I came by to see what all the hubbub was about, and to check on your progress in combating your own cissupremacist blog.

I am not amused. The speshul wite cis lady is up to her old tricks again.

Let’s look at the Cara blogging formula:
Be openly cissupremacist
Let a random trans woman come in and clean up your mess
Cry some speshul wite lady tears, and make yet more navel gazing promises not backed up by consistent longterm actions
Lather rinse repeat.

So, for all the time I spent taking your azz to school, for all the trans women who had to pause and put the brakes on your open cissexism, this is the best you have to offer?

You run away from being called out, you flip your shit and get defensive when you come over to my blog and dump your false piety on me and I reject it for the self serving horseshit that it is, and your bumper sticker faux inclusion of trans women is suppsed to make it hunky dory as long as you wet it down with wite lady tears and empty promises.

Say it ain’t so, mujer! Tel me that this lil cissupremacist verbal romp was an accident, alien possession, computer gremlins, your cat dancing ok the keyboard whatever.

But don’t tell me you deliberately sat down, decided that your nod was the template for the One True Female Bpdy and that all others were simply beyond the scope of what you could be bothered with.

Mujer, this post is so disrespectful of the trans women who took tiempo y energia to educate u it’s not even funny.

First of all, I want to apologize for not answering you sooner. I saw your comment (and Queen Emily’s post) yesterday morning, but had the day from hell and hardly got a moment to myself at all. And I didn’t want to answer in a rush.

You’re absolutely right that this is is a cis-centered discussion (and thread). I tried to make clear that I could only speak to my own experiences, and as said above, those experiences are cis. And that’s the truth. I can only speak to my experiences. And honestly, I did consider the implications of this discussion being cis-centered, but was unsure what else to do about that. Again, if I can only speak for myself, and therefore don’t have the ability to talk about trans bodies in the same way. Further, I’m sure that you’re certainly aware of the cis fascination with trans bodies/genitals, and the way in which that fascination is dehumanizing, transphobic and objectifying. I felt that the last thing the world needed was another ignorant cis woman trying to talk about trans bodies as if they’re open for her own discussion.

All of that said, you’re absolutely right that with the exception of that one little sentence using the word cis, this post and discussion did erase trans experiences and the fact that not all women and not all men have the same sets of genitals, and that trans children and adults also need information about their bodies and are regularly denied it. Perhaps I should have, as your comment suggests above, used the word “cis” as a modifier both in the title and throughout the post. I say “perhaps” only because I feel like that would be directly and explicitly exclusionary, but I guess that might be better than just erasing trans people entirely and failing to acknowledge the cis-specificity? Or maybe I should have just worked harder to find a way to note what I said above about trans people also being denied information, but without explicitly discussing genitals in the same way that I did with regards to cis women. Or, most likely, done both, as the latter is hardly better without being accompanied by the former. (Please note I’m not actually expecting anyone to give me answers to the question “how could I have done better?” — I’m mainly talking aloud here.)

Whatever it is that I should have done, I clearly didn’t do it. I don’t feel like it was a mistake to have this conversation, but clearly I did make mistakes in the execution of it. And I am sorry that in that poor execution, I caused hurt and/or anger, and that, as Queen Emily points out in her post, I reinforced notions of gender/sex that are behind the oppression of trans people. I hope everyone knows that it wasn’t my intent, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot when it’s what I did anyway.

You may have clitoral phimosis. Apparently quite a number of women wind up having it but, between the lack of quality sex-ed and the clitoris being avoided during pelvic exams, never find out.

i teach in a liberal urban area too, i can’t imagine how bad it is in the religion-driven midwest areas.

it’s a shame how little people know about their own bodies. although it is encouraging that my human sexuality class is the first class filled each semester, and students seem to truly want to learn about these topics. it’s just rediculous that they have to wait until college to get this knowledge.

now idly wondering how many people with prostates know where those are, how to reach ‘em and why one would…

i will also note that i still get a depressing number of hits looking for “outie” and “innie vaginas,” based on a post wherein I queried what exactly that was supposed to mean (shape of labia it turns out); and now you probably will to, mind. (Jehovah! Jehovah!! Jehovah!!!)