Both NARTH and the Tradititional Values Coalition have published summaries/reactions to a story in The Advocate titled “Life in the T Zone – With the aid of testosterone, biological women are expanding the old ideas of male and female. But being gender-queer can involve health risks.”
Before XGW reader Autumn brought this to my attention I’d heard the term gender-queer before. I learned gender-queer is an identity for people who have no desire to get sexual reassignment surgery but don’t wish to present themselves as either of the two binary genders our society presents them with. Oftentimes that involves prescribed hormones such as testosterone. To be clear, The Advocate article is stricly about the gender-queer identity and makes no mention of shemales, transvestites or drag queens.
In the NARTH article, after summarizing and quoting The Advocate, the following is tacked on as though it were quoted from The Advocate as well:
Many individuals who consider themselves transgendered, undergo only partial surgeries or hormone treatments and identify as She/Males. Numbers of these individuals become part of the online pornography industry. Sexually explicit She/Male sites number in the hundreds online.
In the TVC article (cahed version), after summarizing and quoting The Advocate, we encounter this little turd:
They [transgender activists] seek to gain special rights for cross-dressers, transvestites, drag queens, and She/Males (individuals who undergo only half of a sex change operation and live as half man/half woman. These seriously disturbed individuals typically get involved in obscene and graphic pornography online.)
Both NARTH and the TVC appear to be trying to create a link between upstanding transgendered people and some of the most outrageous pornography available online. For a “Christian” organization and a professional mental health organization to use the term “shemales” in connection with transgendered people is shameful. Lou Sheldon I expect this from, Nicolosi should be better than this (to be fair no author is listed for the NARTH article). Then again, in one of my therapy sessions when I remarked I was having trouble maintaining a masculine demeanor Nicolosi replied:
“we all know when we’re acting a little bit faggy”
Perhaps Joe should begin choosing his words more carefully. Wikipedia has an excellent explanation of why the term “shemale” is so offensive:
The term “shemale” (along with tranny and “chick with dick”) is commonly, but not exclusively, used in pornography and the sex industry; videos and magazines involving such people are a common sub-genre of pornography. It is often seen by transsexual people as a powerful term of abuse.
This is why NARTH and the TVC’s equating of gender-queer people with “shemales” is shameful. Google “shemale” (I’ll spare you a link) and all you’re going to find is hard-core pornography. Such a thing has no place in a serious discussion of gender roles and conformity.
You may find the TVC site blocked. Download using Adobe Acrobat to get around that.
But, no mention that all this type of porn is consumed by heterosexual men (in the main). What’s up with that hey NARTH?
And remind me what the new NARTH mantra is again… something about client choice to change, or something? So I guess they must be fully supportive hmmm.
I saw that per the TVC article, genderqueer is supposed to be a “new trend” for “female homosexuals.” Huh? — another new trend? I thought Guy Adams was supposed to be our “homosexual trend watcher.” Now I’m going to have to check in with Lou Sheldon too? 😉
Indirect link to TVC article (PDF format): ‘Genderqueer’ Is New Trend Among Female Homosexuals. A link to an text archive of the article is here.
The linkages that NARTH used to connect genderqueers, lesbians, and she/males seems tenuous. Per NARTH, genderqueer is a lesbian identity, so logically natal female would be the stating point for a genderqueer identity. The linkage that doesn’t seem to follow in the piece is that natal males that “undergo only partial surgeries or hormone treatments” would identify as “she/males.” Even if transgender people really identify as she/males,Why bring that linkage up if not to detractingly connect genderqueers and lesbians to she/males?Did NARTH actually talk to any people who identified as genderqueer or transgender before making the statements in their articles, or are their conclusions all drawn from their online reading of the Advocate and a Google keyword searches for she/male or transsexual pornography? My guess is that their knowledge of genderqueer and other transgender people is extremely limited due to a lack of exposure. I would also safely guess that comparitively speaking, few transgender people (as compared to the numbers of gay and lesbian people) sign up for reparative therapy, and therefore the reparative therapists are generally not familiar with transgender people. Otherwise, NARTH would have known better than to use the vulgar term she/male — a term most transgender people would consider among the vilest pejoratives.
For those who prefer, here is a cached version of the article which now seems locked out to traffic referred from XGW. You can also just copy the link and place it in your browser, as only referral traffic is blocked.
Thanks, I added the Google cache link to the post.
TVC throws in the obligatory “shemale” reference in almost everything they write to do with transpeople. The basic threat they feel from gays, transpeople, genderqueer, whatever, is the blurring of sex roles and clearly defined categories. “Shemales” represent the ultimate horror of being between categories.
And I’m sure I don’t even need to mention that the entire reason “shemale” pornography exists is because there is a market for it, and that for people of lower socioeconomic background, the sex industry is often the only option available to make enough money to pay for medical care.
Altho there’s probably no hard evidence to substantiate my feeling, I’d suggest that the VAST majority of men who are turned on by the ‘chicks with dicks’ genre of the porn industry overwhelmingly identify as heterosexual. Or, perhaps the term should be (as I recently heard)’heteroflexible’?
I imagine that many of the customers of transsexual prostitutes are striaght men who like anal penetration and prefer a real penis over a dildo. Very weird, but I can sort of see it.
Who said there was a serious discussion of gender roles and conformity going on?
The identifying term shemale is under serious attack and even undernet’s #tvsex is even discriminating the usage, (i was kicked) when i logged on. Newhalf is not a very descriptive term and to make shemale ‘illegal’ would be to limite a proper descriptive word other than intersexual. Please do your best to address as far as possible.