While I’m guilty of hating hate, of being intolerant towards intolerance and of having evil intentions towards evil, I’ve no personal issue with Separatists as people.

As I’ve said several times, I’m not invested in what someone else chooses to call themselves or whether they want to be part of any movement or community. I have no problem with any statement of opinion anyone cares to make… even if that opinion is that they think I’m a really horrible person.

The problem I have with many of the Separatists and the Separatist movement in general is the same issue I have with religious fundamentalists and Fox News: They make demonstrably false statements over and over again until it becomes a meme.

There’s a war on Christmas because people write xmas! Secularism is taking the Christ out of Christmas! Never mind that Christians began spelling Christmas this way 100s of years ago… Christians are victims of a cultural war!

Crossdressers were never involved in the fight for trans rights. Prince invented the term transgender. The Transgender Community was invented in the 1990s by a communist. Christine Jorgensen wasn’t a transgender woman. Third-gender pronouns were invented by people in the 1990s who wanted to destroy the male and female gender. Gender identity and expression protections will allow women to be raped! Never mind that the preceding assertions are demonstrably false, Separatists are victims of a transgender umbrella!

I respond to Separatist memes for the same reason I respond to the myths surrounding the ‘war on xmas,’ the hero-worship of Columbus or the assertion made in Littleton v Prange that sex is immutable because at the moment of birth, a god comes down and confers a binding binary sex upon all children without exception.

LET ME BE VERY CLEAR:

My goal is to join in the debate over language, the objective value of communal norms and the sacred cows. Those are conversations worth having. Here’s a list of the conversations I think are not worth having:

• Whether separatism is subjectively good or bad
• What the life circumstance of any particular separatist might be
• Whether or not any specific separatist is a good person
• Speculating about the mental health of a specific separatist
• Whether or not a separatist chooses to self-identify as a transgender person
• Whether a separatist is rich or poor, highly educated or uneducated and/or employed or unemployed
• What separatists think about me as a person
• Whether or not separatists should meet as a group either online or IRL
• The political, religious or sexual persuasion of any particular separatist

None of the above topics have any bearing upon the truthfulness of claims made by separatist and as such are a waste of time. When I come across the posts of Separatist or Inclusionist which focus on something other that objective truths, I know that what I’m about to read is probably just a pile of rhetorical BS.

SEPARATISTS ARE VALUABLE:

Public decent, objection and robust critiques are all functions of a healthy community. Continuously reevaluating our language, challenging our beliefs, testing what is asserted to be true and questioning the sacred cows are all hallmarks of a community health and well-being. Our very language, culture and goals were forged out of this decades long discussion/argument/debate .

The pushing that many Separatists do (or their corollary for any other aspect of community) helps to ensure that leadership egos are kept in check, that communal norms are objectivity valued and that investments of time, energy and attention are worth it. They are the irritant that produces the pearl.

As long a the debate is focused on behavior, objective facts and supporting evidence, then our debate becomes of vital significance. When the debate becomes about something other than behavior, objective facts and supporting evidence we’re probably wasting out time, energy and attention. For example…

A while back, two of us got together and formed an internet group. We formed with just one premise, i.e., to speak individually, but as one voice, in challenging the transgender at every opportunity. We don’t sit around writing endless narrative. We don’t sit around quoting the latest research. We are coordinated. We act…  Our group is growing and we’ve succeeded in shutting down threads spouting TG non-sense… All of us share one thing in common: a sense of loyalty and unity in our quest to speak with one voice to the transgender. If one of us goes at someone, we all go at them. If someone attacks one of us, they may as well attack each and every one of us.

- A Separatist opinion leader

Deriving a sense of empowerment by intimidating others and “shutting down” the free exchange of ideas is the definition of bullying. “Shutting down” the debate is the last thing I want; I want all facts to be freely and openly reviewed. I want a chance to review all the evidence Separatists have and I want my evidence-based fact assertions to face the same scrutiny. I want a free and robust debate about the things that matter.

