dxstroyit has done me a great favor by making this comment. On his blog he presents himself as “truscum”, and confirms what many of us have suspected: Many of the ones attacking girlfags are not only trans men; they are truscum transsexual separatists. A quick review of the most hostile attackers proves as much.

This may explain the difference between the gay male friends of girlfags, who feel no hostility towards them, and the language used by these tumblr activists.

Reducing queer to a fetish

My gay friends (who were all raised as men) would never reduce the identity of another queer or transgender group to a “creepy fetish”. They know that this is a concept that were made to invalidate or mock the identity of marginalized groups, homosexuals included.

Gay men raised as men also know that such a tactic is bound to backfire. There is a lot of fetishization going on in many gay male cultures. There is, for instance, sexual fascination for leather, bondage, drag and bears. And there is a lot of sexualization and objectification. Gay porn or gay saunas are beyond politically correct, to put it that way. And a lot of gay men fetishize straight men.

That does not mean that you can reduce the identity of gay men to a fetish. It only means that they are human. So are the genderqueer and the girlfags.

The girlfag’s fascination for gay men is an expression of her own gay  sexuality and/or male gender identity. That’s all. The fact that the truscum need make use of the fetish argument to invalidate them, says more about the truscum than it says about the girlfags.

(More about how the fetish theory has been used to persecute minorities here!)

This leaves us with the question: What is it that really motivates the truscum attacks against girlfags?

Ideas from the anti-trans radfem camp

Apart from religious fundamentalists and a small tribe of sexist researchers, the only influential group that uses the fetish argument these days is a group of radical feminists called TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).

Hate mongers like  Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys and Cathy Brennan argue that all trans women are perverted men who should be excluded from all “womyn’s places”.

The TERFs do not recognize the true gender of any transsexual person, man or woman.

(More about the transphobicTERFs here.)

Using the tactics of your own enemies to invalidate queer

How can transsexual people who have felt the oppression and stigmatization of society, use a terminology that is currently used to invalidate  transsexuals? How can truscum use the same destructive tactics as the TERFs?

Some have speculated that the truscum FTM separatists may have once belonged to a lesbian radfem culture and that they have assimilated some of the more aggressive ideas from them.

However, it seems to me that many of  the girlfagbashers (including dxstroyit AKA fedorablystumped) are bisexual or sexually attracted to men, and unlikely to have been part of lesbian culture, so this does not make that much sense to me.

Others argue that their narratives may have been influenced by the post-structuralist philosophy taught in “Women’s Studies” at American universities. I am sure they could have found the fetish argument there, but these university departments are definitely not teaching an essentialist truscum gospel. They are normally much more open to the true diversity of sex and gender.

So although these hypotheses may provide clues to what is going on here, they do not give us the full explanation.

First generation separatists

Some have speculated that the truscum attacks on girlfags may reflect a trend away from political liberation toward cultural assimilation in some gay/lesbian and transsexual circles. In order to be accepted by a heteronormative society, some homosexual and transsexual men and women try to placate cis and straight people by becoming more like them.

In order to make sense of all of this it may help to look at the previous generation of transsexual separatist, the so-called “Classic Transsexuals” and the “Harry Benjamin Syndrome’s” tribe. 

Like the truscum, the HBS tribe (which was exclusively MTF) taught a gospel of strict separation between the “true transsexuals” on the one hand and the crossdressers and drag queens on the other. The HBSers hated the word “transgender”, as this umbrella term indicated that they had something in common with the gender benders. 

Like the truscum they adopted the language of their oppressors, trying to force crossdressers and crossdreamers back into the closet by calling them fetishists and “autogynephiliacs”. Non-binary identities were, at best, tolerated as belonging to a completely different species. Or they were ridiculed.

It all got really ugly. I know for a fact that their tactics contributed to suicides among gender dysphoric crossdressers and crossdreamers. The separatists scared many of them away from expressing their true identity.

It became abundantly clear for those of us who were forced to interact with this movement, that the main driving force was internalized transphobia. They had adopted the ruling medical paradigm of fetishes and paraphilias. This caused them to do absolutely anything in their power to distance themselves from crossdressers and drag queens.

It is not hard to understand why. Many of them had grown up in the 60s, 70s and 80s. They were facing gatekeepers who demanded total adherence to sexist stereotypes of femininity, before giving them access to hormones and surgery. 

Moreover, it was clear that a significant portion of the HBS crowd had been crossdressers themselves, and many of them had been married to women. In short: They had themselves been very much like some of the people they were now persecuting.  And this was why they needed to force the crossdressers underground. The very existence of gender dysphoric crossdressers threatened their neat and clear boundary between those they called “transgender crossdressing men” on the one hand, and “true transsexual women” on the other. This mirrored the distinction between “transvestic fetishism” and “gender identity disorder” found in the psychiatric manuals.

It all made sense, in a sickening and depressing kind of way.

The HBS movement collapsed two years ago. Today there are a couple of blogs left.  The main reason for their downfall seems to be that younger generation of trans women are much more open and undogmatic about their sexuality and their own journey of discovery.

Young trans women may still be facing conservative gatekeepers, but they take part in networks online that give them alternative views of what being trans is all about.

(More about the Harry Benjamin Syndrome here!)

History repeating

The young female to male transsexuals, on the other hand, have not been part of this history. The fact that the truscum want to occupy  the word “transgender”, while the HBS crowd believed the term was an insulting crossdresser invention, tells me as much. The truscum have  learned nothing from the HBS debacle, and are now hell-bent on repeating their mistakes.

And maybe this is also the point in history where the assimilation policy of some LGBT activists reinforces the truscum fear of “fetishists”.  The gay and bisexual truscum trans men may fear that they will be mistaken for fetishizing girlfags, in the same way the HBSers feared they would be mistaken for crossdressing men.

The general assimilation tendencies found in some LGBT circles are probably strengthening this fear, by undermining the legitimacy of gender variant people who fall outside the various binaries of sexuality and gender.

When I read trucum posts and trucum comments, the message of truscum being “binary” and therefore normal is quite common. So is the fear of being rejected by health personnel who may deny them hormones and surgery. Over and over again young truscum argue that any association with “non-binaries” and fetishists may threaten their acceptance by both doctors, their families and society at large.  

I sense the same fear of “contamination” now, as I faced when defending transgender and queer people against the HBSers. The separatists channel the revulsion instilled in them by friends and family towards girlfags and the genderqueer. This is most likely why they use the fetish argument, call girlfags creepy or mock genderfluid people, calling them cis, snowflakes or transtrenders.

It seems to me that these trans men fear any association with girlfags, as it may be taken as a sign of themselves being nothing but fetishists. 

The irony is that by recycling the fetish argument in this way, they are actually strengthen the ideology of the sexist transphobes out there. And by doing so, they also undermine their own standing in society.

It seems to me that we are facing a textbook example of how a system of oppressive power is upheld by those who are oppressed.

This is a tragedy.

• For a first hand discussion of the girlfag experience, read Ili’s blog post over at Crossdreamers.com: “I am something that does not exist!” (On queer schwulwomen, girlfags and guydykes). 
• See also:  “You are not one of us!” said the separatist transsexual (on the HBS and “classic transsexuals”)
• Susan Schmitt: “Checking Our Privilege, Working Together: Notes on Virtual Trans* Communities, Truscum Blogs, and the Politics of Transgender Health Care”