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An excellent diary, Susan Stryker's comments made me think, yes, yes, yes, yes....

She refuses to allow anyone else to negotiate her right to occupy her body as she wishes

Yes!

And then that body goes and interacts with the world--and...

After that the surgery was made inevitable by the changes the hormones made to my brain and sense of self

And yes...

Yet she just doesn't understand and refuses to engage with her ignorance of this vital aspect of transition

My feeling (created in circumstances far from the situation!) is that Susan Stryker is pushing forward academically, while you and those you find similar to you, in all environments but specifically in your...lived reality as a person who has physically changed your body and your biochemistry--with permanency--Julie Bindel (from your description) seems to be a person to avoid.  Her strength (as I understand it, from what you've written) is in identifying where women suffer violence.  Her weakness--the area she hasn't investigated--at least not from what I've read from what you've written (I mean, for me this is a fantasy person....whereas you, for me, are not...so....) she is not in the correct positions to add positive information to the non-violent aspects of women's lives.  In the non-violent realm you have Susan Stryker who (in my fantasy version!) is happy to open concepts, always to the benefit of people and--hopefully, but yeah!

because feminism isn't what you do, it's what you are.

Or is feminism what you are doing?  Less essentialist, the essentials being hormones, operations, actions, jobs, all the elements that determine, that lay the path, and feminism, a concept, determines, in the moment, the next stones to be laid....

heh!  Ach,

...good work!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Sat Dec 6th, 2008 at 09:28:37 PM EST
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I'm uncertain from this if you think it was SS or me who said "After that the surgery was made inevitable by the changes the hormones made to my brain and sense of self
[....]
Yet she just doesn't understand and refuses to engage with her ignorance of this vital aspect of transition"
. That was me btw.

However you must remember that SS is herself a transgendered woman and a lot of her academic expertise arises from her experience of being a transgendered woman. So her published work is on the history of transgenerism, her feminist critique comes from dealing with and debating the american versions of Bindel.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 7th, 2008 at 07:44:27 AM EST
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