A common statement I hear from those critical of medicalizing children’s bodies to conform to some elusive gender identity, creating life-long medical patients, is that they don’t care what adults choose to do with their bodies. The exception is for children.
We better start caring.
To choose to appropriate the body parts of the opposite sex is sexual objectification. It exploits human wholeness, rooted in sex, and renders it into pieces to be reassembled into not only a costume but a commodity for use by another. For as bad as other avenues of sexual objectification and exploitation are - and they are terrible - we at least understand they’re not positive, let alone a human right. Even prostitution, which has been euphemistically rebranded to “sex work” by some, is at least not being sold to us, via corporations, as a positive lifestyle expression. Goldman Sachs, so far, has no coming out ceremonies at their banks for prostitutes and workshops for allies of prostitutes, as they do for men who appropriate women’s body parts. We do not yet have a “prostitute’s day of visibility,” nor do we have feminists, even those supporting prostitution as a working model, calling for a celebration of prostitutes’ visibility.
This terrible blind spot of many feminists protecting men who appropriate the sexed body parts of women is a facet of our conditioning to femininity: to defer to men, to emotionally defend and take care of them at a cost to ourselves, especially if they present themselves as vulnerable.
One trans widow, describing her relationship with her autogynephilic husband for an article about her marriage and its disruption, stated, "For his part, Tom's perspective was that if I loved him, I would accept that a transsexual has to do what a transsexual has to do – and sacrifice my own identity accordingly."
This conditioning to demure to men and to emotionally protect them, at a cost to our well-being, is how the Boston Strangler got into so many women’s apartments in a metropolitan city, where women know well the dangers of inviting strange men into their homes. It’s how Ted Bundy, wooed his victims into isolation and to their ultimate deaths. Bundy, often walked with his arm in a cast, at night, on college campuses while fumbling with books or a kayak near his car to invite lone women’s help, and help they did.
The Boston Strangler and Ted Bundy were not just killers; they didn’t just sexually objectify women; they were “nice” men. The Boston strangler was reportedly charming. Ted Bundy had women writing to him in prison after he was convicted. Ann Rule wrote a book about their friendship and camaraderie working together at a suicide hotline. He was described by her (and others) as clever and seemed to care about the people he saved via the hotline genuinely. Serial killers are often family men with outstanding community relations.
Ed Gein, was the inspiration for many films, including "Psycho", "Silence of the Lambs", and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" due to his decision that the only way to become a woman was to turn her into this season's latest rage in bodysuits, as reported by Zooey Norman in TheThings.
Norman writes, “anyone who knew Gein, skinning aside, described him as the kindest person they knew. Everyone was genuinely shocked when they found out exactly what his wardrobe and furniture were made out of.”
As an activist fighting the gender industry, I am often asked, “but do you know any "trans" people?”
The point is not that individual men with the fetish of appropriating female body parts are killers (though obviously, some are), but that women (and men) accept this particular brand of sexual objectification of our bodies, by others, at our peril. We must stop normalizing this fetish in public and the commodification of body parts that it is creating.
Donovan Cleckley, in a recent and excellent piece of reporting on trans widows, describes the experiences of @transwidows. Discussing the sexual relationships with males who exhibit autogynephilia, she calls the psycho-sexual gas-lighting these men play out with their wives “topping from the bottom.” “The man with autogynephilia, more often than not, has a fantasy of being submissive and, to indulge in this fantasy, has to rope in the only person available- his wife- who is usually varying degrees of unwilling. He then sets all of the parameters of the encounter and acts out submission, persuading and coercing his wife to take the supposedly dominant role,” explains @transwidows.
I love the expression “topping from the bottom” because it speaks very clearly to how the gender industry functions in society and how women (but not just women) are being roped into starring in an autogynephilic fantasy writ large and being used by the capitalist marketplace which is deconstructing our sexed bodies, literally dismembering us. The gender agenda presents itself as vulnerable, playing at submissive while seeking predominantly female attention and fully aware of its political dominance and ability to create subservience. Unfortunately, Gloria Steinem is not the only feminist or person falling for it.
In a recent article in Gay and Lesbian News, James Dreyfus, calls out the tyrannical activism of those supporting the gender industry. He runs into trouble only when he starts to explain why LGBs are separating from the T. He is so cordial and demure when he says that LGBs simply have their own needs. He records a litany of abuses by gender activists and then states they are separating from T because of different needs. It’s like listening to a woman who has had the shit kicked out of her by an abusive husband suggest to their husband that they should separate due to their differing needs. No. How about you run far and fast in the other direction because he is abusive? Someone who would appropriate your body parts, or support those that do for their own needs, be they a sexual fetish, expression, a feeling, intense dysphoria, or any other sensation, is someone with no boundaries. How do we expect to have positive relationships when we cannot draw such boundaries for ourselves and then go so far as to coddle the people who don’t see boundaries because we haven’t drawn them? The erasure Dreyfus is standing up for, of “real transphobia,” is a myth. Gender activists, cultivated by rich corporatists, are “topping him from the bottom.” He will offer to people who would appropriate his sexed body, his protection, and respect and find out who’s really in charge - and I don’t mean women pretending to be men, I mean the global market.
To submit to being the illusory “top” in the sexual role play of autogynephilia amped-up and driven by the capitalist marketplace is to be gaslit into believing capitalism doesn’t have the upper hand. Autogynephilia is the perfect manifestation of a market that has colonized and used all of the natural world for itself. That market is now coming for human sex - precisely, as usual, women’s sexual reproductive capacities. It is playing dress-up while it does so, being very charming and kind, very inclusive, while it lays in wait to make us into a lovely coverlet for the sofa.
This research depends on the generosity of readers. If you like what you are reading on the 11th-hour blog, please consider a donation or paid subscription in support. Use this link for donations. Thank you.
