Penis phobia much?

Ms. Bindel's argument seems (to me) to proceed from a naturalistic fallacy - that there is a natural order to the body that must not be altered. Yet her queer philosophy of free gender expression (which I agree with totally) is contrary in itself to the naturalistic fallacy adhered to by homophobes, that "men should be men, and women should be women," and that sexuality should align itself with biology. Julie, you cannot have your cake and eat it. Also, Ms Bindel places restrictions on this freedom of expression of gender identity, by saying that this expression cannot itself follow sterotypes, even if those stereotypes are the opposite gender to the person's physical sex. This in itself is freedom-denying while claiming to advocate freedom. These contradictions seem to leave only one basic premise to Ms. Bindel's argument - prejudice, and basic animal dislike of people who are different to her. This is sad as she still says many thinks I would agree with. Why not have freedom of expression in physiology, as well as behaviour and dress?

I thought Julie Bindel was fighting for the deconstruction of gender, which she claims is a social construct. So what is this sudden about-turn? Apparently, transsexuals are not their gender of choice because, in her words: "Medical science cannot turn a biological male into a biological female — it can only alter the appearance of body parts. A trans-sexual "woman" will always be a biological male. " So gender is determined by your genitals and it's not a social construct after all? All those years of second-wave feminism where for nought?

It's your body and your life to lead as you please. If you are biologically male and you want to have your penis and testicles removed, take female hormones, and live as a woman, it's none of my business. Ditto for biologically female - if you want to have your female "plumbing" removed, take male hormones, and live as a man, that, too, is none of my business. I can't I understand gender dysphoria, but I'm sure I would understand it better if I suffered from it. Your choices should not be limited. If you want to live pre-op and assume the opposite gender's appearance, do it. If you want to live post-op and assume the opposite gender's appearance, do it. I read an interesting article by a man with prostate cancer. He said that testosterone causes prostate cancer to grow faster, so they pumped him full of female hormones to counter the testosterone. He said it was only then that he discovered himself behaving in ways that he had previously associated with females. This led him to believe that some female behaviors are biological and not just the result of socialization. I found this very interesting and informative. I had always assumed that gender was entirely socialized - men were brought up to be tough, macho, competitive. Women were raised to like dolls, wear makeup, be (broadly speaking) less aggressive, etc. Yet, that doesn't explain "flamers" (very effeminate gay men), nor does it explain butch lesbians. While there are gay men who play and enjoy sports, most of the gay men I know were never good at sports and are not as "ultra-butch" as some straight men seem to be. While there are "lipstick" lesbians,we have all seen "butch" lesbians too and in my limited experience with lesbians, it appears to me that butch lesbians outnumber "lipstick lesbians", just as less butch gay men seem to generally outnumber the macho gay man. Genetics and hormones could explain much of these things about transgender/gay/lesbian people.

@ Anonymous: "I guess you would understand if you were born in a wrong body, I felt the need to be a girl, drooled over my sisters dresses and jewelery at a time i never knew the difference between a male and a female." So what? Plenty of biological boys like dresses and jewellery. How does this make their body "wrong"? Again this goes precisely to the heart of the article. There is an insane reversal of priorities here that elevates a piece of arbitrary social conditioning (the idea that dresses go with girls, not boys) to the status of inalienable natural "fact", while judging the actual natural reality of the body as "wrong" because it doesn't concord with that conditioning. This is so back-to-front it's grotesque, and I'm glad someone like Julie is brave enough to point out the fact.

So many people seem to have entirely missed the point of this excellent and much needed article. @ Mike Smith: "It's amazing that you ignore data and history predating the 1950's. There are a multitude of examples predating modern culture, in which biological men lived in female gender roles and were accepted by society. Back then, there were no options for medical interventions, so there was no allignment of the body with the mind." er... that's exactly the point. Julie is arguing FOR the rights of biological men to live in whatever "gender role" suits them. And that if we truly believe this is OK, and they are under no obligation to conform to social sterotypes, then there is no reason to alter their bodies to suit those stereotypes. This is the irony at the heart of so much of this issue. The accepted consensus pretends that it is defending the rights of trans people against stereotyping and conformity, but what it is actually doing is promoting stereotyping and conformity by reducing gender to a simple binary choice, and telling anyone who isn't happy with one end of that binary to flip right over to the other end. To the point of changing their bodies to force them to fit that end as closely as possible. This is exacerbating the exact false dichotomy that it pretends to address. If we accept that it's simply OK for a boy/man, regardless of whether he is gay or straight, to indulge in whatever combination of harmless pastimes and preferences he likes - including wearing trousers AND/OR dresses, playing with toy soldiers AND/OR dolls etc. etc. - then both the desire to stereotype him as a man AND the desire to change his body so we can stereotype him as a woman instead become irrelevant. The prevailing mentality surrounding transsexuality runs counter to everything that generations of feminists have worked for: that gender roles are false caricatures imposed on people by society. And that people should be free, and encouraged, to just be whoever they happen to be, with whatever combinations of psychological and physical traits they happen to have - not to think they have to "choose" between one caricature and the other.

