One last thing. I don't hate women.

Since I don't really have the time or store of positive mental health now to wade through these piece by frustrating piece, I'm going to generalize about these essays, probably unfairly, .

Many of these essays seem to be taking an uncharitable and unsophisticated reading of Butler (that gender/sex is 'only' performance and that we ought to play with these categories, in a sort of blithe, socially-naive way) and then collapsing all transgender politics into this reading. Conveniently, they pretty much ignore Butler's, Yegenoglu's, Spivak's, Halberstam's, etc's arguments against universal categories, thinking apparently that if they hold that their universal conception of 'woman' is socially constructed, that it'll resist the common problems associated with any naturalized universal conception, namely that these take the experiences of some women as the norm for all women and therefore repeat the hierarchizing, marginalizing logic that IS colonial heteropatriarchy. For instance, the cover article claims that all women, regardless of their particular communities, are socially constructed to be subordinate to men. But if feminism succeeds, and this subordination is eliminated, will women then cease to exist? And if a particular person hasn't been socially constructed to be subordinate to men, say as part of incremental feminist progress, is that person necessarily not a woman? Will that person be kicked out of womyn's space?

The essay that redefines MTF's as MTC(onstructed)F's especially bothers me. Other descriptions of MTF's and ill-informed accounts of our experiences and motivations and lives are also epistemologically arrogant and violent. They start of assuming we're *really* men and are motivated by a patriarchic desire to unveil women's space. Apparently, they feel privileged enough to define my subjectivity, to perform that god-awful, trite, phallocentric teleportation trick that moves their gaze into my body, and displaces, and obliterates, my subjectivity. Really, I've never claimed to know what a genetic woman *really* feels, if there is such a common experience.

Also, if there is any truth in the stereotype of MTF's as too conventionally femme, why don't they have equal concern with other stereotypically false-consciousness-ridden folks, e.g., 50+ y.o. women, 13 y.o. girls, etc.

The fact is, I'm doomed, perpetually.