Not quite sure how such criticisms as Mark Angelo Cummins' get the attention they do. I suspect that you've nailed the culprit, Monica. The notion that somehow the legacy of white folk is to be in control. Of something, anything to validate their whiteness.

But, you've also nailed a very important aspect of the matter in pointing out that post- Christine it's been 61 years and there's been no coherent or unified struggle for trans folk. In fact, most white transfolk have appeared to have wanted to be mostly invisible. Just other men and women.

To the extent that assaults and murders of white transfolk in USA have decreased then that's probably been a positive tactic. As far as acceptance of trans lives and the ways they are lived are concerned that hasn't been nearly so positive and has almost never been inclusive. It's been white, economically and socially privileged, and based on the gender centers' program of attaining invisibility "because people actually believe that you're a freak and a pervert. "

That last has been the lesson that so many of us light-skinned folk have integrated in our psyches. We've operated far too long in fear and very seldom with pride. Far too many sisters, particularly, have contrived to forget and expunge our own pasts as hookers and street hustlers. We have striven instead for "respectability" which generally's been caught up with historical erasure. Of our histories, our lives, and the ways we've contrived to survive.

There's much overlap in histories of black, hispanic asian and caucasoid of trans people. But, there's so much that was expunged as being "improper" and/or not "acceptable" as a narrative of one's life.

I revel in the unexpurgated story that Janet Mock tells. It exhales fresh air from the earth, so to speak. But, that story could have been told as well by numerous white transwomen who demurred to explain our entire truths in order to be "respected."

Respect is something I take with my two hands and ingest. And when I've done that I am able to gift respect to others. But, to lie and hide and then flail those who openly speak truth to power, and to just folks in general, who reveal themselves and remind me, she is me. Well, that's just some embarrassed and embarrassing bullshit that needs calling out.

Thank you for your voice, sister. Don't ever allow it to be silenced.

I've always been puzzled by the very idea that a man in love and in relationship with a woman is gay. It boggles my mind and confuses my heart.

Very well done, Monica. And, I can't imagine any of us truthfully saying that what you've written isn't factually true.

Certainly the remarks about how cis-privilege lasts just to the point that someone discovers, imagines, broadcasts or whispers that "she used to be male" and then the dysphoria rages within.

Those idiots still haven't let go after all this time?

Excellent post.

Ah, so good to read people who have heads that can explode as such breathtaking sense of "naormal." For, seems to me, whatsername, that's where Bree Kessler's coming from. She is, default, normal; thus, a normal world means that her understanding of sex and gender are the way that such concepts should be understood.

Pardon her, please, for not understanding that she's shoulding all over herself. Although perhaps, by being a dear and informing her of the should that's soaked through her suit-slacks and has made an ugly brown stain on her clothing you're assisting her in cleaning up the mess.

"gay" tends to be marginally easier to grok for Ms. Kessler and most cis-folk because that's about sexuality and they understand that their innate desires tend to be toward one sex and that their "ew" factor tends to be opposite. It will occasionally dawn on them that maybe some few of us have an oppiste "ew" factor.

On the other hand, sex and gender are a much more difficult negotiation. Afterall, sometime during the months prior to birth, these days anyhow, a lot of children are pre-gendered and pre-sexed by amnios, ultra-sounds, and other such arcana that didn't exist 50 years ago. Thus, by the age of 2-3 most of us are very well-gendered and very well-sexed and to contemplate the existences of those who, a very small minority, like under 1%, who aren't made to that basic form becomes more than just am easy thought-experiment.

The atavistic reaction to those of us who are among that less than 1% then becomes one of viewing a monstrosity (as in Latin, " unusual" or, more aptly, "freakish" - something not frequently occurring.) Thus, like duck-billed platypoi we are unusual enough to where most people cannot seem to wrap their minds around the fact that we exist as a part of nature as much as they exist as a part of nature.

With the eternal conditioning it becomes even more unlikely that the Bree Kesslers will find a way to wrap their minds around the notion that a penis doesn't always mean a man nor does a vagina always mean a woman. Yet, here we are and the fact of our existences does seem to me to mean something. The fact that we have a good deal of evidence that we have existed into the mists of history also seems to mean that we are, indeed, a fairly regular human occurrence.

But, perhaps that's all simply too difficult for her thirteenth-grade class to gather all at a sitting, since it obviously has escaped herself.