Ms Bindel: my partner and i (who are criss-crossing in our transitions) find you narrow and to be a resounding bigot. i will however compliment you on your talent at falsehood: you make yourself sound like an expert, like you've researched this for years and know the subject intimately well, when in fact the opposite is true. you are a misrepresenter, and you exemplify every reason that trans people hide and are fearful of society. you seem bright, it's a shame you have chosen not to apply that intelligence to a more noble and tolerant stance. i am sad for you. james

I guess you would understand if you were born in a wrong body, I felt the need to be a girl, drooled over my sisters dresses and jewelery at a time i never knew the difference between a male and a female

These sort of views are not only bigoted, but they usurp the name of the feminist movement to defend their bigotry. I'm reminded of the words of Janice Raymond who attempted to espouse a view that posited the mere existence of male-to-female transsexuals to be equivalent to rape. That by merely being inflicted with emotions we cannot control nor desire to have, we are somehow raping women. Time and time again therapy techniques attempting to rid people of Gender Dysphoria (the primary negative symptom of GID/HBD) through therapy alone, and all have failed. Transition technology was invented because the efforts of the psychology community to do something about the horrible experience of transsexualism otherwise were a complete and total failure. As they failed to turn homosexuals straight, so did they fail to turn transsexuals into cissexuals. I have sufferred from Gender Dysphoria for my whole life, the first clear memories I have of the feeling are from when I was 5 years old, prior to ever having any notion of sexuality. My gender identity has nothing to do with my sexuality, despite the fact that the ignorant, like Ms. Bindel, attempt to conflate the two. My first suicide attempt was when I was 11 years old, and it was directly related to my gender dysphoria. What people like Ms. Bindel would prefer is that the only viable treatment for Gender Identity Disorder be eradicated - why? I cannot say, but it seems to me to be a desire for genocide, considering the non-op and pre-op suicide rates of transsexuals are estimated to be 50%-75%. As I am simply now babbling on and losing the cohesion of my train of though, I will end in pointing out the fact if transsexuality were simply a means to bypass the horrors of gender inequality, as Bindel suggests, then male-to-female transsexuals, like myself, would not exist. There is absolutely nothing I enjoy about being treated as if my opinion is not worth anything simply because I am a woman, as well, there is absolutely nothing I enjoy about being judged as a person based on my sexual appeal to men. If I did not have gender dysphoria, I most certainly would have absolutely no interest in losing male privilege, and would most certainly not transition.

Whose feminism is this? In this article, Bindel fails entirely to move beyond the anti-trans-hyperbole-masquerading-as-radical-liberationary-feminist-politics espoused by Janice Raymond, Mary Daly et al. (the "handful of radicals" who "dared to challenge GD") in the 70s. She has also failed entirely to engage, in any meaningful way, with the telling critiques from trans writers of the ideas of these "radicals" - such as those of Jay Prosser, Sandy Stone, Kate Bornstein and Julia Serano. As a trans-person, I'm very wary of slipping into any stereotypes either side of the divide. I want to avoid stereotypical notions of femininity because I recognise they can be just as disaffirming and damaging as the notions of masculinity into which I was shoehorned whilst growing up. Yet Bindel insists that "Transsexualism, by its nature, promotes the idea that it is "natural" for boys to play with guns and girls to play with Barbie dolls." What about those of us who play with neither guns nor Barbie dolls? Where to trans people like me (remember, trans- is a prefix that implies in-betweenness, journey, not a leap between extremes) fit into Bindel's epistemology? Moreover, she calls the trans rights movement a "powerful lobby", but that only demonstrates the witch-hunt mentality many so-called "radical feminists" engage in when it comes to trans people. Powerful lobbies are those that have millions of pounds worth of backing and powerful political influence. This can hardly be said of trans rights groups... yet. Why waste time attacking an already marginalised group when you could use your efforts - as, to Bindel's credit, she has done in the past - to fight against the genuinely damaging lobbying power of multinationals, anti-immigrant and anti-gay rights media, the religious right etc? Anyhow, onwards: "Gender dysphoria (GD) was invented in the 1950s by reactionary male psychiatrists in an era when men were men and women were doormats." Care to mention the history of cross-gendered identifications in pre-patriarchal soccieties, such as the Berdaches in Native American communities? No? Thought not - it doesn't fit with the stereotype about trans people this article is projecting. Indeed, the fact that such people existed more or less freely (and, to be fair, without the medicalised aspect) before the onset of patriarchal capitalism suggests that trans can be a powerful ally in the fight against patriarchal forms of domination. But hey, demonise away. Divide yourself from potential allies. Say controversial stuff for the sake of being controversial. That's a far more positive and powerful message. Final critical point. Bindel says this: "A definition of transsexualism used by a number of transsexual rights organisations reads: Students who are gender non-conforming are those whose gender expression (or outward appearance) does not follow traditional gender roles: "feminine boys," "masculine girls" and students who are androgynous, for example. It can also include students who look the way boys and girls are expected to look but participate in activities that are gender nonconforming, like a boy who does ballet. The term "transgender youth" can be used as an umbrella term for all students whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth and/or whose gender expression is non-stereotypical. According to this definition, a girl who plays football is trans-sexual." ...Only this just isn't true. It's talking about "students who are non gender-conforming" or "transgendered", nowhere in the definition does it mention "trans-sexual". Or does Bindel genuinely think trans-advocacy groups are so stupid that the moment a girl/woman kicks a ball, she becomes trans? Get a bleeding grip! "Biology is not destiny" - that's a key feminist insight, as Bindel herself says. But to validate this article, she needs to add the qualifier: "unless, of course, you're trans". Very disappointing indeed.