from seeing the verified facts put into some sort of timeline. I'll put that on my to-do list :)