These community debates are culturally important and will continue because it’s serves as the “conscious” of our community. They are the collective compass we use to find our way home.

PWNING FALSEHOODS ≠ PWNING PERSONHOODS

I’ve noticed some Separatists tend to conflate my denigration of their unsupported assertions of fact and/or their obdurate behavior with denigration of their personhood.

I love taking sledgehammers to a demonstrable falsehood. I enjoy using colorful language to describe dishonest tactics when they are used in place of facts. I enjoy PWNing an objectively bad idea, a proven falsehood or dishonest tactic. There’s nothing wrong with attacking these things.

What’s harmful is attacking someone’s personhood. Dana Taylor spreads demonstrable falsehoods and trades in the same rhetorical tactics used by almost all hate groups. While I’ve strongly denounced her obdurate behavior, her factual errors and logical fallacies, I’ve not attacked Dana personally. I’ve never said that she’s a poo-poo head or used her life circumstance to dishonestly turn public opinion against her arguments. I stick to attacking what she does, not who she is.

I know a number of Separatists that I like and respect as well as some that I don’t like or respect. However, my like and/or respect is completely irrelevant to the objective validity of an assertion of fact. Someone I don’t like can be right and someone I like can be wrong. Having someone question my assertions of fact is what should happen in the adult world. My denigration of your truth assertions ≠ my dislike of you as a person just as my agreement with your truth assertions ≠ my like of you as a person.

Being able to engage in a colorful debate is a healthy thing (IMHO)… A bit like Christopher Hitchens and Pastor Douglas Wilson. They were two great and colorful debaters who never made their spirited debate personal and who went on to collaborate on a number of projects (including a movie). They both enjoyed their debates and called each other friends even though, where religion is concerned, they were on opposite sides.

There’s nothing wrong with being colorful when demolishing a falsehood and there’s nothing wrong with robust and vigorous debate… in fact, there’s everything right about that process.  The continued tradition of robust debate around language, the objective merits of Separatism vs Inclusionism, communal goals, etc. is a sign of health and should be valued. Community is about unity and NOT uniformity.

I recently noted that Separatism made the news:

New group steps out from under trans umbrella
New Zealand Daily News

Transwomen who are fed up with being lumped under “the transgender umbrella” are joining through social media and are urging others who feel the same to get in touch, in the hope of creating an independent voice.

Post-trans normality New Zealand and Australia is a new Facebook group which was started by women who say recent events have highlighted the vast differences between the many people who are currently being grouped together.
“The term ‘trans’ has shifted to cover a wide range of people, who have little in common,” says spokeswoman Jacquie Grant. “Straight male cross dressers, ‘weekend’ women, the ill-defined and constantly shifting gender queer and true transsexuals. We are supposed to accept that we are part of a ‘spectrum’, from sexual fetishist male through. This does not sit well with a lot of us. For us, we are simply women,” she says…

In another news story Jacquie Grant said, “The term ‘human’ is just simply too wide a range of people, who have little in common. This also includes straight male cross dressers, ‘weekend’ women, the ill-defined and constantly shifting gender queer. Since we are apposed to any umbrella term which includes crossdressers, today I’m happy to announce our independence from the word “human”.

Actually, I’m not writing this post to PWN their loopy logic; I just wanted to PWN their newsworthy group:

Today I found that I was the subject of yet another Dana Lane Taylor gauntlet throw-down. Dana is an opinion leader in the TS Separatist group and in this post she seems to claim complete ignorance of any crossdresser leadership within the trans community except for the evil Virginia Prince. Well, as with the last time Taylor threw out a challenge, I accept!

On the outset I have to question the honesty of the following statement:

“There is a stigma surrounding male crossdressers which Charles (Virginia) Prince tried to address years ago which ended up causing harm to transsexuals.”

