Yesterday, when I was looking up information on the new laws and the court decisions about our new equal marriage rights in Connecticut, I stumbled upon information about an anti-gay, anti-trans group called MassResistance. And much like any other hate-based group, they are completely and totally antagonistic to the idea that two people could genuinely love one another regardless of gender or sex. That physical sex does not determine gender also irks them and all the women that go through the gauntlet of transition are considered perverts by these people, regardless of how good of people these are and the fact that they are not the one focusing on other people’s genitals (I swear, sometimes I wonder where people get the idea that they can ask me probing, intimate questions about my genitals). And these people decided to get together after the Massachusetts court decision that legalized equal marriage. Despite the fact that they are quickly losing the battle against equal marriage, these people persist to try to disseminate lies about the gay and transsexual communities.
What really got me though was their “coverage” about a transgender rights parade and protest. The author of this website showed their true colours and their preference for willful ignorance simply by the way they write their posts. Like Janice Raymond in the Transsexual Empire, they blatantly use incorrect pronouns and they make points which are either ridiculous, discriminatory or just plain hateful. When we look like women, act like women and claim to be women - guess what? We are women, regardless of what you think or feel or what your religion tells you (which to be honest, Christianity says nothing about transsexuality). But of course, they are recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Centre as a hate group and this recognition just furthers the fact that the things these people say and that the mission that is evinced is completely volatile and bad qualities to encourage in society.
- The Charge of Body Mutilation - This hate-based group makes the charge that we willfully go through surgery to mutilate our bodies. This charge is absolutely false, as we are taking care of our bodies as anyone with any abnormal growths and diseases would. Many of us take a hard-lined medical position and work with physicians, therapists and pharmacists to obtain legal hormones. When we decide that it would be in our best interest to take our transition to the table, we go to a medical professional to have surgery - whether it is vaginoplasty, facial feminization surgery or breast implants for male-to-female transsexuals or mastectomy, hysterectomy and other such surgeries for the female-to-male transsexuals. All of these procedures are performed by licensed surgeons, physicians, endocrinologists and other sorts of doctors that have had to work hard and long in their fields to get a Medical Degree. It’s not like this is something that we are doing to ourselves, by ourselves - with no knowledge of what will happen if something goes wrong or how to properly ensure that necrosis doesn’t happen. We are entrusting care to people who know what they are dong, and it is based on this and many other reasons that it is not bodily mutilation.
- The Use of Incorrect Pronouns and Language - These people try to keep people who have learned the nature of the disparity between their physical sex and their gender identity and how to change their bodies to match up with their gender identity, but MassResistance is too stuck in the past to change the way they think. They want to still consider men who had to fight for their manhood as women, and they want to consider women who had to fight for their femininity as men. There is one problem with that and that is that they are deluding themselves and buying into the lies that physiology defines one’s destiny. People are born as women or men, and they stay that way where it counts - the mind. I would bet that if these people were to talk about any other person born with a deformity and that person was able to overcome that deformity, they would not call that person deformed anymore. So why continue to lie about transwomen and transmen who have realized the true nature of who they are and made the according changes. Keep your minds out of their pants, unless you are interested in dating them or are their primary care physician - you should know better than that!
- The Blatantly Wrong and Hurtful Charge of “Mentally Disturbed” - Transsexuals are not mentally disturbed in the least bit, we happen to be in touch with who we really are and have stopped the unhealthy cycle of self-denial. We have opened our minds to the idea that gender is not set according to physique and we are taking appropriate care of ourselves. We even see therapists so that we can deal with issues of psychosis and ensure that we are not making a false decision based on a level of psychosis, but out of a true sense of gender dysphoria. Many transsexuals have to go to doctors that will not dispense hormones nor surgery without a therapists’ letter, so we have to prove that we are not mentally disturbed in order to elicit the medical institution’s help to change our bodies to fit who we are on the inside. Therefore, no one can successfully transition without ensuring that we are not mentally disturbed.
- “Homosexual Programming” in Schools - To tell people that there is nothing wrong with loving someone of the same sex and that it’s just as valid as loving someone of the opposite sex is not “homosexual programming”. It is not trying to convert children into homosexuality, since that is simply a ridiculous concept. What it does is it tries to instill in children the knowledge that there is nothing wrong with being gay or lesbian and hopefully, with enough people actually feeling this way - people can find it easier to come out of the closet. By effecting changes to public education and teaching the values of mutual respect and treating all couples who love one another with dignity, we reduce the amount of irrational hate and therefore, reduce the amount of hate crimes. No one can turn a homosexual into a heterosexual, so why do you think that it’s possible to do the opposite? However, with enough education and with winning the hearts and minds of all citizens, we can help people feel less stigma about coming out and thus help society thrive and build people who can get into relationships with people they are genuinely attracted to.
- The ironic use of the word transphobic in quotes - The funny thing is that these people don’t realize that what they are doing is, in fact, transphobic. They want to put it in quotes so that they don’t have to own up to the fact that what they are saying is libelous, hateful and downright disgusting. It’s like making a comment disparaging someone based on their race, religion or national origin. These people practice transphobia on a regular basis and yet, try to distance themselves from it by making the concept of transphobia seem made up.
- The Standard Slander of Planned Parenthood - Planned Parenthood is an organization that has been working damn hard to help women get the right to proper medical care. This is a valuable service in light of a society that would take away a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and whether or not it’s a good time to have a child, or whether she needs to obtain resources and get her own life in order. The anti-choice movement is designed to try to keep women taking care of children instead of advancing and excelling in the professional fields. But women should have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and should enjoy the rights of every other citizen. Either that or we as a society should improve social services so that we can better provide for mothers who have no choice but to carry a child. Planned Parenthood is an organization that is working to help fight for equal rights, why do you want to disparage them and their mission when YOU are unwilling to help?
Personally, I don’t get why MassResistance is so adamant against equality for transsexual and transgendered people. They are making clear statements of their transphobia and they refuse to acknowledge that the words that they say are hateful, bigoted and self-righteous. Apparently, the only thing that MassResistance wants to resist is the improvement and the further education of society, as their website speaks poorly of allowing training in schools which could help fight transphobia and help cut down hate crimes and violence against transgendered people. Laws can only go so far and for the rest of the journey, we must promote public education to let children know that not all women and men are fortunate enough to be born in the appropriate bodies. Some women, like myself, are inadvertently born into the bodies of men - something that should be corrected. To accept this and to publicly educate about this would create a much deeper base of understanding and would build a world that is freer from hate and bigotry against all transgendered citizens. MassResistance, stop resisting change - it’s going to come anyway and you are going to be regarded in society and in history as accepting and loving as the Ku Klux Klan or the minutemen who wait outside the US-Mexico border shooting people as they come across. Grow up. Oh yeah, and stop using a photo of John Adams along with your bigoted hate speech, he would have definitely opposed your rhetoric.
