please stop these games

I have found that many people who have not had a trans female or trans feminine experience often have trouble wrapping their brains around the concept of trans-misogyny, so I will offer the following two anecdotes to help illustrate what I mean by the term. Once, about two years ago, I was walking down the street in San Francisco, and a trans woman happened to be walking just ahead of me. She was dressed femininely, but not any more feminine than a typical cis woman. Two people, a man and a woman, were sitting on a doorstep, and as the trans woman walked by, the man turned to the woman he was sitting next to and said, “Look at all the shit he’s wearing,” and the woman he was with nodded in agreement. Now presumably the word “shit” was a reference to femininity — specifically, the feminine clothing and cosmetics the trans woman wore. I found this particular comment to be quite telling. After all, while cis women often receive harassing comments from strange men on the street, it is rather rare for those men to address those remarks to a female acquaintance and for her to apparently approve of his remarks. Furthermore, if this same man were to have harassed a cis woman, it is unlikely that he would do so by referring to her feminine clothing and makeup as “shit.” Similarly, someone who is on the trans masculine spectrum could potentially be harassed, but it is unlikely that his masculine clothing would be referred to as “shit.” Thus, trans-misogyny is both informed by, yet distinct from, transphobia and misogyny, in that it specifically targets transgender expressions of femaleness and femininity.

The second example of trans-misogyny that I’d like to share occurred at an Association for Women in Psychology conference I attended in 2007 (for those unfamiliar with that organization, it is essentially a feminist psychology conference). One psychologist gave a presentation on the ways in which feminism has informed her approach to therapy. During the course of her talk, she discussed two transgender clients of hers, one on the trans male/masculine spectrum, the other on the trans female/feminine spectrum. Their stories were very similar in that both had begun the process of physically transitioning but were having second thoughts about it. First, the therapist discussed the trans masculine spectrum person, whose gender presentation she described simply as being “very butch.” She discussed this individual’s transgender expressions and issues in a respectful and serious manner, and the audience listened attentively. However, when she turned her attention to the trans feminine client, she went into a very graphic and animated description of the trans person’s appearance, detailing how the trans woman’s hair was styled, the type of outfit and shoes she was wearing, the way her makeup was done, and so on. This description elicited a significant amount of giggling from the audience, which I found to be particularly disturbing given the fact that this was an explicitly feminist conference. Clearly, if a male psychologist gave a talk at this meeting in which he went into such explicit detail regarding what one of his cis female clients was wearing, most of these same audience members, as well as the presenter, would surely (and rightfully) be appalled and would view such remarks to be blatantly objectifying. In fact, in both of these incidents I have described, comments that would typically be considered extraordinarily misogynistic if they were directed at cis women are not considered beyond the pale when directed at trans women.

Ehrlich was a Polish Jew born in 1882, and an avid socialist (as were many European Jews at the time). He was a member of the Bund (the Jewish labour party) and ran against Zionist Yitshak Schipper in the Warsaw Kehilla.

On October 4, 1939 he was arrested by the NKVD (the Sovyet secret police) and subjected to interrogation for 10 months. On August 2, 1940 he was brought before a tribunal and accused of spying for the Nazis. He denied the charges, but the tribunal sentenced him to death. While he awaited execution, the sentence was commuted to 10 years in gulag. He wasn't released until a year later as part of the Sikorski-Mayski agreement between the Sovyet Union and Poland.

Upon his release he was asked to join the newly-formed Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which he formed with Viktor Alter under Stalin's blessing. The JAC was chaired by Solomon Mikhoels, the director of the Moscow Jewish Theater.

On December 4, 1941, just 10 months after the JAC's formation, Ehrlich and Alter were arrested in Kuybyshev by the NKVD. No reason was given for their arrest. Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt, both prominent social activists, petitioned Stalin to release Ehrlich and Alter, but were ignored.

On February 23, 1943 following the Sovyet victory in Stalingrad, Sovyet ambassador Maxim Litvinov wrote to William Green to tell him that Ehrlich and Alter had been executed on Stalin's orders.

Despite this, the JAC was fiercely pro-Sovyet. They led campaigns to fund the Red Army, and broadcast statements about the lack of antisemitism in the CCCP. In July 1943, Mikhoels and Itsik Feffer led the largest American pro-Sovyet rally in history, where over 40,000 people listened to him praise Stalin's efforts against the Nazis.

In January 1948, Mikhoels was killed by the MGB (the other Sovyet secret police) in a staged car accident.

Sovyet persecution of Jewish anti-fascists continued until 1952, when most of the prominent members of the JAC were arrested and executed. 7 months later in August, at least 13 prominent Jewish poets, including Feffer, were rounded up, brought to the basement of Lubyanka prison, and executed as part of Stalin's "Great Purge".

You literally went off about a soccer player not saying 'Israel'.

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