First of all, we’ve done this dance over and over again. Taylor and her ilk make an assertion of fact, I ask to see the evidence they used to draw their conclusions and they then tie themselves in knots (up to and including burden shifting) trying to avoid admitting that they have no evidence and that their assertions of fact (like the above quote) are merely unsubstantiated opinions masquerading as truth. Unsubstantiated assertions of fact seems to be the stock in trade of many (certainly not all) Separatists. A statement such as the above quote is intellectual junk food designed for the credulous and dogmatic.

“Why aren’t they urging the self-identified Sissy Maids and admitted transvestites to get dressed up in their Sunday best and approach their lawmakers to help get laws passed? Why not? Because the TeeGee leadership doesn’t want people to know what Transgender really means. So what they did was used the label Transgender, threw everyone they could into it, and put the face of transsexuals on it. Transgender is just a smoke screen so the public can’t see what is really going on. The men are hiding behind the skirts of women.”

Claims of pseudo-omniscience concerning the motivation of others should serve as a red flag to the cautious reader. Taylor seems to assert that crossdressers don’t dress respectfully when meeting with lawmakers because it’s what adults are expected to do in professional situations; no, crossdressers dress respectfully only because the “ TeeGee leadership doesn’t want people to know what Transgender really means.“ After claiming inerrant knowledge concerning the motivations of the “TeeGee leadership”, Taylor goes on to make some testable fact claims:

• “Transgender is just a smoke screen so the public can’t see what is really going on.“ Apparently a conspiracy exists wherein the transgender leadership tries to hide the fact that the term “transgender” covers all non-cisgender people (even the CosPlayers and Visual Kei) in the same way that the term “gay” covers all same-sex-loving people (even the leather daddies and studs).This is a testable statement. One way of testing this assertion is to simply survey what the transgender leadership has taught government entities about what “transgender” means. Did the transgender leadership teach the government that “transgender” only equals transsexual or, did they teach the government that it was an umbrella term?
• “The men are hiding behind the skirts of women.” Crossdressers are apparent accomplices to this conspiracy and are willingly “hiding behind the skirts of women.”A simple way of testing this assertion would be to review the evidence of involvement crossdressers have had in the progress of the trans community. Fortunately, I’ll do a little of that in this post.

Did Taylor offer up ANY evidence to substantiate these assertions of fact? Nope. So, my response to this intellectual hucksterism is to again quote the inimitable Christopher Hitchens, “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. ”

Dana goes on to write:

“I haven’t seen a single male crossdresser take a leadership role by lobbying for transgender rights. Almost every one of those who are in these roles identify as women. Now, why would this be? I think it is something a lot of people don’t think about but I bet those leaders know very well why.”

Later she throws down the gauntlet challenging:

“Maybe someone in the leadership roles will prove me wrong and write an article mentioning all of these people, in detail, and try to justify broad definitions of gender identity and or expression being included in all public accommodations. Monica? Autumn? Christan? [BTW, my name is spelled "Cristan"] Any takers? And how about some of you guys who a crossdressers with names such as Lilly Tgirl or CD Janie get all dressed up and walk into the office of a lawmaker and lobby for your rights?  How about someone named “Sissy Maid Faggot Steven” get all dolled up and lobby?”

A transvestite-identified man named James Howell was the first to do trans lobbying on behalf of ALL trans people. His organization was called the Transvestite Information Service (TIS) which was personally backed by Reed Erickson (a transsexual). The TIS went on to help start one of our nation’s first national trans organizations called the United Transvestite and Transexual Society.

Transvestite Information Service: First national attempt to contact, dialogue with and gain information about ordinances which barred both crossdressers and transsexuals from dressing in female clothing if they were sexed male at birth.

JoAnn Roberts began being active in 1980 and co-founded the Transgender Renascence Association in 1987. In addition to publishing a number of trans magazines, she started the Transgender Forum back in 1994.  She’s one of the (seemingly) many that’s been credited for coining that nefarious, oppressive umbrella term “transgender” as meaning a community of non-cisgender people. Here’s what else she’s done as a transgender leader:

I had been very active in community politics, but not so much of late. I’ve served as the head of Renaissance twice, initially as its first Managing Director and then as Chair of the Board for its 10th Anniversary in 1997. I was Chair of the board of the American Educational Gender Information Service (AEGIS) from 1992 to 1996. I was elected to the International Foundation for Gender Education board twice and last served in 1994. I was a co-founder of the Congress of Transgender Organizations (CTO), the Transgender Alliance for Community (TAC), GenderPAC, and lastly the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC). I also authored the original Bill of Gender Rights in 1990, which was later expanded into the International Bill of Gender Rights.

Or, what about:

• The fact that I have proof that crossdressers were lobbying on behalf of all trans folk since the 1970s?
• The fact that I have proof that crossdressers were openly part of what it meant to be “trans” in the 1980s when doing political work? (Proof #1, Proof #2)
• The fact that both crossdressers and transsexuals have been targeted by fundamentalists since the 1950s and that even in the 1950s normal people (non-fundamentalists) didn’t view transsexuals and crossdressers as abominations.
• The fact that transsexuals were having legal issues way, way before the Dana’s conspiracy theory has crossdressers ripping the rights away from transsexuals: Proof #1, Proof #2; not to mention Anonymous v. Weiner, 1966; Hartin v. the Director of Bureau of Records, 1973; or, Anonymous v. Mellon, 1977

Yah, yah, yah… I can hear you now: “Well, maybe so… But why are you hiding those really weird trans people, hum?”

One “weird” crossdresser immediately comes to mind since I live in Texas:  Leslie Cochran

“Leslie Cochran, local homeless transvestite icon, has run for mayor multiple times, and during his first bout for the position, in 2000, he came in second to Kirk Watson (with 7.7 percent of the vote). Standing 6/4′ in heels, Leslie is both the king and queen of weird Austin. Well spoken and will liked (by most), Leslie has become a notable tourist attraction, homeless advocate, and regular nightlife reveler.”

- Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas by Joshua Long

While I wouldn’t call Leslie Cochran a transgender leader, I will say that he is open about being a crossdresser, that he’s a homeless activist and well-loved in the Texas state capitol.  Need I really mention Stu Rasmussen? While both male-identified people have been looked upon as being “weird”, they seem to be well-loved, productive and accepted in their cities… as they should be.

Also, I would call the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence a leadership organization within the community. I can’t point to any one sister as being a trans leader, but I can say that the Sisters were the first to respond to AIDS when it was ripping through the GLBT community. I can say that they were in the business of saving lives, helping the dying and “used drag and Catholic imagery to call attention to sexual intolerance and [to] satirize issues of gender and morality.” While the Catholic church was protecting pedophiles and killing millions by telling Africans that while AIDS was bad, using a condom was worse, the Sisters were out there protesting this stuff through performance art and doing measurable good in their community.

I mention the above people/groups only to dispel the preposterous notion that the most outrageous among us are somehow so tainted that they are useless and/or cannot hope to better society. In fact, what is evident is that yes, even someone that appears in public looking like this…

Sister Sistah, Sister Dana Van Iquity and Sister Kitty Catalyst O.C.P. at San Francisco's NAMES Project Quilt office on Market St. working on the Sister's Nuns of The Above memorial quilt.

… deserves to have a chair at the table, deserves full 14th amendment guarantees, deserves to live a life without being crippled by shame (their own or our own) and that they are a valuable part of our community.

And just so there’s no misunderstanding, representatives of the crossdressing community have always played significant roles in the Houston trans leadership and community. (Do I need to say yet again that Houston is where trans law was born?) Whether it’s helping to lead groups or organizations, lobbying in Austin, conducting charity work, being there for others or answering the trans community hotline day and night for 15 years, crossdressers have stood shoulder to shoulder with their transsexual, intersex, etc brothers and sisters and I see no reason why that will be changing anytime soon.

Now, as to the whole bathroom red herring:

“Jolle Ruby Ryan wrote an article about being proud of fetish transvestites under the transgender umbrella. I was actually a bit shocked that one of the voices of this community would say this. The only place I saw this article posted was on her site. Nobody else in the leadership roles of the transgender community touched it. Why? Because this is the kind of thing that can destroy their chances on getting broad gender identity laws to pass. The general public does not want men in women’s private spaces. This is why a lot of laws for protections of transgender and transsexual folks don’t pass. And some do but public accommodations are stripped out. The transgender leadership keeps the cross-dressing men, sissy maids and those inflicted with paraphillic infantilism in a dark basement, and for good reason.”

The link Taylor seems to find so perplexing is apparently some blog post wherein someone dared assert that all people of non-cis experience, behavior and expression – even if that expression is sexual in nature – should be able to live a life free of shame and guilt. Yes, I know. Terrifying.

The above quote makes the following assertions of fact, without – yet again – providing any evidence to support such assertions:

• The quote apparently assumes that the TG Borg knew about this person’s post and has purposefully withheld comment lest we draw more unwanted attention to the abhorrent notion that even transvestites have a right to live life without being crippled by shame.
• The only reason trans protections do not pass is because of the crossdressers and that real progress can’t be made until they go away.
• Paraphilic infantilism = transgender
• Guys in maid costumes are being kept in a “dark basement” as part of the TG Borg conspiracy because reasonable lawmakers will think that they’re just trying to gain access to stuff like the women’s showers.

Consider that the quote must inherently assume that laws/ordinances prohibiting rape, assault, stalking and/or public indecency/disturbance could be nullified by trans protections based upon gender identity and/or expression. If the safety of cisgender women are of real concern (as Taylor claims) when discussing trans protections, then there must be some some rational for that concern, right? I mean, surely separatists would never spread fear-based hyperbole knowing full well that there’s no evidence to support the idea that trans protections somehow circumvent existing safety laws … right? Consider that Taylor’s assertions were written at a time in our history wherein the number of companies, states, cities and municipalities, schools (public and private), community colleges, universities and governmental agencies protecting trans folk from discrimination based upon gender identity and/or expression is (compared to 15 years ago) tremendous. Consider also that this tremendous growth is an upward trend.

If you’ve posted on the topic of separatism and you seem to be pro-inclusion or you come off as being a non-extreme separatist, the you may have had an encounter with a troll named “Just Jennifer.” She seems to pass her time either posting blog rants which are basically one long ad hom attack. She gets her kicks by miss-gendering people (she calls me “Mr. ‘Cristan’ Williams”), creating ad hom attacks, quote mining and setting up strawman arguments. If you’ve critiqued separatism you’ve probably had the misfortune of having her preform her troll dance on your blog.

If you’ve tried to talk with her, you’ll quickly find that she will never, ever actually address the subject you’re commenting about. She’ll only ever respond with a strawman argument and wrap up with an ad hom attack. She evades addressing anything meaningful by tap-dancing around the actual topic of discussion. She does it so much, I’ve dubbed her rhetorical side-stepping, the “Jennifer Shuffle.”

If you are one of the people she’s trolled, I thought it would generally make the intertubes a better place if instead of trying to engage her, you simply respond with posting the following into your response:

The Jennifer Shuffle is a troll dance that side-steps addressing the actual topic. Instead of feeding her, try posting this once and then either banning her or not responding to her further. 

Lastly, while I know folks who’ve dropped her docs, I’m not interested in propagating that, so please don’t reply with that stuff.

Despite what you’ve heard from the so-called ‘TS Separatists’, it doesn’t seem as if transsexuals were “colonized” at all.

The Data, Part 1

Consider the following dataset:

- click graph to enlarge -

What is this you might ask?

This is a comparison of the following 5 terms:

• Transgender People (light blue)
• Transsexual People (red)
• Transgenders (green)
• Transsexuals  (yellow)
• Transgender Community (dark blue)

This is a graph of how many times the above terms were used in 20,090,715 books from the year 1970 through the end of 2007 (37 years worth of data). Data from the last 2 years is not yet available.

Lets take a closer look at this data. Here’s the same metric presented for the years 1990 – 2008:

- click graph to enlarge -

In other words, is this what “colonization” looks like?

- click graph to enlarge -

This is a comparison of the following 2 terms:

• Transgenders (blue)
• Transsexuals (red)

- click graph to enlarge -

This is a comparison of the following 2 terms:

• Transgender People (blue)
• Transsexuals (red)

A Note About Valid Data

I’m looking at terms used for grouping people together into a community*. In other words, it would not be an apples-to-apples example if I used the following:

- click graph to enlarge -

In this graph, we have two terms used to explore the very specific idea of groups (‘transsexual people’ and ‘transsexual community’) and a term that can be used in a multitude of ways: transsexual (transsexual books, transsexual makeup tips, etc). Obviously comparing a dataset that includes concepts like ‘transsexual books’ cannot be considered as being a valid comparison to datasets that explicitly looks at transsexuals as groups.

Similarly, this is not a valid comparison:

- click graph to enlarge -

If someone wanted to be dishonest, they could claim that this graph proves that ‘transsexual people’ (red) have been colonized by the term ‘transgender’ (blue). If this is what you see when you look at this dataset, you need to be working at Fox News.

Exactly like the first dataset that compares ‘transsexual people’, ‘transsexual community’, and the general term ‘transsexual’, the above dataset does the same thing: compares 2 explicit concepts (transsexual people, transsexual community) against one term that can be used in a multitude of ways: transgender (transgender books, transgender makeup tips, etc).

I know… a TS Separatist will inevitably run off to google and compare ‘transgender’ and ‘transsexual’ and present it saying…

- click graph to enlarge -

“See! See! See!!! THIS PROVES IT! Transsexual has been colonized by transgender!!! This is an apples-to-apples chart! It compares transsexual (red) to transgender (blue) and transgender came out on top!!! ”

To which I would say that you would be correct if ‘transgender’ referred to one type of trans person or experience, but it doesn’t. This is a comparison between a term that refers to one specific type of trans person or experience and a term that refers to all types of trans people or experiences. If anything, this shows that there was almost NO change (there was, in fact, a small net increase) in the amount of times the term ‘transsexual’ was used in the year 1990 as compared to the year 2008.

The TS Separates Logic

I can hear a TS Separatist somewhere saying, “Just looking at how often these terms were used in 20 million books isn’t proof that there’s not a colonization going on!” To which I would say… “Ah, the old teapot argument…”

Here’s an example of TS Separatist logic:

Also, late transitioning transgender males and white heterosexual cross dressing males are not the only ones who have the right to vote on issues pertaining to transsexual, transgender and intersex (TTI) equality, however, they have colonized the transsexual community. The results of this colonization has been devastating to the progress of transsexual (TS) and intersex (IS) Americans. Look at the history, and the law books- it’s all there. Ever since cross dressing men and transvestites co-opted the transsexual movement, TS folks have actually LOST already pre-existing rights.

- Ashley Love

There are several claims made in the above statement:

1. Non-transsexuals have colonized transsexuals.
2. The result of this was devastating.
3. The historical record proves the above two claims.
4. Transsexuals had more rights before there was a transgender community.

Is any historical record actually given to support these claims? Nope. She asserts, “Look at the history, and the law books- it’s all there.” Did she bother to even cite even one source? Nope. Looking at the historical record isn’t welcome or wanted for a number of TS Separatists. For them, the name of the game is ‘Prove to me that I don’t have a baseball!’ I understand that reviewing 20 million books to see if there has been a colonization by the transgender community isn’t absolute proof that ‘there is no baseball.’ I’m not saying that the data ‘proves there is no baseball‘; what I am saying is that this data doesn’t seem to support the victim narrative favored by a number of TS separatists.

The Data, Part 2

Okay then. Let’s look at the internet search and news reference volumes over the past 7 years or so:

This is a comparison of the same 2 terms we looked at in The Data, Part 1:

• Transgenders (blue)
• Transsexuals (red)

What do you see most of in the above dataset – red or blue?

The above is a comparison of the same 5 terms we looked at in The Data, Part 1:

• Transgender People (light blue)
• Transsexual People (red)
• Transgenders (orange)
• Transsexuals  (green)
• Transgender Community (purple)

If anything, this review of how people look for groupings of trans people shows that news stories and searches for ‘transsexuals’ (only one type of trans person) far exceeds parity. In other words, transsexuals are but one constituent grouping found within the transgender community (according to the English language). However, transsexuals beat out the transgender community in terms of both search and news reference volume a number of times. If there was really a colonization going on, one would expect that ‘transsexuals’ and ‘transsexual people’ would have been completely obliterated in search volume and news reference.

However, what does one find? One finds that for google the…

‘Transgender Community’ does not have enough search volume for ranking.

This is what you also find:

7/23/211 EDIT: One critique was that I didn’t include USA-only data in this section. So, here’s the US-only data as well:

The top searches from the top subregions:

The top searches from the top cities:

See that green bar? That represents search volume for “transsexuals” in the top 10 regions. See those other blips that look like dots instead of bars in the bar-graph? That represents search volume for:

• Transgender People (light blue)
• Transsexual People (red)
• Transgenders (orange)
• Transgender Community (purple)

Just to drive the point home:

- English Searches, Worldwide -

- English Searches, USA Only -

That orange lump represents ‘transgenders’ and the light blue speck represents ‘transgender people’. The huge green bar represents search volume for ‘transsexuals’.

Trolls

The amount of drama created by those that paint themselves as the oppressed victims of a Borg that stripped them of their self-identity is incalculable. In fact, that’s their point:

A while back, two of us got together and formed an internet group.  We formed with just one premise, i.e., to speak individually, but as one voice, in challenging the transgender at every opportunity.  We don’t sit around writing endless narrative.  We don’t sit around quoting the latest research.  We are coordinated. We act.  We respond.  And, we do so consistently, persistently, and reasonably.  Our group is growing and we’ve succeeded in shutting down threads spouting TG non-sense.  When someone’s name is brought up for membership in our group their position on the gender debate is discussed in depth.  Each of us come from different spheres of internet experience, all of which are related to the gender debate.  Once we decide amongst ourselves if there is someone out there of whom might share our position we approach them…present a little information, ask if they think they might be interested in joining.  Some have accepted.  Some have declined.  Most have not been asked to join.  All of us share one thing in common:  a sense of loyalty and unity in our quest to speak with one voice to the transgender.  If one of us goes at someone, we all go at them.  If someone attacks one of us, they may as well attack each and every one of us.  We know who our allies are…and aren’t… for sure.

- Susan

I understand that the trolls in the above group aren’t interested in what the data has to say. I get that they will claim that google’s data is bad or that the data I’ve presented here is somehow wrong or irrelevant. I also understand that providing objective historical evidence that calls their victim narrative into question will be disregarded or they will question the authenticity of the historical record.

I’m not interested in feeding the trolls; that’s not why I’ve been doing this research. As I’ve said before, I’m personally grateful for the drive to fact check their unsubstantiated assertions.

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you too were on the receiving end of a barrage of ad hom attacks from these trolls and/or you’re genuinely interested in researching the facts  associated with some of their unsubstantiated assertions.

I encourage everyone to fact-check the data and/or historical record I’ve presented. I urge you to do your own research and (PLEASE!) add it to the available historical record online. However, please stop engaging these trolls. I’ve tried to engage them before and it’s like talking to a creationist. They seem to have a belief (unsupported by objective evidence) about the world and in their version of reality, they are being attacked; they’re victims of stupid people who’ve harmed them. You won’t change their minds. It’s best that you don’t engage them.

*Community: I use this term in a manner consistent with the current English langue to mean:

Research tools I used for this post: Google Trends |  Google Book Ngram Viewer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFnRc7sNoSU&feature=youtube_gdata